So, thoughts about the game so far:
- There are some seriously overpowered joke weapons in this game. Like the Hiking Boots, which deal damage based on how many steps you have on your pedometer, or the Birthday Hammer, which multiplies your attack by four, but only on your birthday.
- The giant boss battles are pretty much the best thing ever.
- BEEF
- My favorite level so far has been the Dreampoint at Mount Pajamaja, because they give you a new power, and then they actually let you figure out by yourself without tutorials.
- Seriously, the giant boss battles. I call them Tengen Toppa Mario Luigi.
- When Mario enters the Dream World, I give him the Iron Ball Hammer and the BP Drain Bangle. The hammer because it has a random chance of dropping a metal ball on an enemy for extra damage, and the hammer hits everyone in the Dream World. And the bangle because when I see a large group of enemies, more than 6 at least, I can use the Luigi Ball, it'll kill everyone in one hit, and then I'll end up with more BP than when I started.
- Tengen Toppa Mario Luigi

i only just got the pi'illo = pillow pun

i think i might just be an idiot

You are never allowed to call me stupid again

No matter how stupid I get

she's still pointless termnX. there's a reason the bros don't speak. Introducing a character to speak for them doesn't solve any problems it just creates them.

Not really. There's always been a character to speak for the bros. throughout the whole series of games. Starlow in the most recent two and the suitcase in Partners in Time. It's not as frequent in super star saga, but when it happens I believe Prince Peasely talks for them. It's not individual to these recent games, and it's not necessarily a bad thing.

I'm referring to Mario RPGs as a whole, not just this subseries. No one speaks for Mario in any of the Paper Mario games and they have by far the best dialogue and most well-tuned level of player assistance and hand holding. Starlow is just absurd, her completely unneeded comments add a good deal of extra time to each cut scene and you'll find that most, if not all of the time, the dialogue would be just as understandable if the Mario Bros just nodded or something.

For the people who need to see if this game is worth it, there's a demo in the e-shop

I'm downloading it right now

It's a pretty damn extensive demo, too. Appropriate, I suppose, given how long the game is.

only played a few hours of dream team, so I'm curious

does the hand holding stop eventually or not? by that, i mean "is there a single mechanic that i get to work out myself instead of being forced to learn it?"

EVENTUALLY but you have to stick with it a while, the complaints certainly aren't justified
it's really f*** funny actually one of the first times there's a new dreamworld mechanic that they dont explain to you, it ASKS you if you want to have it explained, and if you say no, it'll pop up every few seconds being like ARE YOU ABSOLUTELY SURE WE CAN JUST SOLVE THIS PUZZLE FOR YOU and you have to tell it to f*** off like 3 times if you want to solve the puzzle on your own

it's just that i'm like

"okay, i made Luigi become a tree. that tornado in the background looks kinda like the tree, so i mus~"

"HEY MARIO, LUIGI CAN BECOME A TORNADO TOO"

ugh

Yeah, I'm almost at the 20 hour mark and I'm just now getting to the point where it's allowing me to try s*** out for myself. MOST of the time.

It's ridiculous

Well I just finished it and I kind of have a lot to say about it. This might be a long a** post. Spoilers are minor but will be tagged anyway

I'll start with the good:

+It keeps the basic system that made the other three (two that I've played) games so great. Encounters aren't random, battles have some interactivity instead of being just boring turn based garbage, etc. It's a ton of fun and they hopefully will never f*** with it.
+The system has been streamlined in some nice ways. "Streamlined" gets painted as a big dirty word a lot but in some cases (like this one!) it can make previously over complicated systems much easier. One particular example is that you no longer have to switch between having Mario or Luigi lead, instead Mario always leads. Beans are easier to collect, since hitting Mario with the hammer over a soft surface makes him dig underground automatically, while hitting him on a hard surface makes him small. It's a simple change, but it makes beans so much less annoying to get. Even the way beans are used is improved: you don't have to travel back to a place in the central town area to spend them anymore, now they're just used to improve your stats directly. Also, if you die in battle, instead of being taken back christ knows how long to the last save point, you're allowed to simply restart the battle (or even drop to easy mode, if you're a big baby). It takes away a boatload of unnecessary frustration.
+The Dream World is super f*** nice. The way it changes the battles around keeps them from becoming repetitive, and the 2D perspective does a good job of differentiating it from the real world. The atmosphere is great in these areas, and their music is easily some of the best in the game (especially the forest and Bowser's Castle areas). The giant battles are f*** awesome every time, especially since they play completely different than anything else in the game. The Luigination Bros. attacks are always super cool and (mostly) a lot of fun to pull off, and the Luigination abilities in the 2D world keep those sections from feeling stale.
+The game does some great things with Luigi as a character, too. The Mario Bros. have never been the deepest characters in video gaming, but entering Luigi's dreams and seeing his absolute f*** devotion to Mario, as well as his confidence and general attitude before the final giant battle was f*** awesome.

