Mario & Luigi: Partners in Time

Best of these Mario & Luigi games and it's not even close. This is the only one with an actual interesting story, it felt dramatic and I am sucker for alien invasion stuff, here the time travel feels super cool which I usually wouldn't be into. I actually prefer this hubworld mechanic over the open world exploration other entries have, sometimes less is more, it also helps that besides Mario 64 this game is like the only one where the Peach's castle acts as hub why they don't do that more often?

Something about the magic of the previous game Superstar Saga just didn’t quite carry over here. The large interconnected world map was changed to simple nodes on a Mario World style world map and that was a bummer.