Pros: Sense of humor, action and RPG blend, great pacing, not too challenging for casual gamers
Cons: A little too easy for advanced gamers
The bottom line: Mario & Luigi: Partners in Time melds action and RPG into a pleasing whole, like Klondike bars combine smooth ice cream and a chocolate shell into a blissful treat.
If you don't think the Nintendo DS has any good RPG's, you haven't played Mario & Luigi: Partners in Time. No, it's not your typical RPG; it's not even your typical atypical RPG. It's a sort of action-RPG hybrid that recalls the original Mario RPG on the Super Nintendo, with a few of its own twists.

The story is convoluted, involving time travel, evil mushrooms from another planet, baby versions of Mario, Luigi, and Bowser, a Yoshi newspaper reporter, and moustaches. This isn't to say the story's very good or compelling, and as with every other game featuring evil time traveling extraterrestrial mushrooms the inevitable plot twist is pretty obvious even early on. But where a plot-reliant RPG falls on its face when that plot sucks, as in most Final Fantasy games, the story here mainly serves to set up various gags. It works, too; the only people who won't crack a smile when they meet the infamous L33T HAMM3R BROZ are those who just don't get it.

The action of Partners in Time follows a fairly rigid pattern: something happens that opens up a time portal in the present-day Mushroom Kingdom, through which Mario, Luigi, Baby Mario, and Baby Luigi must travel. In each case, they find the Mushroom Kingdom of the past under attack by not only Bowser (and Baby Bowser) but also vicious intergalactic fungi¹. There they battle Bowser's minions and evil mushrooms to restore order to the Mushroom Kingdom. Oh, and to save the princess too, of course.

These dungeons, for lack of a better term, mix puzzle solving and action-RPG combat. Both in and out of battle, you control the four Mario brothers with the four buttons on the DS; A, B, Y, and X make Mario, Luigi, Baby Mario, and Baby Luigi jump or do some context-sensitive action. At first, the puzzles are simple button-pushing affairs, but later on the foursome gain new powers. The babies can drill undergound, or the adults can roll into a ball, for example. Eventually you'll have to use all of these abilities to clear a stage, and of course there are hidden bonuses in earlier stages if you go back later.

Combat is menu-driven, but every action, offensive and defensive, is a test of your button-timing prowess. Even the most simple jump attack means pressing that character's button at the right time to do extra damage. In place of a magic system, there are "Bros. Items", things like shells, fire flowers, and trampolines that require trickier timing, with a bigger payoff. And of course, there's an experience point system, because what would an RPG be without experience points (I mean, aside from good, like Morrowind or Oblivion), and stats that increase per level. Keeping the cheekiness going, there's even a stache stat that serves as a kind of luck factor.

It might seem simple -- combat menus and button-mashing -- but what Partners in Time may lack in typical RPG depth, it makes up for in solid, engaging action. Around halfway through the game the dungeons become more puzzle based and the battles get slightly tedious (especially if you're thorough, which means your characters are overpowered), but combat is never boring. There's never that purposeless sense of level grinding or endless minigame repetition. Most importantly, the sly, self-referential humor really works and makes the overall experience worthwhile.

The DS isn't the graphical powerhouse that the PSP is, but Partners in Time is crisp and colorful. The characters look appropriately cartoonized, and the 3D world done with 2D art is really a masterpiece. Visually, this game can stand with the best of the SNES, like The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past. The audio is great too, remixing class Nintendo tunes for the backgrounds, and though there's no voice acting, Mario and Luigi make vaguely Italian sounds that are at the same time appropriate and a bit politically incorrect.

The only real complaint with Partners in Time is that it's a bit too easy, which may have been a concession to younger players. Once you consistently get the timing down, none of the enemies really pose a threat. Even in boss battles, all you need to do is figure out how to react to attacks and you're golden. It's almost wholly unnecessary to buy items because you'll rarely use them and they're awarded almost constantly. There's also a kind of sidequest that has you digging up beans to trade for powerful abilities, but once you find the bean casino it's unnecessary. Still, with all this said, the core gameplay is well crafted and that's what's important; compared to some other games where the periphery is great but the essence of the game is flawed, I'd take Partners in Time any day.

Mario & Luigi: Partners in Time is the DS's answer to the slew of traditional, unimaginative portable RPG's on the PSP, and it's easily a winner. Neither too short nor too long, not too serious or too boring, it has just the right amount of variety to keep just about everyone happy.

¹A quick Google search suggests that "Vicious Intergalactic Fungi" is available as a band name.