Mario And Luigi Superstar Saga

If you have played the completely brilliant DS game Mario And Luigi Partners In Time you will know the Mario Bros. and RPGS go together like peanut butter and jelly. The game is, as you would expect, and RPG, but not any RPG, a great one. The game's storyline is pretty strange. The evil Cackletta, along with her slightly barmy sidekick, Fawful, has stolen Princess Peach's voice and replaced it with explosive vocabulary, just after the explosive vocabulary replaced her normal voice Bowser comes along to kidnap Princess Peach, but he works out if he takes her back like that his castle could be in jeaopardy, so he tells Mario and Luigi to set out to get Peach's voice back so he can kidnap her... quite the storyline. You start off as just Mario, with basic controls ( A jumps, D Pad walks )but then about 15 minutes in Luigi joins the game. then the controls change. You can press START to make Mario and Luigi switch places ( front or back ) then the guy in front jumps with A whilst the guy in back jumps with B, still quite simple! Now the real variety comes in when you start learning the special moves, then it gets complicated. For example you are on a mountain, you need to jump real high, then float over a gap, then go under a barrier and then hammer a rock blocking your path. The button pattern for that would read something like this: L,B,B,START,B,B,START,L,L,B,A,R,A. So, not so simple afterall. But soon enough you will start getting used to the control scheme, and believe it or not, it will grow on you. So thats the main outworld taken care of what about the battlefield? Well, it's pretty simple RPG fare. You can select from Solo,Bros.,Items,Run. Solo does a simple attack ( Jump or Hammer ) for jump you can press A or B ( depending on who is attacking ) just before landing on the enemy to deal out more damage, same with the hammer. Bros. attack are special moves that require Bros. Points (BP) to use. you have 3 levels of each bros. Attack, levels one and two are in slow motion and have button prompts on the screen whereas level 3, the hardest, has no prompts and is in normal motion, if you do level 3 you will deal out more damage and learn more advanced Bros. Attacks. Items is pretty self explanatory, you can click it to select either Mushroom, Super Mushroom, Refreshing Herbs, Nuts, 1-Up Mushrooms and Super 1-Up Mushrooms, no attack items here, strangely. And again, run is pretty self explanatory, if you are low on health or cannot be bothered to battle the certain enemies you can just click run and then mash both A and B to escape, there is a catch, however, the longer you take to get off of the battlefield the more coins you use. So thats the attack now what about the defense? Well, say an enemy is coming towards you, you can either make Mario or Luigi jump ( A and B ) depending on who the enemy is going for. You can either straight out dodge the enemy or you can counterattack it with the right timing. So if you have never played an RPG in your life and you're reading this review right now you are probably not unerstanding ANY of this, but, considering this game starts easy and gets ever-so hard later on, it may be a good game to get non-RPG fans into RPG's, especially with its undeniable charm and its humourous moments. The game that personally got ME into RPGS was the sequel, Mario and Luigi Partners In Time, and this could be the one for you. The puzzles are easy yet challenging, the comedy is GOLD, the combat is surprisingly simple and the overall game is brilliant! You can pick it up for about £8.50 on eBay, you'd be NUTS not to purchase this!