Like Final Fantasy, the Mario rpgs share only the essentials with their predecessors. It's Mario, he's on an adventure, and he battles in interactive turn-based combat. What more could you want?
Mario and Luigi: Superstar Saga may only be a spiritual successor to Paper Mario and Super Mario RPG, but it has retained 100% of the fun.
Aesthetics:
Everything about this game's graphics reeks of polish. Hmm, "reek" is a bad word to describe something positive. Appleworks' thesaurus gave me "funk" as an alternative, so I'll use that. Everything about this game's graphics funks of polish. It looks just as good as Paper Mario but in total 2D, which makes the world look more natural than Paper Mario's 2D/3D artistic approach.
The game's animation has such quality. The characters are so detailed that familiar ones will be instantly recognizable and new ones look precisely like their drawings in the instruction booklet. Mario and Luigi have enough animations to express a full range of emotions and reactions, such as surprise, fear, disappointment, and even recognition of other people's stupidity.
While you won't see amazing effects like a Golden Sun summon spell, everything is big enough on the screen that it doesn't feel like you're playing a Game Boy game. Play this with a GameCube Game Boy Player and the thought "Game Boy" will never even enter your mind.
In fact, this game was designed for the Game Boy Player. It has a special GB Player start-up screen and includes rumbling for people using a GameCube controller. You know a lot of care went into a game when they worry about force-feedback for a small part of the game's potential audience.
Control:
Mario and Luigi has a new gameplay element over its predecessors, and it's that you're controlling both Mario and Luigi at the same time. The whole game is set up to take advantage of this unique control style. When solving puzzles, you must use both brothers, one on one button, one on the other. When in battle, enemy attacks can be dodged and countered by using the right brother at the right time, and sometimes both need to jump at the same time to avoid an attack.
When on the offense in battle, the Mario Bros. can use their brother points to perform special moves together. This is accomplished by pressing a sequence of buttons based on which brother is doing an action at which part of the move. Thus the battles never get boring, since you're actively participating in them.
The control takes some getting used to, but since the game relies on it and it's totally fun, you don't mind. Unlike Mario Kart: Double Dash!!, which also uses two characters at once, you'll actually know you're playing as two characters in Mario and Luigi.
Gameplay:
An evil witch from a neighboring kingdom has stolen Princess Peach's voice and replaced it with explosives. If Nintendo really wanted to show its mature side, her voice would have been replaced with expletives, but this story isn't the main plot of the game, just how it starts.
Mario and Luigi travel to the other land with Bowser (he can't kidnap the princess or she'll blow up his castle with her voice, so he needs Mario and Luigi to get her voice back) and they follow the clues and paths, earning new abilities along the way. Spin jumps, high jumps, and hammer attacks are all needed to solve the various puzzles in the game.
No body in this other kingdom has heard of Luigi, but everyone seems to know Mario. If they really wanted a bizzarro universe they should have done the opposite and had everybody know Luigi, with neither brother sure why. The game does pack quite a bit of humor though. Some of it makes you laugh, some of it makes you simply acknowledge its existence, but overall the script seems very deliberate- nothing mis-translated or just made up by someone who never played the game.
Sound:
The music in the game reminded me a lot of Super Mario RPG. Classic Mario tunes are sprinkled throughout the game, but when you go to a new town something about it just sounded like Mario RPG. Now that Square's back with Nintendo they really need to do another one of those, they've already confirmed an official Paper Mario sequel for GameCube for next year, and I would love a Mario and Luigi sequel as well. I'm off topic- just tap my foot when I do that.
Besides the game's music being great, the soundeffects are also top-notch for a Game Boy title. Luigi and Mario say a variety of phrases that have yet to get old; and always a plus in a Mario game, the jumping sounds like Mario's jumping.
Direct quote from the original Donkey Kong arcade machine: "Jump Button Makes Jumpman Jump." Stop tapping my foot...
Multiplayer:
Mario and Luigi includes the same Mario Bros. game that's been on every GBA Mario game so far. The reason is to promote multiplayer GBA games, since if you know someone with any Mario game you can play 2-player Mario Bros., even if you don't have the same specific Mario title.
OVERALL:
Don't let this title be a sleeper. If you enjoyed either Mario RPG or Paper Mario, you owe it to yourself to pick up the latest in the series. This will quickly become one of your favorite GBA games.
The Lowdown on  Mario And Luigi: Superstar Saga
| Aesthetics: Awesome |
Control: Very Good |
| Gameplay: Awesome |
Multiplayer: Above Average |
| Sound: Very Good |
Innovation: 6/6 |
| Lasting Appeal: 6/6 |
Rating Explanation |
Overall: Awesome!
"Top of the Genre"
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Mario And Luigi: Superstar Saga
