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NOTE: any time i say "the series" here im referring to the mario & luigi series, not mario as a whole

-the beginning of the game is. rough, to say the least. i really really dont like it. after going through the bowser's airship section (which is fine in my opinion; sure intrusive tutorials be damned but it's not too bad) you're immediately thrust into stardust fields, which i think is my least favorite area of the game, right off the bat (or maybe joke's end). it has such a draining purple pallete (that actually looks really nice in the remake but im not talking about that) and immediately the first thing you do is: arbitrary minigame thats weirdly strict with its timing. it's not that bad though and you do get 3 hits on both bros before you lose so it's not that annoying, but it is a VERY strange beginning to the game. almost as strange as the fact that immediately following is... a fetchquest to get 100 coins! and thats the whole first area, save for a little boss at the end. i just dont get it i think. i dont want to go over like every area in the game like that though. thats dull and id much rather make sweeping statements about the game. i wanted to point out the first area as specifically rough though because it is literally the introduction to the game.

-the combat system is BY FAR the roughest in the series (that ive played; idk maybe paper jam's is bad. thats the only one i havent played) and im really annoyed that people always point out partners in time as the odd one out in this regard when like. it's not as bad. enemy attacks always feel awkward to dodge (the dodging and counterattack always feel a little too sluggish), the bros attacks all look the exact same on account of basically just the bros moving acrobatically a little bit, they also FEEL about the same since each of them are basically just "press a or b 3 times with certain timings" except with twists such as "this one has you press ONLY b" or "this one has you HOLD a" ; the stand out one that i actually kinda liked was chopper bros., because at least mashing a for a sec feels a Bit different. it's funny though, because the attacks are all so similar in concept that when you get the advanced versions they ALL feel like they might as well have just been COMPLETELY separate attacks on the menu and NOTHING would change. the bros attack "difficulty" system, while good in theory (allows you to learn the attacks via them being slowed down more at the cost of power and more BP on usage) is actually not that great i think, because all it Really teaches you is the order to press the buttons. literally all that the harder difficulty does is remove the slowdown (ergo it has a different timing; ergo you cant use the lower difficulties to practice timing Aka The Important Part) and gives you a Little Less indication on which button to press (which like. i dont think removing visual information makes for an interesting challenge. not that it removes the indication altogether though since the bros still shine their color when you should press the button so ??). i think a better system is bowser's inside story's, where you can use the menu to access "practice modes" or whatever to practice bros attacks in fake little battles. it's not perfect and i like the fact that in superstar saga youre pushed to learn as you go in actual fights, rather than practicing in a sectioned off little thing, but for the sake of practicing superstar saga's system Does Not Do It For Me

-this kind of ties in with the last point since it's Also about the battle system but i think it's distinct enough to warrant its own point: the difficulty curve is Really Strange; it feels like it rises until you get to the third boss in the game and then just kinda. plataeus. nothing really feels like it gets any harder, and if you choose to use the mush badge it drops to pissbaby easy real quick since you can one-shot basically any enemy including bosses with the mushrooms you buy with pocket change + chopper bros (however it's so notoriously overpowered a lot of people just forgo using it altogether to make the rest of the game actually A Game). throughout almost the WHOLE GAME the enemy attack patterns..really never get more interesting, complicated, harder, etc. they just kinda plataeu. with a few exceptions which ill get to in a sec. and that creates a weird case for joke's end (2nd last area in the game) where the enemies are so easy to dodge that they Still Dont Pose A Real Threat, but they DO have higher numbers than what came before them. so in the offchance you Do accidentally fuck up an attack you will Probably Die. which might actually be because i didnt bother to buy new gear since the prior few areas had been so pissbaby easy but what Ever. and then it's immediately followed by the final area in the game where NOW they decided "okay time to make the enemies have harder attacks" i still have no idea how youre supposed to dodge the sniper bill's attack what. there are some other oddities too, like for whatever reason, the chuckola woods bossfight has one attack that feels like you have only a few FRAMES to dodge it-- but ONLY when it's attacking mario. i eventually started dodging enemies because the battle system was not fun enough to warrant it

