When people think about the best Mario game on the DS, a lot of people think New Super Mario Bros., Super Mario 64 DS, or Mario Kart DS. But for me, the greatest Mario game on the DS is none other than Mario & Luigi: Bowser's Inside Story. This game is just plain awesome, but let's cut the fanboying for a minute and get on to my justification.

I guess the reason why I like the Mario & Luigi series is that each of them has something that makes each of them different in terms of gameplay, and Bowser's Inside Story has you being able to take control of the King of the Koopas himself, Bowser. Funny enough, the title of the game is very fitting, as despite this being a Mario & Luigi game, this really is Bowser's story. You'll end up playing as Bowser for a majority of the game, him differing from the Mario Bros. in having ridiculous attack and defense stats, at the cost of a really low speed stat and only having one attack per turn, and being able to use his fire breath and huge strength in the overworld to allow exploration. Of course, on top of that, you have the role of the Mario Bros. who explore the insides of Bowser's body, augmenting his abilities from the inside, and helping Bowser in their mutual goal of stopping the old, yet new threat to the Mushroom Kingdom. You might not know who he is, but if you don't know, you'd be STUPID (just kidding), because he's the master of fury *ahem* pardon me... master of CHORTLES: Lord Fawful. The fan-favorite sidekick to the sorcerer Cackletta takes to the stage in his main villainous role that practically no one has ever been able to forget. So many awesome moments of pure villainy and great comedy that I love so much. 

In terms of the presentation, there's really nothing to fault. The pixel art is spectacularly well done, having a great amount of detail, and a very well designed and fleshed out artstyle. Everything is really well-designed and has plenty of charm, energy, and life to keep pretty much everyone interested. For the music, there are so many memorable tracks, like the normal boss theme, the final boss theme, Deep Castle, and strangely one of my favorites, the minigame music. I don't know why, it just manages to stick with me. The soundtrack has all of these fantastic pieces, but the rest of the music is high-standard as well. There really is no piece of music that I don't like in this game. And of course, like every Mario & Luigi game, the comedy is fantastic. You of course have Lord Fawful himself, pulling some great lines, but you also have Bowser just being a lovable jerkface, Luigi with his usual clumsiness and cowardice, and so many other great characters that really get a laugh out of the player.

However, there are some things about Bowser's Inside Story that I have to nitpick. For one, as much as it is awesome to see Fawful taking on the starring role as the villain, a really good villain, at that... I just don't find him as entertaining as I did when he was just a sidekick. I mean, him saying "chortles" instead of "fury" always kind of irked me a little. I also found that while the giant battles are awesome, I always have trouble getting the fire breath to work properly, making some of the bosses annoying, and the fight against the Fawful Express almost impossible and very infuriating. But while these two are nitpicks, my big problem with it immediately stops this game from being rated higher. I HATE THE LAST-MINUTE VILLAIN! Despite for 90 percent of the game, you have the unique, lovable, insane, and amazingly competent villain Fawful starring as the villain, he is literally cast aside and made minor at the very end, so that a generic, bland, plain as white bread, RANDOM copycat can take his place! He's uninteresting, comes pretty much out of nowhere, and steals the spotlight from an amazing villain! Oh, well, at least the boss fight is pretty good.

At the end of the day, Bowser's Inside Story is an amazing, well-designed, and lovable game. There are just a few things halting it from being the best Mario game in my opinion. That title would go to Super Mario Galaxy. No, that will not be the next game I review. Sorry to disappoint. Anyway, what do you think of this game?

Wow, this is an interesting review. Most people do it that way, and I do it too, that we divide each section and rate them apart. However, I could see your thoughts about things and they blend together nicely. 

I agree that this game comes with a great new protagonist: Bowser. In the previous games, he was either used or held captive by people, or he was a cool boss with not much of a storyline, but mine-me was funny in the game.
Fawful is an awesome antagonist, it's surprising to see that this 'babbling nerd' made it so far. And he gets a lot of Bowser his minions on his side, which makes him even more dangerous. His first boss fight is interesting but he has two major attacks when his headgear is defeated and that's it, so I liked the second fight with him more. In Superstar Saga, he has one introduction battle which isn't very interesting but more of a thing to make you familiar with Cackletta and him. In the second and penultimate battle, he is an awesome boss with cool attacks and a good strategy, but he is too weak for words compared to Cackletta.

I really like the music and the graphics too. I think that especially the graphics are a huge step forward, Partners in Time had decent ones but the looked a lot like GBA graphics. This game gave a whole new feeling. 

I think Fawful had nice lines in this game, but he didn't say 'I have fury!' and 'Fink-rat!' as much as in the other games which I missed here. And yeah, that fire attack can be confusing.

Good job on the review, I hope my comments make you think as much about the game as it did with me

This is a great review!

I have played part of this game and it was a very interesting game. I like how this game gives you the chance to play as Bowser instead of being the typical heroes protagonists like Mario, Luigi, Yoshi, and etc. This gives the perspective and story of Bowser through our eyes and makes us think that Bowser is actually an innocent person with a heart. I do like the stats that Bowser has, high attack and high defense but low speed. That is what a good tank and beast should be.

I love how your thoughts flow into one paragraph to the next and it is not all over the place. I love the amount of details and thoughts that you put into this review.
Next time, label each of your sections so that readers have an easier read to this review. Other than that, this is a great review! Keep up with the good work and I am looking forward to your future game reviews!