Even if it didn't feature the main characters of gaming's storied franchise, Mario & Luigi - Partners in Time would still obviously be a game from Nintendo. Its charm, style, innovation, and family-friendly humor work to create a unique RPG experience spun off from Super Mario RPG (1996). The result is a work of an ingenious game design, giving fans the greatest battle system ever devised for a turn-based RPG.

The hook here is the control of four characters at once. Given the title's time travel storyline (which is sadly not used as a major gameplay mechanic), it brings two generations of Mario and Luigi together. The difference here is that each one is given their own face button to perform basic tasks.

This is where the game earns its guaranteed classic status. Every world the characters end up on is a puzzle. You're not traversing the wildly varied locales to hunt familiar and new creatures to level up. You're solving complex yet logical puzzles.

Each of these challenges involves plenty of work, but with a game system this wonderfully designed, it never feels like it through the 15-20 hours of adventure. Multiple sequences involve splitting up the baby and adult brothers to tackle their own tasks, tailored to their own abilities. Switching from one set to another is as simple as pressing their corresponding button.

Avoiding random combat, every enemy is seen in plain view so the player makes the choice to enter the fray. Compared to every other RPG you'll find, Partners lets the user have an effect on every facet of combat. Even a simple jump requires a quick button press at the moment of impact for the full effect (like Mario RPG). Special moves, like red shells or other various nods to previous games (not only the RPG series, but the entire Mario universe) require precision timing that keeps the players' attention in even the most rudimentary encounter.

In theory, a player who knows the enemy attacks could, in a long shot, play the entire game without taking a single hit. That's how open this combat engine is to the players' needs, by offering multiple means of defense and counter-attacks. It does make this one lean towards the easy side, with rapid leveling-up, plenty of money, and few deaths. This is not a game directed at the die-hard fanatic of the RPG genre; it's aimed at everyone who wants to sit and relax to kill a few hours, while still entranced by every game play mechanism used to add to the addiction factor.