Mario & Luigi: Brothership Review

Sailing back out of the wilderness of an abandoned console and form factor, Mario & Luigi: Brothership is a return for another Mario RPG series. Where Paper Mario always lived on Nintendo’s premier console, Mario & Luigi was the handheld counterpart, first on Game Boy Advance and then on Nintendo DS and 3DS. It’s been nine years since the last original game in the series, but if anything the brotherly bond that the series was built on is stronger than ever.

They’ll need it too, as they’re sucked into what appears to be the Bifröst from the MCU, only to crash out of it and land in the world of Concordia. This world was once completely connected and united, a cluster of islands floating across the oceans, all linked together by lighthouses and energy streams via the Uni-Tree. When that tree was destroyed by a machiavellian plot, all the islands floated away into isolation.

The brothers arrive at just the right time, meeting Connie, an apprentice Wattanist who’s planted a new Uni-Tree on Shipshape Island – which is part ship, part island – in an effort to reunite the world. To that end, you’ll be fired out of a cannon at all manner of themed islands, adventuring through their independent story arcs, and eventually reach their lighthouses to connect that back to Shipshape. There’s a good variety here, from jungles and deserts to high-rise city islands, and as you get deeper into the game, there’s often a new twist, whether it’s a high stakes rescue mission, detective investigation, or leaning on a newly learned ability. By and large, you won’t need to return once you’re done, though new paths will open up once the Connectar is flowing, and there’s smaller side missions that you can quickly complete.

All the Concordians you meet have the appearance of a US power socket, thanks to their long tall eyes and flattened faces, and the script and story is charged with a lot of electrical puns. The arch antagonist is revealed to be Zokket and his minions the Extension Corps, as one example. It doesn’t make for the wittiest script, which I found largely washed over me, though there were definitely some chuckles along the way for some of the most off-kilter plot beats. The main spark comes from Snoutlet – who’s definitely not a pig – who lives in Luigi’s hat and takes on the role of communicator and sass-giver that Starlow had in the last few games, though even Snoutlet’s character felt pretty mild to me. The real story is all about the youths of this world stepping up to fill the shoes of their mentors and guardians, in particular with Connie, who treks with you to the key encounters at the Great Lighthouses.

In the hands of original developer AlphaDream, Mario & Luigi was well known for its gameplay gimmicks. Arguably the original concept of playing as both brothers in tandem, with individual jump buttons, was a gimmick in its own right, but then there was the brothers being shrunk down and adventuring within Bowser and with Kaiju-sized battles, or the RPG crossover of Paper Jam that brought Paper Mario into the fold. Mario & Luigi: Brothership is a back to basics adventure compared to those games, with the focus all on the brotherly duo battling it out together.

The pair always run together while adventuring in the world, Luigi trailing Mario’s footsteps, and you can still control their individual jumps and hammer slams, though you now generally just need to worry about Mario and Luigi will jump automatically on his own. The main twist to the open world adventuring is the Bros. Moves, which transform the two brothers and enhances their movement abilities. One has them basically turn into a UFO that can hover for a few moments and help reach more distant platforms, another brings back the Bros. Ball from Partners in Time.

Luigi’s got more of a mind of his own, which is pretty key for the Luigi Logic system. This pops up pretty regularly, with the poor fella scrunching up his face and jabbing the side of his head as he tries to figure out a way to help overcome an obstacle, before that Eureka moment hits. It’s invariably helpful, whether it’s locking him to a giant ‘L’ button that he can hammer to trigger things for Mario to navigate past, or key points in boss battles to help trigger a damage phase. He can also run off and smash crates and things for you too.

The duo are more united in battle than ever, as well. The satisfying rhythm of battle is back, with extra timed button presses to amp up an attack as it lands, jumping and hammering to dodge and counter, and more. Mario and Luigi now team up for every attack, so even a basic jump attack will have you use both ‘A’ and ‘B’ buttons, and that leads naturally into the Bros. Attacks with their far more bombastic animations. Initially, they have individual shell attacks – Mario’s directed on a single target, Luigi’s bounced back and forth between a crowd of enemies – but there’s more inventive ones that you eventually unlock.

Amping up your abilities further are Battle Plugs. Each one gives you a particular boost, such as making an ‘Excellent’ rated attack explode and damage nearby enemies, making your counters easier, adding anti-flying damage and more. What’s great is that you can swap these in and out mid-battle without taking an action, and there’s some nice synergies to find, though each one has a limited number of uses before it then needs to recharge for a certain number of combat turns. That will keep you strategising and mixing things up a bit, in addition to the slight variation between whatever gear you’ve given the brothers.

Blocking and countering is key, though, and you’ll have to learn to read all of the different attacks that enemies can unleash. It really keeps you on your toes, so a flying Snaptor might swoop in multiple times and throw rocks, springs and even brothers, which you need to identify and react to in the correct way and with correct timing. It’s easy to get caught out, and makes new encounters and boss battles in particular a real challenge. Thankfully, you’ve got manual saves, autosaves and can always retry any battle immediately if both brothers are KO’d – a second failure will offer you an easy mode. You do also have the ability to flee without consequence from any standard fight.

Mario & Luigi: Brothership’s jump to Nintendo Switch also comes with a new art style. It’s fully 3D now, but also more cartoon-like, with black outlines to characters and the world. While it has its moments where it can look rather nice – the character animation in particular is pretty good for key moments – I do feel it suffers from lower texture detail and doesn’t hold up quite so well on TV compared to handheld play