As you can tell from the review score, we’re pretty big fans of Mario and Luigi Brothership. It delivers a solid balance of action, strategy, player development and exploration to give fans something that feels both familiar and unique all at the same time. The battles are challenging and the whole experience is almost odyssey-like with the sheer size and scope of the adventure you have to complete to finish the game. We’re talking Homer’s Odyssey, by-the-way, not Mario’s, as you travel the length and breadth of Conchordia’s shiny seas in a bid to reconnect the scattered islands that make it whole. Visually impressive in a way that didn’t necessarily come through from the trailers, Brothership is a strong new entry in the Mario catalogue for the Nintendo Switch. While it’s far from the 3D platformer that we’re all crying out for, it makes for a great distraction as we await the next generation console that it’s probably being held back for.
Mario and Luigi Brothership is a turn-based RPG that builds on previous games like Paper Mario and the Origami King, The Thousand Year Door and Mario RPG. If you’re a big fan of any of these then you’re going to love the chunky hit of entertainment that you get from the latest entry in the Mario and Luigi series. The narrative is crafted around a heartfelt moral story about connections with the people around you. That may not be everyone’s cup of tea, but the brilliantly-crafted islands, battle progression and new Mario antics are enough to cut.
That being said, if your plumber duo appreciation is exclusively locked into the 2D or 3D platform games from the main series then it might be one to skip. Otherwise, you’ll have to get used to something really quite different in Brothership and your appreciation of the game will depend on your perseverance. That’s not to say that you won’t necessarily love it too, but if you’re not used to turn-based battles then it can take a little while to appreciate. Equally, the really juicy gaming action doesn’t kick in until you get to the later islands, so if you don’t give it your all you can easily be a bit disappointed.
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Brothership has a LOT of story
Unlike the more popular main series titles, there’s way more story, dialogue and cinematic scenes in Mario and Luigi Brothership. This could be a sticking point for some gamers if you don’t like that kind of thing. This is again similar to other RPG titles from the mustachioed bros, but because it’s a significant departure from titles like Super Mario Wonder or 3D World + Bowser’s Fury. As a result, there will be plenty of Mario fans not used to this level of cinematics and conversation to swathe through.
The game starts out with Mario, Luigi, Peach and a number of other Mushroom Kingdom characters who get caught up in some kind of vortex that sends them to the fractured island realm of Conchordia. You’ll then start as Mario and your first job is to find Luigi and join forces with the locals to bring all of the islands together again. This builds and builds as you reconnect more islands and uncover the increasingly dark mystery at the heart of it all. It’s instantly clear that things aren’t right in Conchordia, but you’ll need to make it through a lot of gameplay to find out just how messed up things get.
It makes for a decent setup and fun new experience to enjoy. It’s easy to criticize the game for being a bit too sweet at times, and in all fairness it is, but the reality is that things get a bit dark at times and it’ll probably surprise you more than it grates. Admittedly, there’s a lot about friendship and community spirit, but you’ll also face off against a maniacal threat that wants to dominate Conchordia. Add to that the ever present threat of Bowser and the other boss challenges and you’ve got just as much bite as there is kindness.
You can skip through dialogue to skim-read things and bypass cutscenes if you want to focus on the action, so you can pace things up a bit whenever you want to. However, the animations are pretty cool and the character interactions bring a lot of classic Nintendo mad-cap fun, so it’s worth the effort in our opinion. It could definitely be a lot tighter and skimmed down, which would have made for a better game ultimately. This has had a slight impact on our review score, but it’s minor compared to the sheer size of the action and adventure you get.
Mario and Luigi Brothership is a big game, so you should buckle up for an epic that keeps on punching. Just when you think you’re about to finish it, it serves up more action and storyline twists that leave you wondering whether or not you’ll ever get to the final boss fight. This gives it a lot of value for money and you can easily sink 40+ hours of gaming into it to get the most out of the battles and story.
Island hopping in Conchordia
The general idea is that you discover new islands as you progress through Mario and Luigi Brothership, with each one wildly different from the last. When you find them, you’ll need to make your way to the lighthouse on each of the islands and reconnect them with the Great Tree on Shipshape Island, the hub for the game. Sometimes this is done by hunting down some hair wax for a funky dancer on Twistee Island, or making it through a moving maze or hunting down lost Toads. The list is huge and it’s a joy to have made it through it all.
The island discovery and exploration system is tied into the story progression, so you’ll meet new characters and discover something new about Conchordia on each island. They vary in size, and they all have different concepts behind them, so it never gets too familiar or predictable. However, to discover a new island, you’ll need to navigate seas and currents, which can be a bit on the tedious side. Fast travel isn’t unlocked until you get close to the end of the game and even the speedier island speed doesn’t kick in for a while, so you’ll need to wait occasionally as Shipshape island slowly travels the currents to begin with.
This could have been fixed pretty easily and while it’s far from a game-killing annoyance, it’s just a little unnecessary. This definitely gets a little better with the island speed boost function when you unlock it, so you’ll just have to put up with things initially being a bit slow. This is kind of designed to give you time to explore a little more and discover new things, but this could have been achieved some other way in our opinion.
The real stars of the show are the islands, so making the discovery mechanic so cumbersome slows down the fun early on. The good news, though, is that they’re all well constructed and memorable in their own way and you’ll have everything from puzzles, battles and bosses to dance challenges, pizza-making mini-games and new moves to get to grips with. As you might expect, the challenge increases as you hop from island to island, and they’ll be punctuated by Great Lighthouse Islands in each of the four seas of Conchordia, so there’s a lot to discover.
