
To me, the genius of the Mario & Luigi series is the way it takes the boring aspects of turn-based RPGs--namely the turn-based battles--and punches them up with quick little reflex-based tricks to hold your attention and speed up the whole process. As before, Mario and Luigi attack with hammers and (surprise) by jumping on enemies, and if you hit the right buttons at the right times, you can add more power to your attacks. What's more, every enemy in the game gives you subtle, clever hints about how it's about to attack you, so if you closely examine these clues you can dodge the attacks and avoid taking damage entirely. With the right combination of attention and reflexes, it's possible to make it through random encounters quickly and emerge completely unscathed. That's a satisfying feeling, every time, and even three games into the series, it's is still a great way to keep the flow of the game moving and make it more fun to play through random battles than simply issuing menu commands and trading abstract damage values with enemies. Exploration of the overworld is similarly enhanced with some rudimentary platforming and block-bopping, as in the previous games. It's just a fun game to play.

It helps that Bowser totally steals the show. Inside Story is an absolute riot, full of endearing characters and a droll sense of humor that comes primarily from the ridiculous things coming out of those characters' mouths. If you remember Fawful's nonstop ludicrous turns of phrase in the first game, you can expect that kind of hilarity on a frequent basis from nearly every character you run into in this sequel, with special mention for a heavily French-accented item vendor who also happens to be a coin block. Getting to play as Bowser gives you an amusing glimpse into the Koopa King's megalomania. His ego hilariously fills the room as he reveres the magnitude of his own evilness in one breath and then bosses around a battalion of goombas with the next. I almost can't believe this game made me stop and ponder the plight of Bowser as a displaced evil tyrant--there's a certain forlornness to the way he stomps around the halls of his own castle, trying to convince all his old minions that he is in fact a cooler bad guy than Fawful. That I did stop and think about it might say all that needs to be said about the quality of the game's writing. It's worth playing for the humor alone.

The developer, AlphaDream, has wisely kept this series firmly rooted in two dimensions, with fantastically colorful level artwork and some of the most smoothly animated, expressive sprites I can remember seeing in a DS game. It's a marked improvement over Partners in Time and a real achievement, in a less-is-more sort of sense. I also have to give credit to the characterizations of Mario and Luigi themselves; even though they don't say any specific dialogue, their wild gesticulations and occasional mumble-mouthed faux Italian voiceover make them as important to the game's story as anyone.
At first, I wanted to fault Bowser's Inside Story for hewing so close to the format of its predecessors, but the more I played of it, the less I could deny how expertly made it is in every aspect. It's an all-around fantastic portable game that's completely worth playing, whether you enjoy it in bite-size chunks or plow straight through it from start to finish.