Educational game that gets the job done.
The majority of the game is spent in the different cities of the world. As Luigi, you will talk to local residents in effort to discover where you are and the location of the Koopa Troopas with the stolen artifacts. You could move to north south east and west and for the most all the cities are the same. You would explore talking to locals until you discovered your location which you would relay to Yoshi so he could come join you giving you access to leave the level. To complete a level you must return five artifacts to their location. This is where the majority of the games education value comes in and you'll have to learn a lot to complete the quiz to successfully return your stolen items. The premise doesn't really make a lot of sense, but it was fun as an eight year old.
There a re quite a few levels and five cities in each level. The game is fairly repetitive in forms of objectives, but obviously each artifact is a new piece of history you must learn about. It is entertaining enough to compel a nerdy child like I was, but some kids might get bored with reading the residents discussion and the information on the items.
Overall, this game is one of the more fun educational titles I've played. It is similar to the Carmen Sandiego series, but with a nice Mario twist. It plays well and looks nice for the time it was released. The game should be enough to keep anyone entertained for a while and can be fairly tough on the hardest difficulty. It is worth a look for anyone interested.