Everything about Bowser's Inside Story is fun and imaginative, making this the best Mario RPG to date.
The bad: Hardcore gamers may find the first half to be too easy.
Game-play: 10/10
Graphics: 10/10
Sound: 10/10
Value: 10/10
Tilt: 10/10
Average Score: 10/10
When I got this game, I peed my pants! But I expected this to have annoying flaws in it. Little did I know that this could be the best RPG since Chrono Trigger (My favorite RPG) hit the Super Nintendo and Final Fantasy VIII hit the Playstation. Everything about Bowser's Inside Story is fun and imaginative, making this the best Mario RPG to date.
The plot is simple. Weird mushrooms called Blorbs (possibly a parody of the swine flu) are making toads big and sick. The mushroom Kingdom has a meeting (including Peach, Toadsworth, and Mario and Luigi) to decide how to solve this. Bowser, angry he wasn't invited, decides to do the cliche thing; kidnap Peach. Mario thwarts his plans and kicks him out. Bowser then stumbles in the woods where a mysterious person gives him a vaccum mushroom. He feels sick and is brainwashed by Fawful (who you know from Superstar Saga) to vaccum up the Mushroom Kingdom leaders, including the bros. and peach. He is then confused and doesn't remember what has happened. He also swallows a yellow fairy (who is called Chippy to hide herself from bowser). Later on, it's revealed Fawful's genius plan was to conquer both Peach's and Bowser's castles and get the Dark star to conquer the world. It's up to Mario, Luigi , and Bowser to stop this.
Surprisingly, most of the time you'll play Bowser, but you'll get almost equal time with Mario and Luigi as well. Bowser plays form a overhead view, while Mario and Luigi, inside Bowser, play from a 2D perspective similar to Super Paper Mario. Once they learn to get out, they can play overhead like Bowser. Sometimes, the Bros. will have to help Bowser do stuff such as move ropes, push a statue of Fawful, or even sneeze to move ships. Surprisingly, you'll do this a lot to get farther in your quest, which is long by the way.
You'll get a lot of cool special attacks later on. My favorite for Mario and Luigi is the cannon blaster that has you checking which one has Mario or Luigi, and if you do it right, you'll cause tons of damage. The best Bowser attack is the Goomba attack, which lets you blast a bunch of goomba's at enemies for high attacks. Bowser can also fire flames at enemies, dodge attacks with his shell, and even vaccum in enemies for the bros. to fight, so it never gets tedious waiting for the bros.'s turn.
The game works flawlessly with the plot. The game is imaginative in game-play and looks. One boss fight has you avoiding a jumping robot Luigi avoiding a robot Boo chasing him! Sometimes, Bowser will become giant and go Godzilla on trains, towers, and castles, and it's challenging and fun. That's not enough. Mario and Luigi get retry clocks and badges to help you along the way, and it's always easy to buy items for you to use. This makes the firts half battles sort of easy, but you'll need these for the challenging 2nd half of the game. The game is challenging but never frustrating or slightly boring, and it dominates flawlessly in everything.
You'll get some new moves, such as the ability to go underground, knock a Blue shelled Mario, body slam with bowser, flame, and even dash punch. These moves work really well with the game-play, and the puzzles are never too hard to figure out. You'll barely have to use walkthroughs for this, although impatient gamers might need them. Make sure you battle a lot to get tons of rankings and level ups along the way if you want to fully enjoy this classic.
The game is absolutely hilarious. I love it when Bowser punches a save block to save his game, and I love it when Luigi throws up his hat, only to drop it. The bros. are as goofy as ever, and their italian gibberish is always fun to hear. Bowser will completely rant and insult everyone in his path and point out a lot of cliches of video games. The person he treats the nicest (he says to her to please help him) is "chippy", aka the yellow fairy. His rants are hilarious and he just kicks the dust in humor.
The graphics look amazing and imaginative. I never knew how the body looked until now. Nintendo squeezed in every graphical detail on this game, and their magic still stands faitful to the Mario series. The music is terrific, changing if you're in Bowser's Body, or if you are Bowser. The bowser music sounds orchestral and cherry, while the inside music sounds dark and spooky. The audio is amazing too.
In conclusion, perfect is an understatement for Bowser's Inside Story. I always anticipated another event and I never got bored of it one bit! It's a bit more linear than the previous games, but this RPG is a classic you don't want to miss. You'll squeeze in at least 25 hours on this game, and being the best Mario RPG to date, you'll want to play this. This could be the best DS game yet. In conclusion, there are no flaws that will make you second guess this classic RPG.