Disappointing Sequels part 1

I have fury!!!

I want to take the moment to talk about great games with disappointing sequels. The first one that I wish to talk about is Mario and Luigi: Partners in Time, the sequel to Mario and Luigi: Superstar Saga.

Mario and Luigi: Superstar Saga is a great Mario RPG that was developed by AlphaDream corporation and released for the GBA. It featured funny story, great characters, and in intuitive battle system. I put a good 30 hours into that game just to beat it, and many many more afterwards. So, naturally, when they announced the sequel, Partners in Time for the DS, I was ecstatic. I couldn't wait, especially since it would include Baby Mario and Baby Luigi in the fray.

However, It proved to not live up to the standards set by its predecessor. While the game itself wasn't bad, there were just to many things that made it disappointing. One of the things that irked me the most was the world. The world is divided up into Peach's Castle in the present and about 6 areas in the past. As I'm playing the game, I'm expecting it to be big. Every place you go in the past, you go in the present. But no. You use time portals scattered throughout Peaches castle in the present to go back in time to Baby Mario and Luigi's time. You go through those areas, and you go through until you get a shard of the cobalt star. Then you go back to the present to another time portal that has just popped up. Huge unimprovement from large world of Superstar Saga.

The game also had many small problems to contend with. There are virtually no sidequests, save for a couple of minigames that are not worth it. The replacement for the Bros. actions, the Bros Items, involve from 2 of the brothers to all of them. However, the only use for them is in boss battles. And at that time, you use one item until that becomes obsolete. It just didn't work. And after I finished the game, I just did not want to really keep playing. With Superstar Saga, I'm still playing and leveling up.

This is not to say that the game was bad. It was good while it lasted, and the appearance of Fawful, the greatest Villain ever was a welcome surprise. It was just another case of a disappointing sequel.