The bad:
-The length. The f*** length. There's something to be said for brevity in games - they shouldn't last longer than a player is interested in them. My final time on the game was 42 hours. For comparison, Superstar Saga took about 14. I don't mind long games, but I started losing interest when I hit 20 hours and the end was nowhere in sight, and became frustrated when I hit 30 and it still wasn't much closer. It wouldn't have been too hard to change, either - just remove some enemies and lower the stats of the bosses to compensate. A majority of the game's time is spent in combat, battling the same group of enemies over and over. It's frustrating.
-The length may not have been such of an issue if the content was more interesting, though. What really stood out to me was that, about halfway through the game, they start adding recolored versions of previous enemies with alarming regularity. They didn't challenge me to learn new attack patterns or even fight the old enemies in new ways, they just moved a little faster and had some better stats. This coupled with how f*** LONG you're in each individual area tends to get a little dull. The dream world counters this well with Luigination, but while the real world attempts to include some gimmicks to make the areas more interesting, they don't tend to change the way you play much and as such don't help in this particular issue.
-The hand holding. THE HAND HOLDING. The game doesn't trust you enough to actually play the game for the first 20 to 25 hours of game time. It's also annoying when it outright explains things frequently instead of letting me discover them for myself (to be fair, it does let you take the reigns after the 25 hour mark, but still). There's not much more I can say that hasn't already been said.
-It could entirely be my 3DS that's at fault (or I could just suck a lot), but I felt like the touchscreen responsiveness in the giant battles was having occasional issues. It caused me to miss a lot of counterattacks. I'm not sure that's the game's fault though.
-The rank up bonuses strike me as unbalanced. When you rank up for the first time, there are so many great bonuses, and the game only adds more great ones as it goes on. However, when I finally reached the last rank up near the end of the game, I realized few of the bonuses were really useful to me anymore (and this is the rank up where they give you two bonuses). Most of them are only really useful if they're invested in early in the game, but you've only got space to invest in one or two. That said, the choice is difficult and interesting early in the game, and a lot of the upgrades are super useful, so it's not totally flawed.
-The new villain, Antasma, is 100% uninteresting. I know nobody plays Mario games for their deep characters, but come on. Fawful was charming and funny. Antasma is... he's a bat with a stereotypical "vampire" accent. He's an ancient evil that was locked away but now he's awakened. There is literally nothing interesting about the character. To make matters worse, Bowser is made into a main antagonist in this game. One of the reasons I liked the previous RPGs so much is that they avoided this simple trope, but Dream Team makes no attempt to even make it more interesting. Bowser Bowser Bowser.
-Related to what I said above, this game recycles far too much Mario content. One thing I liked about Superstar Saga is that it didn't rely on existing material much - while things like Hammer Bros. and Piranha Plants were still in the game, it took place in an entirely new kingdom with several entirely new races of people, starring entirely new supporting characters. This game not only uses the typical Toads, but reaches into Superstar Saga and pulls out some Beanbean citizens and Hoohooligans. Reusing old content isn't always bad, since it brings a sense of familiarity (and honestly I loved that they brought back Popple), but there's not a great balance here. That's not to say there isn't any new content - there are the block people, Antasma and the entire Pi'illo race, after all - but none of them are interesting in the slightest. (Also, it's a minor thing, but there are more Hoohooligans in Dream Team than there are on the entire Hoohoo Mountain in Superstar Saga. I'd be willing to accept that the Beanbean Hoohooligans were immigrants from another kingdom if they'd even hinted at that in the slightest in SS. Also, why do they replace some of their words with "hoo" in this game? They didn't do that in SS. What?)

The art:
The art is a mixed bag for me. For one thing, I love that they decided to go with 2D sprites on a 3D background for most of the game. It looks really nice, and initially I was really impressed just walking away from an NPC and watching their sprite shrink as it got farther away. The sprites in this game are also gorgeously animated. When in motion, they honestly look like some of the best sprites I've ever seen, especially the Mario Bros. However, when they aren't in motion, I generally think the sprites look awful. They look blurry and upscaled (and it's even more noticeable with the 3D effect turned off). Speaking of that, the 3D effect makes the whole game look much, much nicer. It's one of the few games that I think is essential to play in 3D. As a whole, I like the sprite art.
During giant battles, however, the characters use 3D models (for obvious reasons). I don't think they're terrible, but they look far too plastic and shiny. If the majority of the game was played with those models, they'd be extremely off-putting. As it is, they're only used for about ten minutes at a time (give or take), so it's not a huge deal.

Also, I don't believe I've ever played another game that allows you to save at any time, but also places dedicated save points throughout the game. I don't really understand that from a design perspective, but whatever, it's not a huge deal.

So that's that. It's overall still a pretty enjoyable game, but the list of complaints is far longer than it should be. I don't think it's better than Superstar Saga or Partners in Time, but it really isn't a BAD game either, just kind of frustrating in the mistakes it makes.

I'm giving it a high 3/5 (C+) edit 2016: demoted to 2/5 based on reconsideration and having played the sequel. Check my followup review here

luigi what are you doing

So I totally want Dream Team and will get it eventually.


But right now I have to choose, people who own it, would you help me make my decision? Just how awesome is it basically? And is it the best in the series? IMO with each game the next one has always been better than the previous.

I'm debating about getting this or Pokemon Y.