Paper Mario and Mario & Luigi: a fan's musings about Mario's RPG adventures

Well, that's not wordy. Sarcasm aside, this game, as a fan of the series and the original game, is puzzling. Actually, the better word might be "baffling." It was one thing to remake Superstar Saga , which at that point had only been recently playable on the Wii U's Virtual Console, assuming you were fine with not being able to play it on-the-go. For AlphaDream to remake the very first game of the series after the painfully  mediocre and unoriginal  Paper Jam  was... nice, for lack of a better word. Plus, it came with a neat side story centered on an ordinary Goomba leading fellow minions in search of Bowser. Ultimately, Superstar Saga + Bowser's Minions  (or just SS DX ) financially performed only as well as a 3DS remake of a Game Boy Advance game could when another  Mario game called Super Mario Odyssey  was right around the corner. "Well" as in not even 80,000  copies . Yeah. That's... pretty bad, to put it lightly. At the very leas...

The not-so-bad sequel to Bowser's Inside Story So, I recently started replaying both Bowser's Inside Story and Dream Team . First, it was just the former, but now, I've somehow found myself hooked on full-on beating Dream Team again. While I'm a "save-the-best-for-last" kind of guy, there's this genuine appreciation for what the game accomplishes that makes this particular playthrough of the Mario Bros.' fourth adventure a bit more enjoyable. But first, some background. When Dream Team  was first announced, I was both elated and cautious. The idea of finally getting a Mario & Luigi game on the 3DS was tantalizing, but the art style was so different from its predecessors that it almost felt... "wrong". There was a charm to the lower-level, cartoonish graphics of the first three games that simply worked for whatever AlphaDream was going for. Now, I still enjoyed Dream Team once it came out (that is, after getting through the ob...