50 best Nintendo 3DS games right now

Best Nintendo 3DS Games – #40 Mario & Luigi Paper Jam

Developer: AlphaDream

Release Date: January 22nd, 2016

Synopsis: When Luigi accidentally opens a book and unleashes the entire universe of Paper Mario into the universe of Mario & Luigi, the resulting chaos brings both Mario & Luigi’s enemies and Paper Mario’s enemies together in a plot to kidnap both Princess Peaches and take over both worlds. Mario, Luigi, and Paper Mario team up to traverse five different zones fighting off enemies through turn-based combat paired with timed button press actions.

As they make their way to Bowser’s castle, they must face various familiar enemies in both regular and paper forms, and solve puzzles along the way. Bosses encountered alternate between typical turn-based fights with additional attacks that must be dodged as a team, and Papercraft fights where you must pilot an enormous papercraft against a papercraft enemy on a trap-infested field, using charged attacks to knock enemies down and defeat them.

Why It’s One Of The Best Nintendo Games: Paper Jam may not quite live up to the purported excellence of either pure Paper Mario games or Mario & Luigi games but, as a combination of both, it does very well. The timed button press gameplay for both attacks and counters is incredibly challenging but rewarding as you learn the rhythms required of you. While the two Marios and Luigi are fairly bland main characters, the dialogue is well-written and full of goofy puns and jokes that are worth frequent chuckles. The game is fairly long, and the brothers gain abilities to use in the field for puzzle solving that require you to revisit old areas and solve new puzzles. All this to a surprisingly epic soundtrack by Yoko Shimomura make for perhaps not the best Mario & Luigi or Paper Mario title, but certainly a crossover worth playing.

Next: 39 - Yo-Kai Watch 2