2.5/5 ★ – JonFrost's review of Mario & Luigi: Dream Team.

Playing this one after Bowser's Inside Story and even Superstar Saga made me feel a little biased, but this one is just nowhere on the same level. On the one hand, I do like the battle systems. The Bros still feel fun to control, the Dreamy battles have a pretty interesting dynamic of your stats being significantly more powerful but at the cost of there only being one of you (not as fun nor as seamless as Bowser from last time but hey), and the giant battles are a direct improvement from BIS. I also think that the soundtrack is the best of the subseries. Nothing hits as hard as In the Final or even Cackletta's Soul, but the soundtrack as a whole has more bangers than the other games, with "Never Let Up" being one of my favorite normal boss themes of any video game ever. On the other hand, the pacing is abysmal. There are a lot of tutorials spread out here and there, and they're all unskippable. Even ignoring that, not much happens in the story. Bowser and Antasma don't feel as ominous given that they barely do anything on screen together and the stakes feel lower because the game never reminds you of the looming threat. On top of that, while the Dreamy Luigi overworld mechanics can be fun, some of them feel tedious to use. I hated the one from Dreamy Mt. Pajamaja, in particular, because for some reason you were never allowed to move at all while an unnecessarily long animation of Luigi pushing a button plays. For the other ones you were at least allowed to move a little bit while activating the ability, but not this one for some reason. Also, the Luiginary tornado was just a lame idea. You have to stop to form a tornado, but despite giving you movement in the tornado, you have to go back to the exact spot every time. It'd be interesting if it was possible to reach higher platforms, but it isn't, and I don't get why movement is even a thing outside of that one puzzle. All in all, I still like this game. It's just that it leaves a lot to be desired in terms of what I expect from this otherwise fantastic RPG series.