Finally reached what I believe is the final area in Mario & Luigi: Dream Team. Stopped playing for a while cause after 40+ hours I was feeling a little burnt and wanted a change of pace.
Going back in, however, I realized just how much the game punishes you for doing something wrong in battle. The player is expected to dodge increasingly complicated attack patterns with no advance knowledge, and while earlier in the game you tended to have more time to react, the window of opportunity becomes smaller and smaller.
Basically what this means is that towards the end of the game, battles start feeling a lot more trial-and-error. The ever-present "Dodge Ten in a Row" challenge issued for each new area (and it's dream world counterpart) becomes quite a cruel joke.
You might perfectly dodge an enemy's attack, only for it to become "dizzy" and blunder into the other character. Enemies that launch projectiles become almost impossible to "read" as their movements before attacking look nearly identical with shorter response times.
The lack of a soft reset button combination combined with the horrible respawn conditions of enemies (traveling a large yet unknown number of screens) mean you either have to do it first go or press Home and then X to close it out and restart it manually.
Given my issues with completion, it's definitely making the game less enjoyable. The 1% drops combined with the aforementioned respawn condition is not helping. Certainly makes me yearn for an Action Replay, although I sadly don't see one on the horizon anytime soon.