A battle-packed adventure
The battle system in Mario and Luigi Brothership is fairly unique with moves designed around cooperation between the two brothers. This adds a little extra mental effort to every move, because you’ll need to switch between the two with almost every attack. This starts with simple moves like jump and hammer where you start it off with one, get an assist from the other and finish the move with the main attacking brother. It gets more complex with Bros. Attacks with multiple button presses and timing to take into account.
This gives the game a different level of challenge. It’s easy to get things wrong and waste a move, so it trains you to pay attention with everything that you do in battles. You can sort of muddle your way through against simple enemies that you get at the start of Brothership, but it doesn’t take long for it to be important to pay attention to what you’re doing. Get it right and your damage is way higher. Get it wrong and one of the brothers fluffs there part of the move and you pretty much waste your go.
Some of the Bros. moves are pretty tough to get the timing right on, so either you’ll train your way to success or just ignore them, which is a bit of a shame. There are at least two of the moves that probably should have been simplified just a little to make them more playable, but overall it’s a balance. The game does give you options to overcome this problem with Battle Plugs a little later on in Brothership. One of these is called Auto Excellent, which guarantees you a perfect move without having to get any of the button presses just right. What this means is that even if you do struggle with one of the Bros. Attacks, you can still use them occasionally to boost out your arsenal and against tough enemies and bosses.
However, there’s one part of the game with the Great Conductor that insists on making you land an excellent without using Battle Plugs. This can feel like a barrier to progression for a number of players, but there are strategies to overcome this, which you can see at www.youtube.com/watch?v=147_4sTIQJo. However, if the fringe moves were just a bit more straightforward then it probably would have been a slightly more enjoyable experience.
This is just one of a few minor tweaks that Nintendo and developers Acquire could have made prior to launch to improve the battle system. Overall, it’s got a lot going for it and you’re going to have a lot of memorable battles throughout Mario and Luigi Brothership. By the time you reach the final boss fight, you’ll probably be pretty well-versed in everything that you can do. This doesn’t make it a cinch by any stretch of the imagination, so expect it to test you right the way to the end.
Graphics review
For the most part, it’s a good looking game without pushing the boundaries of the Nintendo Switch in a big way. The art style is unique and gives it something new. The battle and lighthouse animations look particularly impressive and then the cutscenes add to this with even more glitz. The island environments are lovingly crafted and the variety makes each one a pleasure to explore.
The main gameplay visuals aren’t a patch on Mario odyssey, or Bowser’s Fury for that matter, so if that’s your minimum bar then you might be a little underwhelmed by the visuals for Brothership. The reason we bring these up is that they came out 7 and 5 years earlier, so you’d expect Nintendo to have pushed the envelope a little since then. That has been the case for previous consoles, but it definitely looks like the Big N has learned a little from the mistakes it’s made for console transitions over the years.
If they’d put more focus on flashy graphics for Brothership then that might have taken attention away from their efforts with the Super Switch/Switch 2. Nintendo hasn’t had back-to-back console successes since the 1990s, and it looks like it might be doing everything to ensure that the next console lands well. If the simpler art style for Mario and Luigi B is the price to pay for more attention for the next console and launch games then it’s one that we’re fully behind.
The reality is that it just doesn’t need overly flashy graphics to work as a game, so it probably wouldn’t have changed our review score by much, if at all. Brothership looks perfectly fine just the way it is as you become immersed in the game and environments pretty quickly. By the time you meet up with Luigi with that epic jump you’re in and it doesn’t let you out until the credits roll.
A part of this is that the simpler graphics mean that it runs very smoothly on the Switch, so there’s none of the clipping, draw distance issues or bugs to pull you out of the experience. This is pretty much the norm for Nintendo games with the exception of titles like Monster Hunter Stories 2 and the bigger, more recent Pokemon titles, which did attempt to push the envelope without the console might to support it. Performance is good, thanks largely to the scaled-back visuals, but in this case that’s a good thing.
Classic Nintendo music genius
Music is another big part of the success of Nintendo and Mario games over the years and Brothership builds on this very well. The music and sound effects go perfectly with every battle, island exploration and cutscene. It’s not quite as memorable as the very best, but overall it’s very good, which is what we’ve come to count on as a minimum.
If there were a few more hits and less dialogue and story bloat then our review score for Mario and Luigi Brothership would have been even higher. The game really stands out when you’ve made it to break just before the final island assault as you have free reign to explore all of the islands and mop up anything that you haven’t done yet. There’s a lot of this to enjoy, but it also means getting to experience all of the musical genius and crazy sound effects without the distraction of the story elements. There are extra bosses to fight, new moves to use to get more loot and extra side missions to take on, which are accompanied by a quality score.
Overall review
Mario and Luigi Brothership will be a treat for the majority of Mario gamers, especially if they’re already big fans of the previous RPG games. It’s challenging and fu, big and well-crafted to deliver the high-level experience you’d expect from the flagship character. Yes, you’ll need to swathe through a little extra story and yes, some of it might be a bit cheesy, but it’s more than worth it. Brothership is all about island exploration, move discovery and punchy battles and it delivers all of these with a tag-team flourish.
Mario and Luigi Brothership review score: 89%
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