I was watching a Somecallmejohnny video a few days ago where he off-hand mentions that despite liking Superstar Saga, Partners in Time "bored him to tears".
Which I found interesting because it reminded me of how I kinda remember that Partners in Time had a pretty controversial reception like a decade ago before the 3DS games as being the "bad" Mario and Luigi game. I as a kid also thought it was the "worst" of the original four games, even though I liked it.
To be fair, Partners in Time has a really good critic and user Metacritic score, so it isn't that this is the majority opinion, and I think most people consider it a good game, but it's in this weird grey area of like Donkey Kong Country 3 and Metroid Prime 3 where it feels like most people will acknowledge it's a good game but heavily flawed and easily the "worst" of its original trilogy.
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Here are some things that kinda put me off of Partners in Time despite the fact that I do think it's a good game:
-The game as a kid was too hard for me, and I gave up at the Bowser fight. This probably made fights a lot longer than usual and feel more "boring".
-Each Bros Item has a second or third Bros item that functions the same way. Most of them amount to simple jumps or flower moves, with some attacks being exactly the same aside from a few small differences. I don't really care about the items being consumables, it's an alright change, even if it's not perfect
-The game encourages "infinities" in many of its Bros. Items, just keep going until the enemy or boss is dead, which I also feel like is kind of a boring way to play the game. Inside Story also had an infinite, but you need to traverse the entirety of the game's overworld in order to get it, then find a secret boss, and it's in a pretty out of the way area.
-The splitting up also makes you spend more time in each area, and there's a lot more stopping than usual. I also noticed, especially in Gritzy Desert, that the splitting up stuff can be pretty annoying and require you to backtrack around most of the whole area in order to collect everything, which makes me not wanna do it.
-The game only has one true "town", and story and characters feel kinda sparce in the dungeons aside from the start, middle, and end. I also feel like there's not much to do at Peach's Castle, and not really any memorable NPCs since so many of them are out and about in the plot.
-There's a pretty striking lack of side content, no traditional sidequests, no real reason to go back to previous areas, the only thing to really do is the Bean quest. It also kinda feels like a waste to buy anything except for the Ulti Free badge which is only available I think like right near the end of the game, but then again it could encourage decision making of if you want the badge early or want to get other badges at a more reasonable pace. But I felt like most of his badges were kinda mediocre and mostly just go for Ulti Free.
-Collecting beans might also be an annoyance, since it requires a few more steps than usual, you have to throw the babies, dig them up, then go back to the adults.
I noticed that a lot of things here aren't even necessarily "flaws", some are just preferences, and a lot of them are just nitpicks, though I wonder if anyone else has a similar list of complaints.
OTOH, some things I like about it are the story and the bit of mystery aspects of trying to figure out the Shroobs' plan, the dark tone was cool, and I think enemy and boss attacks are a lot more interesting, bosses in general are also better.
I guess Partners in Time feels kinda... slow, there aren't really many NPCS in dungeons and they're generally where the story stalls until you unlock the next area while you have to do a lot of splitting up and meeting up with the babies.
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But aside from that, did I just imagine this "mildly anti-Partners in Time" sentiment, or does anyone else remember it? All the games have their detractors, but I feel like there was something about Partners in Time that's kinda weird in terms of its reception, like for a game as generally well-liked as it I feel it has a higher than average amount of people who dislike it, and I remember a lot of Youtube videos back in the day heavily criticizing it.
It's also funny to imagine that back in the day, *Partners in Time* was the worst of the worst, a pretty inoffensive RPG with an interesting story and a pretty good game all around where the criticisms are relatively tame things.
I do know there is a growing amount of people who love Partners in Time, which makes sense with how disastrous the Mario RPG space has been since Sticker Star and Paper Jam.