-it is the least visually appealing game in the M&L series in my opinion. sure i think a lot of the weird off-model designs are cute and charming, and im upset that they just made them more generic versions in the remake. but also so much of the sprite art looks so strange and clunky. i dont really care that much about this point since i still think it looks GOOD, but fwiw i think partners in time, aesthetically, is just this game but a little upscaled and more refined (and a little darker, ambiently), and looks so much better to me. obviously that one is on the DS and this is a GBA game, so i cannot judge it for everything. but i can judge it for the toads looking like that What The Hell

-i complained for so long about the battle system. but it's not like the overworld feels much better to play. action navigation is a DISASTER. having to switch bros constantly to figure out which bro has what ability every time i needed to do something to progress was a chore -- worst of which being remembering which bro gets hammered into the ground and which bro gets hammered into being small, since it is quite literally the same action with different results. in theory i love using the same mechanic in multiple ways like that but mixed with confusing navigation it Constantly threw me over. an example for doing it better, to me, is dream team, where when luigi hammers mario, whether he goes into the ground or becomes small depends on the texture of the surface youre hammering him into! thats so much more intuitive, to me, at least. firebrand and thunderhand are really undeniably Cool, but in practice are uninteresting and i see why they were very quickly phased out. when used by the front bro, what they do is. Activate Special Switches That Will Only Activate If Hit By That Element. which is really lame, because thats also exactly how buttons function with the hammer, except i guess these ones are bro-specific. not that it matters, since theres like one or two puzzles that actually utilize that aspect of it. they dont even work for first striking enemies. which is really weird, because they otherwise DO function in battle, even if they're just. elemental hammers, basically. and thats kind of how they feel in general, except elements hardly come into play because your elemental attacks arent as strong as bros attacks, and you unlock the elemental bros attacks really late in the game and by that point there arent that many enemies with elemental weaknesses anyways; speaking of that point in the game, you also get the ability to "tickle" the other bro from behind with the element of the bro in the back which is.. weird but this series has shit like that constantly, you kinda get used to it. tickling luigi with fire allows you to run fast like the zelda pegasus boots. this one's fine, it's versatile enough out of it's strictly intended purpose that it's fun to have, even if it happens to be less useful than youd probably think. tickling mario with electricity allows you to move in any direction while the bro in the back remains in the same position relative to the bro in the front! this is so non-useful, that literally the main intended use of it (fitting in between tight moving obstacles) can literally just be done with the spin jump. the other one is the ability to flick boo switches, which can only be activated while youre not looking at them, so the electricity stopping your turning is required. which is fine, in concept except Oh Wait That Means It Is Functionally the Same As The Thunder/Fire Switches And Thus Carries My Same Complaints. also these have the same issue of increasing the tedium of menu navigation and having to remember which bro should be in front and when, except it's slightly less bad than the hammers since at least thunder and fire look a bit more visually distinct than Two Identical Hammers even if their hand icons Do Not. another significant issue is that swapping who's in front brings an inconsistency: luigi. when he's in front, he uses the A button and mario uses the B button. battles do not change, however. regardless of who is where in the overworld, the buttons for each are consistent in battle. okay. not that hard to adjust when im swapping back and forth on the fly, albeit i am a bit peeved that it breaks the rule of "A is Mario, B is Luigi". but when it's a luigi solo section, i find it exceptionally jarring to go from the overworld where im pressing A to do everything, to the battles where suddenly i have to switch to B to counterattack. its one of those really weird annoying inconveniences that just kept getting to me.

