M&L: Dream Team, and beating the Gold Beanie
[With Mario & Luigi: Dream Team releasing today today, contributor Francesco Dagostino looks at the care AlphaDream put into the 3DS RPG by examining one of its surprisingly complex encounters that players will want to master.]
I’ve spent the last couple of hours obsessively playing Mario & Luigi: Dream Team, repeating the same battle over and over. It’s not a particularly fierce fight, and it’s not even compulsory; it’s just a chance encounter with the Marioi-esque equivalent of a Metal Slime. I’m sure Dragon Quest fans will understand why I’m so stubborn about killing this little guy: it’s not a matter of experience points or drops – though those help. It’s a matter of pride!
The monster is called a Gold Beanie, and as the name suggests, it’s a particularly precious, yet mischievous-looking, plant seed. One of the reasons I’m fighting this battle repeatedly is because Dream Team is a very interesting game at heart, challenging in the most fun way possible. It’s an RPG that incorporates numerous platformer elements to enrich the battle system and make it constantly unpredictable.
The game starts off very simple, with a limited variety of enemy types, and through repetition teaches the players all the actions enemies can perform – and how to counter them by jumping at the very last second or bouncing and juggling projectiles with the hammer.
The Gold Beanie, just like a Metal Slime, takes a lot of hits to kill and has a tendency to run away when the tables start turning in the player’s favor. These would normally be the perfect ingredients for a disastrous recipe leading to my frustration, and yet I just can’t stop trying over and over. Thankfully, I saved right before the fight: monsters are visible on the map and you can save anywhere – yes, call me a cheater if you want.
But it’s not the first time I found myself facing the same monster multiple times. This episode of the RPG spin-off series has a new feature that makes battles even more fun: a screen containing a huge checklist of so called “Expert Challenges” that you can check at any point both on the field map and during battles, that shows special tasks you can try to complete during each skirmish, ranging from never taking any damage from a specific mob to unleashing ten consecutive “Excellent” attacks.
Dream Team can be very addictive, and completing these little tasks make each battle more fun, forcing the player to explore and learn all the attack patterns at each and every enemy’s disposal, then choose whether to dodge or riposte depending on the situation.
To spice things up, the Gold Beanie has a very interesting behavior and diverse attack pattern, and if you don’t learn to counter all his moves and actually hit him every chance you get (this will make him topple), the chances of his escape dramatically rise.
The Beanie has three main attacks, which are worth describing in detail. Each attack has at least one very important variable, making his moves very hard to read for an inexperienced player.
1) The first attack is very simple, at least in theory. The Beanie will charge at Mario around two to five times. After each charge, which you’ll needs to repeal with a well-timed hammer bop, the Beanie will gain speed. At a certain point, though, he will briefly flash red. It’s just a millisecond, so you need to pay close attention to his color. When he does, he will launch himself against you for the last time, filled with rage. This is his last attack, but be careful: after flashing red, he will actually trip, falling on the floor and bouncing above Mario for an accidental surprise attack, messing up the player’s timing.
2) The second move the Beanie can execute during his turn is a “chase attack.” It’s a new kind of action in the series that is either activated by some specific enemies (generally bosses) or by Mario and Luigi’s Bros. Attacks. Basically, the Gold Beanie whistles and calls a flock of Green Beanies, and together they all start to chase Mario, who runs toward the bottom of the screen. One at a time, the Green Beanies will accelerate and try to trample the pudgy plumber, but he can move freely left and right, hop to avoid the enemies, or kill them with one of his trademark jumps. Meanwhile, the Gold Beanie will move about the screen, feinting his charge and hiding behind the other Beanies, so you will want to keep your eyes on him like a predator – because when he actually does charge, carefully hidden behind one of his lackeys, you need to jump on him and make him trip. If you just dodge him, he will come back for a critical attack… and then run away.
3) The last of the Gold Beanie’s attacks is probably the cutest. He will start circling around Mario to try and flank him for repeated damage. You either dodge or stomp him with a timely jump, though you really want to hit him if you don’t want him to run away in his next turn. Every time you hit the Beanie, he will change the direction his attack comes from, and become faster. This characteristic of his move alone and the fact that, once again, the number of times he comes at you is randomized between three and five, is enough to give you a headache. But there’s one last detail that will definitely make your head spin even if you’re the best player in the world: randomly, little pebbles will appear in the bean’s trajectory. He will trip on them, completely messing up the timing of the attack, and tricking the player into jumping at the wrong moment to hit him.
As you can probably imagine by my description of this enemy’s pattern, AlphaDream really did a great job at making every single enemy encounter different from the previous one, to the point that the game almost feels too gimmicky. Luckily, the battles are quite fast and well distributed in the dungeons.
In the end, I couldn’t beat the Gold Beanie. My personal rule was I would have to never get hit to really win. To check how much experience the enemy would have rewarded me and avoid bothering my boyfriend (who was on the phone with me during the majority of this stupid challenge) any further, I decided to take advantage of a neat feature the game has: when you lose a battle, you can lower the difficulty of the game for that battle alone and try again. Basically, this makes the characters twice as strong, which guarantees a victory after you’ve spent so much time learning all the variables of the attack patterns of a single enemy. So what have I learned from this experience, you might well ask.
I have learned that Mario & Luigi: Dream Team is a game you can approach from a variety of angles. It is balanced to welcome both players who want to come up with crazy challenges to test their reflexes (there’s a ton of extra modes and tournaments to test your mettle) and people who find the battle system too complex or bizarre. Dream Team also incorporates several key gameplay features that actually try to make creative use of the 3DS – and often succeed. The gyroscope, for instance, is used in a number of special attacks, while the 3D’s depth is a key factor in countering a lot of advanced enemy moves, such as the Gold Beanie’s lackey charge. For this reason alone, the game deserves to be checked out.
Oh, and I also learned that I have far too much free time, especially in the weekends.
[You can read more fine articles from Francesco Dagostino at his very awesome Infinity Counter blog, and on his Twitter account @franpaccio. The GIF at the top of the article is via Supper Mario Broth.]
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