To all Youtubers who want to use this in their thumbnails. You are allowed to use it, so long as you include the link www.araneidaeweb.com in your description.

This is how I play the game.

Reduce Mario's Max HP to 5. This can be done permanently with Chet Rippo in the late game Rogueport Sewers, or just by having enemies hit you. LEVEL UP BADGE POINTS. Buy as many Power Rush badges as you can from the Pianta Parlor in West Rogueport. Equip the Power Bounce Badge you got from Hooktail's Castle. Equip any other badges you think will give you good utility, like Spike Shield and Ice Power.

Now walk all over everything.

I prefer using Mario as the primary attacker and just having partner support, even though with the right setup, you can have partners solo bosses.

Goombella is the best partner. She is Mario a second time. She has her own version of Power Bounce, which is broken as usual, and even if you aren't using her to attack, she has Rally Wink, which is just "Give Mario a second turn in a row to attack", and her worst move "Tattle", generates more stylish star power than Appeal does, and has niche uses in setups.

Yoshi comes in a close second. Stampede is broken due to being multihit and aoe and all of the multihit moves do insane damage when you stack damage. Gulp is his worst move which is only used against a certain miniboss.

Both Goombella and Yoshi are S tier partners.

Koops is a close third in high A tier. The only thing holding him back is he can't hit flying enemies. Otherwise, he has great aoe in Shell Slam that pierces defense and hits everything grounded. Shell Shield is useful in other setups where you need a low health Mario to live a turn.

Flurrie is an interesting case, being kinda low B tier. She's the tank of the group. She has high health, she can self heal with Lip Lock while damaging opponents, and Gale Force can clear entire screens with a bit of rng, blowing away enemies out of the battle. There isn't a downside to ending fights with Gale Force, as it does give you exp for each enemy blown away. On the other hand, Dodgy Fog is useless, it just gives Mario, and only Mario a chance to occasionally dodge enemy attacks. Bottom line is, Flurrie will tank boss hits and eventually outlast them, but she's a drain tank in a game where doing a lot of damage really fast is the meta, simply being outclassed by Goombella, Yoshi and Koops.

Sorry Vivian Fans. Vivian is kinda D tier. Shade Fist and Fiery Jinx don't do that much damage, and a lot of enemies in the late game are either immune to fire, have front spikes so she can't hit them, or are bombs. Infatuate is kinda fun to use, as it inflicts confusion, which makes enemies attack each other, but like Dodgy Fog, it's not reliable. And Veil is the worst move in the game. No contest. It has two EXTREMELY niche uses against Cortez's second phase and the final boss's first phase. At least her fire attacks can clear stage fog.

Bobbery is also D tier. He has the most HP in the game.... 5 more than Flurrie. His bombs can clear stage fog. But Bomb Squad deals fixed 3 damage after 2 turns and cannot be boosted by badges. It has one niche use against the final boss, which coincidentally involves comboing it with Vivian's Veil move. Hold Fast doesn't really mesh well with his kit. The idea was that Hold Fast can autocounterattack direct attacks, and Bobbery has a lot of health to let him live through a ton of counterattacks. In practice, more enemies than not have attacks that are ranged, or just don't "make contact" for counters to work on them. And Bob-ombast is a bit of a letdown. It makes a big explosion that hits everything, but it costs more FP than Stampede and Shell Slam and doesn't scale as well damagewise.

SPOILER WARNING FOR A 20 YEAR OLD GAME:

Ms. Mowz is F tier, complete trash. She has one attack that deals low damage, can only hit the frontmost enemy, and can't hit spiky enemies. Kiss Thief can steal items from enemies... but only the front enemy and only if it's grounded. It requires so much setup to use in the rare chance an enemy is holding a badge you actually want. Tease makes all enemies dizzy. Which is like Infatuate, but worse. And Smooch is a complete waste of FP. Ten FP to restore Ten health to Mario. By comparison, Goombella's Rally Wink costs 4 FP to give Mario a second turn. Do I need to explain how horribly outclassed a 10 FP cost move to do nothing more than restore 10 health to Mario is by literally anything else you could do?

I hope you enjoyed my tier list. I have no idea why I went on a rant about partners and how good they are.

OH. I forgot one partner. Flavio. SSS+++ Tier. No explanation needed.

Watch the remake come out and completely change everything, making my tier list invalid.