-i have heard that the story of paper jam is "paper thin and very nothing", but that it has "a lot of good humor sprinkled in to at least carry you over". i have not heard this about superstar saga, which is surprising to me because it is completely true. the important characters are completely nothing in personality (except prince peasley and fawful; the latter of which being deserving enough of getting his own game that he got his own game) and even if you like the little bits and parts of story that the game has it's kind of a bitch to pay attention to when like 80% of the game takes place in random arbitrary detour fetchquests! like seriously, when the plot itself isnt revolving around you finding some mcguffin of the hour (rare) it's finding some other random thing to have you go do a fetchquest for in order to progress it anyways. this is fine sparingly, but it gets to the point where in the part where main mcguffin fetchquest gets split into four fetchquests, one of the fetchquests requires you to do 7 micro-fetchquests to get some fruits around the kingdom, and one of the fruits has a micro-micro-fetchquest associated with it (thats really just a single "can-you-even-call-this-a-boss" fight but whatever). so much of the game's plot is just "go get this thing" "okay, you got this thing. now go get this other thing" and even though the game isnt even that long it feels like the plot moves at the speed of molasses. probably because the entire plot of the game is like a paragraph stretched over the course of like 15 hours or however long it takes to beat. "peach gets her voice stolen by cackletta and fawful, who are evil residents of the beanbean kingdom. the mario bros. go to the beanbean kingdom to stop them and get tricked into allowing them to retrieve the beanstar. the beanstar is a magical item in which its power is activated by a pure voice, and the only voice pure enough in this day and age is peach. they attempt to activate the beanstar and instead it gets angry and then gets split into four pieces. as it turns out, the higher-ups in the beanbean kingdom tricked cackletta and fawful into stealing birdo's voice instead of peach. mario and luigi defeat cackletta and recollect the beanstar pieces. cackletta's soul is put into bowser's body and she kidnaps peach. mario and luigi defeat bowletta." that is Every Single important plot beat that happens in the whole game. in fairness i did skip over bowser getting amnesia briefly but really all that adds up to is him being in the beanbean kingdom to get possessed by cackletta. to be clear, i think the plot is serviceable. i dont think these games need to have like A+ AWESOME INCREDIBLE STORYLINES THAT WILL MAKE YOU SHIT YOUR PANTS. but at least the other games feel like the characters have nice, fun interesting personalities to keep you entertained while you play, sometimes even bringing in mouthpieces for the mario bros to have a character always be able to react to situations, like starlow in bowser's inside story. superstar saga has a handful of funny jokes and whatnot, but the only actually important characters who i got attached to are prince peasley and fawful! the rest just feel kinda nothing. which i already said. but still.

-this game has by far the worst music in the series. the tracks get grating and repetitive very quickly, even the rather upbeat and cute battle theme gets so annoying when most of the e song consists of the same measures over and over until like halfway through, and you more often than not Only hear the part of the song before it starts to change up a bit since regular enemy battles dont last That Long. and then theres areas like the chuckola woods where its just a few NOTES over and over again and thats the whole song. and then theres joke's end. jesus fucking christ i have never been that close to muting a game for the remainder of the area just because the music is that fucking annoying. why they decided to have the worst music in the game also be the music for the longest area in the game i have no clue. what the fuck. to be clear i dont dislike all the music. popple's theme and teehee valley are standouts obviously, they slap like hell. but like, it has around the same number of songs that stand out in a good way as partners in time, except also multiple songs that standout in a bad way

tl;dr: clunky battle gameplay; clunky overworld gameplay; uninteresting story and the characters arent interesting to make up for it; the music is the worst in the series; it is visually the worst in the series

as a kid looking at quirks of superstar saga like swapping the bros or the elemental hands (via watching videos of gameplay) i would always be like "wow thats so cool and interesting why did they remove those for the later games" but like Everything they removed from this game in the transition to partners in time is something that consistently bothered me in my playthrough

ill replay through partners in time soon though. i havent played it since i was a kid, and unlike bowser's inside story ive only beaten it once or maybe twice. i absolutely loved it as a kid and thought it was about on-par with bowser's inside story, but who knows, maybe in this upcoming playthrough i will discover a newfound distaste for the game as i have for superstar saga. or maybe ill learn to appreciate it more!