The trick here is to have what button controls each character in the back of your mind. While you'll be spending the majority of the time with the adult versions of the brothers, if one (or both) is defeated, you'll take control of the respective babies. This changes the entire battle, as the convenience of having Luigi controlled with B and Mario with A is gone, and dodging attacks requires Y for Baby Mario instead in addition to Luigi. The same goes for keeping many special attacks going. It's never frustrating since mistakes always come back to the player's error, and it's perfectly within reason that the attack could have been avoided.

The clock ticks as you're witness to an amazing amount of pleasant animations, all using the same sprite engine to tell the story. The way the developers were able to showcase a wide variety of emotion, comedy, and struggle with only a few basic animation routines is stunning. Dialogue brings with it a few nods to the Mario tradition ("We promise the princess is in this castle!"). A slightly twisted sense of humor stays within the family-friendly range, and also ends up creating Partner's best moments. Certain maneuvers rely on the humor to work.

A few ever-so-minor complaints creep up, especially the final-yet-not-so-final encounters at the end. Multiple versions of the same villain make you wonder if the game is ever going to be completed (even worse given the extended length of these battles). Also, aside from a single three-second moment, you won't use the touch screen, or any of the other features that make the console stand out.

None of that should take away from the intelligent design of this DS classic. Partners in Time is a reason to own the console (amongst the many others), and a reason to give the genre a go even if you're not a fan. This is as close to perfect as video games can get.