Pros: cute story and it has some of the entertaining game play
Cons: Dosen't make use of a lot of the DS features, long boss fights.
The bottom line: Makes you want to go back to the simple days where beating a boss required just 3 stomps.
Well I played through Mario and Luigi Super Star Saga a couple of months ago and enjoyed it. It was frustrating has heck but it was one of the funnest and funniest Mario RPG’s. I would like to say Partners in Time for the DS is like that but sadly I can’t.

Story.
In a distant alien world that is thoroughly trashed the residents look for a new place to conquer and call home. And they find it in the Mushroom kingdom. They arrive and start invading the place when Baby Mario and Baby Luigi are thoroughly thrashing Baby Bowser to rescue baby Princess Peach. Meanwhile in the present day Professor E. Gadd has invented a new time machine to travel back to the past, Princess Peach will take the first journey. But when the time machine comes back it is ruined and a monster is inside. Mario beats the alien and after words time holes start appearing around the castle. Mario and Luigi take the first time hole back to the past and get caught up in the middle of the alien invasion. They are rescued by there younger self’s and the two sets of brothers team up to rescue the adult Princess Peach.

The one thing you will notice about 2 or 3 hours in that this doesn’t have the same weird and whacked out humor that the original one had. Not to say some of the outtakes won’t make you laugh out loud but there isn’t has much in there. Its way to toned down and while it’s not what ruin the game in my opinion it’s a major negative compared to the original.

Graphics.
The graphics use very little of what the DS is cable of, while the character sprits are much better then the original game they are clearly 2d with very little if any of the DS 3d engine used. The touch screen with the exception of one scene is never used either. That is of course to say the game doesn’t take notice of another interesting feature the DS has; it’s duel screen. While a typical map is displayed while exploring areas, during fights monsters may sometimes do attacks that require you to look at the top screen in order to make judgments in how to dodge the attacks. Also some of your moves will use the top screen in pretty much the same way.

Sound.
The sound is that of a typical Mario game most of the time happy go lucky type of music but it can get fairly dark and moody when the situation calls for it. The usual Mario voice actors come back to play the voices of Mario and Luigi has well as Peach.

Gameplay.
Ok if you have played the original game you should be at home with Mario and Luigi Partners in time. Like the last one this mixes action RPG’s with turn based RPG. While it is turn base and you go through menus like that, the amount of damage you score has well has damaging enemy attacks depends on how fast you hit the button that a character is design to. In other words if Mario is about to be hit by a fire ball hitting A will make him jump over it.

The baby’s are done by the X and Y buttons the same way the adults use the A and B. What’s new about having the baby aboard comes more with the puzzle solving aspect rather then in battle. The only differences in battle are that the Adults take the damage first and if they die the babies take there place in battle. Handy because it gives you time to deal out 1-up mushrooms after a nasty attack, bad because the babies are a lot weaker then the adult Mario and Luigi.

Well I guess that and the way bro moves are done. Instead then a set amount of moves that requires special moves, Bro moves are done by items now. Some items like the shell can be used regardless of who is in your party, but these moves are always more powerful if you have the whole group. And some like the copy flower can only be done by the whole group. There is really only 2 types of moves, one that require you to press the right button really fast to get damage. And the other that requires you to look at which character is moving and presses the right button. If your successful at these moves they can go on for quite a while, of course they speed up and get harder has the move goes on but most of the time there the only way to score decent damage.

Now in puzzle solving goes both the adults and the babies learn different moves to get around obstacles and sometimes you have to combine moves to get them done. In example the babies can use hammers to press switches while Mario and Luigi can do the air spin. An example of using them together is when Mario and Luigi air spin the babies so they can fly higher and further then regular. There are also plenty of puzzles where you have to hit switches in two different places.

Where does the game go wrong.
Ok the gameplay is very simpler to Mario and Luigi Super Star Saga which was fun, so where does it go wrong. The pitiful sorry excuse of tedious game play called Boss fights. Ok bosses are supposed to take a bit longer to wipe out then the usual grunts in the area other wise they wouldn’t be called boss fights. But the boss fights done in Partners in time can take anywhere from 20-40 minutes to beat. Now this isn’t me getting a game over and having to try again. This is just one round of non stop bopping a boss over and over again. Tonight the final form of the last boss whooped me into game over. Now why does this make me mad, well it took me 90 minutes just to get from the bosses first form to the final bosses final form. Bowletta in the original game may have been harder then hell but she wasn’t tedious. The final boss in this game is about has long has the final boss for FF8, and that was pretty tedious but that was on a console and PC. Can anybody tell me why having a 2 hour long boss while playing on a battery power portable console is a bad thing.

Final Recommendation.
Mario and Luigi does so many things right that it’s hard for me to give it such a low rating. But the tedious bosses and the lame story really makes this game more boring then it has to be.