Mario & Luigi: Bowser's Inside Story is an RPG (role play game) brought out by Nintendo for the DS in 2009. I really enjoy the Mario RPGs and have played Mario and Luigi: Partners In Time previously (which was given 5 stars by me in my review). I bought this game because I enjoyed Partners In Time so much, and have to admit that this game is just as good. I really enjoyed the story and playing the game gave me hours play.

Ok so to start off, here is a bit about the story line in this game:
This game doesn't follow as traditional of a 'Mario' storyline, though the basic balance of good and evil is still very much present.
A disease called 'The Blorbs' has infected a lot of the Mushroom Kingdom and the Toads who become infected by the disease are all growing to massive sizes. Princess Peach calls the Mushroom Kingdom council (including a starlet called Starlow) to order to discuss the new disease and then the council all discover that they are also infected by the new disease as they have all eaten mushrooms that were sold to them by a dodgy salesman called Fawful.
Fawful also tricks Bowser into eating a poison mushroom called a Vacuum Mushroom and he suddenly starts sucking in everything he sees, he sucks in Mario, Luigi, Princess Peach and Starlow and passes out.
Fawful takes his chance and decides to take over the Mushroom Kingdom in the absence of Peach and the Plumber Brothers. Mario and Luigi need to revive Bowser in order to bring Fawful to an end... I don't want to give too much away, but this is basically the start of the story. There are loads of little twists and turns throughout this story and I think it was a nice change from just Bowser capturing Peach and having to save the day again.

You can play this game, at different parts of the story as both Mario and Luigi as a pair or as Bowser, it is nice to have a change and play as Bowser in a game like this where you can walk around freely, it makes this game kind of stick out and be different from the rest.

You have, like with many RPG games different attack, HP and defence points, your character can level up become stronger by beating enemies and gaining experience points in battles.

The interface on this game is really easy to understand and it does not take long to navigate through to where you want to go in the game from the title screen.

The graphics on this game are what you would expect from the Nintendo ds, they are bright colourful and cartoon styled, they could be described as quite child-like compared to games available on the Xbox or Playstation, but I think that this is what attracts Nintendo fans as games are light hearted and fun to play/look at. This game is played on 2d kind of graphics which I think is also more pleasing to Mario fans as some of the 3d Mario games have been less successful.

You should be able to pick up this game in any Game, HMV or Gamestop locally, or if you can also purchase it on the internet. I bought this game for around £30 in Game as this was the best deal at the time, however I bought this about 2 months ago so it probably hasn't decreased much in price. I can see this game for as cheap as £20 on the internet so if you don't mind having to wait on it, you may save some money buying it online. I got a lot of play time out of this game and think it was a great buy.

Overall I think that this is a fantastic game, there is lots going on in it in terms of storyline and playable characters and I found this game interesting from start to finish. I would definitely recommend it to anyone who enjoys playing RPG's or Mario fans in general. 5 out of 5 stars from me!

*also on ciao under lorrainek90