Top Ten Mario & Luigi: Dream Team Locations
Mario & Luigi Dream Team is my personal favourite M&L game. Part is because the locations felt the most immersive, being both reallistic, but cartoony too. So which ones are the best? Let's find out.I won't hesitate to say that Somnom Woods is not only the best location in Mario & Luigi: Dream Team but also my favorite level in the whole series. Yes, better than SS Bowser's Castle, Woohoo Mountain, Gritzy Desert, BiS Bowser's Castle, Wakeport, Mount Pajamaja, Mount Brrr, and Gloomy Woods. It's THAT good! It's what you wouldn't expect from a Mario game. It's so different and unique I don't even have the words for it.
Just go play this game yourself and wait until you get to the second-to-last area of the game, giving you the ultimate atmosphere! Forest settings have always been pretty good in Mario games, especially in the M&L series. Chucklehuck Woods in SS is pretty gloomy and a bit creepy (but in an adventurous way). PiT's Toadwood Forest was really creepy, scary, and quiet. BiS's Dimble Woods was your average walk in the forest, and PJ's Gloomy Woods was a darker variant of Dimble Woods.
Somnom Woods in DT, though? Well, it's underdeveloped, mysterious, and home to Pi'illo Island's god, with tall trees and perhaps the best music ever heard in Mario history. It's absolutely legendary, words can't describe. The dream area is just as magical (although the labyrinth was slightly annoying, it has incredible music). Overall, Somnom Woods is an epic area!
Wakeport is another legendary location in Dream Team and the Mario & Luigi series as a whole, just edged out by Somnom Woods. There really aren't many things I can complain about in this area. It's the perfect tourist town level, with a nice layout, blue textures, perfect music, and amazing puzzles. It's such a charming little tourist town.
Heck, we even meet fellow Beanishs from Superstar Saga and fight against Popple the Shadow Thief from the same game. And don't get me started on the dream area. It has that perfect dream vibe, being absolutely chill and one of the best paradises ever. Overall, I adore this location.
Another touristy type of location. As we visit the mountain of Pi'illo Island, we are on a tour to the top of the mountain with our tour guides, learning new moves. Let's just say I love the atmosphere and colors used here. It has a kind of autumn vibe with the immense brown and orange. But I should also mention it's the only location in the game with two "areas" within it, the bottom half with the autumn vibe, and the more wintery and lost top half.
I prefer the bottom half, but both are amazing and interesting. Overall, this is my third favorite place in the game.
This is my favorite beach area in the Mario & Luigi series. It has the best atmosphere and everything a beach needs. The sandy main area? Check. Some cliffs? Check. Some trees and forests? Check. Maybe some ruins? Check too. See? Even the music is quite amazing. It's a remix of the much less great Gwarhar Lagoon in Superstar Saga, and I think it's quite amazing in this game. Plus, this level offers some amazing platforming.
Overall, this is another amazing level in this game.
Mushrise Park is the plains area of Dream Team but with loads of twists. Instead of just being some basic plains stage like Bumpsy Plains or Beanbean Fields, Mushrise Park takes place inside a, you guessed it, park filled with hills, fountains, and a park vibe. It feels quite like a tourist place. It can be a bit annoying with the slow missions, but all in all, it's still a fun area. This is also where we finally find hammers. Overall, it's a pretty great area.
Although the dream world of this area is a bit bland somehow, the Boss Brickle thing where he wants to catch a bunny got on my nerves a bit, but it's still a great area overall.
This is the only dream area of the game without an overworld counterpart. I mean, it's Dream's Deep, where people are in deep sleep. As a result, this area gives a lot of feels and atmosphere. What is it like when in deep sleep? Well, it's dark, heavy, and calm, and this area perfectly represents that. It's visited two times, once in the beginning, and then later during the Ultibed mission. And the music is legendary here too! Overall, another great area!
Of course, with most areas in this game having the perfect mix of realism and cartoony style, it should come as no surprise that the Bowser level, Neo Bowser Castle, feels quite out of place with the rest of the game. And that's not strange, as it's a flying castle created from the Dream Stone by Bowser and Antasma. It's definitely not a bad area at all. It's just not as interesting or fun as the rest of the game.
Dozing Sands is, out of the major areas, the only one I have rather mixed feelings on. First off, it's a desert area. Not just that, it's not particularly beautiful. Obviously, it's better than Doop Doop Dunes in Paper Jam. It has a unique atmosphere and concept, but I don't particularly enjoy it. It's just so huge, and you need this drill machine to traverse quickly, but the stops are few and far between. Not bad, but a little annoying.
First off, this area has the best music in the entire game, excluding Somnom Woods. I'm not even joking, it's fudging legendary! This castle, being the capital of Pi'illo Island and a sort of hotel for tourists, really catches that exact vibe, mostly thanks to the music. It's so happy and adventurous at the same time. Although in the main playthrough, we don't explore much of the castle and just visit the much less fascinating linear ruins. But all in all, when you can explore it, it's amazing!
Of course, being a small tutorial level, Pi'illo Blimport doesn't have much interesting going on. It's just an overexposure of tutorials and filler. However, it's not that big, luckily, and thus it gets better from here. But overall, it's easily the worst area.