Place your random thoughts.

I actually tried this one yesterday and failed three times. Today, I realized I had Easy Mode on. When I turned it off, it made my attacks do a lot less damage. So now I’m even more confused as to how I failed yesterday. Anyway, the main gimmick is that Fawful’s Vacuum Helmet heals him back to full health if you deal damage, and also lets him avoid attacks, so you have to wait for it to fly off him, which happens every few turns. When it happens, you get your chance to inhale it as Bowser. It has a lot of health, and it’s very annoying, especially because it can fly out while Mario and Luigi are fighting, and if that happens, you have to wait even more turns before you can inhale. It’s almost foreshadowing the final boss. Except here, it doesn’t heal when it leaves. I had to rinse and repeat about three times before finally destroying the Vacuum Helmet. After finally doing that, which is raw catharsis by the way, you can finally actually attack Dark Fawful. It only took me a few Brawl Attacks to get him to Fury. And then it took two perfect Broggy Bonkers to finally kill him. Like I said, I was happy enough to just do that, but I saw that the final boss was pretty close, so I did that, too. After a room and a minigame, you’re there.

As you might expect, this was not a very easy fight. I died twice before realizing that my current strategy clearly was not working. Defeating Dark Bowser is easy as he doesn’t have much health. He’ll be revived by Dark Star Core, which is a combination of Dark Fawful and the rest of the dark power. Then, Dark Bowser gets up and grows big. He might use an attack and then you’ll have to punch him in the stomach to get the Dark Star Core out. Then, you suck it up for Mario and Luigi to fight. The parts of it are its glasses, which have to be broken by being attack, and its three appendages (easily defeated with a Snack Basket, but can only be targeted after its glasses are destroyed). After this, only the main core is remaining, and it has some heavy hitting attacks. But if you don’t defeat it in time at its core form, it flies out, goes back to Dark Bowser, and next time you inhale it, it’s completely back to full health! All of its body parts! What tended to happen on my first attempts was that I’d be killed by one of its attacks as a core, or it would escape and Bowser would die. To combat this, I decided to actually change Mario and Luigi’s badges and gear. The badge combo I had, KO badge, makes your next attack do three times the damage. It was super helpful. I also decided to get them to the Rainbow Rank since they were at level 29, one level away. To level up, I went to some older areas in the game, which was really refreshing. I forgot how much I love the remaster of Grasslands, All The Way. It’s my favorite remix next to the song that plays in Peach’s Castle after being taken over. Anyway, I also gave Bowser an item that lets him attack twice a turn. I ended up getting two KO badges ready, and when Bowser inhaled the Dark Star Core, I broke all of its body parts and killed the main core easily with the badge. All it took was two Falling Stars. Bowser does his epic finishing attack, and Dark Bowser, the Dark Star, and Fawful are dead, bringing peace to the Mushroom Kingdom once again. But Fawful’s death caused everyone to be expelled from Bowser’s body. Mario and Luigi fight Bowser in the end credits, with pictures of the aftermath. Toads are cleaning up the castle and Bowser’s minions are fixing their castle. And something else really heartwarming happens, but I’m not going to spoil it here. It’s just a perfect way to end the game.

The remake isn’t superior to the original, but it’s super underrated. It’s still a good way to experience the game, just not as good. I should have finished this game a long time ago, because I just left it there to collect dust, and I really should have played it more. I think the next Mario & Luigi game I want to play is Paper Jam.