So the new Mario & Luigi came out last Friday and although Dan seems to like it, there doesn't seem to be much enthusiasm out there toward the game. In the midst of games coming out such as The Witness and Xcom 2 it seems like Mario & Luigi: Paper Jam is going to be forgotten rather quickly. The series in general has been declining ever since Bowser's Inside Story and even though Paper Jam isn't quite as bad as Dream Team, from my perspective it seems like the series is destined to go the way of Paper Mario: doomed to be forgotten, which is ironic seeing as Paper Mario is in this game. From my 5 hours spent with the game so far I'm liking it a decent amount, but there's definitely things that stick out as poor decisions that hold the game back from being easily recommendable.

From an RPG perspective, this game is basically what you expect it to be. It has your standard M&L combat, but this time Paper Mario is in your party. He also has jump and hammer abilities but they work slightly different and I think the game is better for it. This is the 5th Mario and Luigi game so its definitely a good thing to switch up the gameplay to make it interesting and this latest entry does a good job with that. Having three members in your party makes dodging attacks more difficult as well. Instead of having two buttons to worry about you now have three, and some of the attack patterns of the enemies can be extremely devious. This will force you to pay close attention and be very deliberate with what buttons you press.

Its all the other aspects of the game that put a damper on my attitude toward this game. Just like Dream Team, Paper Jam is filled with a bunch of lame filler(Boring mini-games, Papercraft battles that take too long) whose only purpose is to seemly be a time sink instead of serving as a fun distraction from the RPG combat. At least they have a dedicated button to speed up cutscenes, dialogue and tutorials, which help ease the sense of boredom that can often come with these types of games.

All of this is really a shame because for me personally Bowser's Inside Story is one of my favourite JRPGs of recent memory. @beachthunder asked if Bowser's inside story was a fluke and to me, that basically seems spot on. It seems like everything fell perfectly into place for that game to be amazing (A great, quick pace to the game, Fawful being the main villain,Bowser being a playable and likable protagonist, etc.) and after that, the developers at AlphaDream were just unable to come up with anything that was as exciting as their previous entries in addition to adding uncessary mini-games to the formula.

It also seems like that series is being aimed more at children then adult video game players. The addition of a bunch of dumb mini-games in the last two games combined with what might be the worst example of over-tutorialization in all of video games leads me to believe that maybe these games just aren't made for me anymore. It might be that it doesn't really matter if there's pacing problems or if the mini-games aren't very engaging because kids will play anything and just want something to spent a lot of time with. I'm not particularly sure if I'm out of line with this theory but that's the impression that I get from spending a lot of time with these past two games. Regardless, Paper Jam looks like a game that I will at least be able to finish, which is more than I can say about Dream Team. It's just a shame that ever since Bowser's Inside Story, they haven't been able to live up to the high bar that game set.