Mario & Luigi: Brothership

Switch Review

Mario & Luigi: Brothership is the 6^th mainline Mario & Luigi game not counting the two prior remakes and the first new entry in the series in 9 years. It is also the first in the series not to be locked to only a handheld so players can enjoy the game on their TV rather than a small screen on the Gameboy or 3DS.

It is an Action, Adventure RPG that sees Mario & Luigi getting abducted to a mysterious land where they have to bring back the different shattered islands of Concordia in a similar vain to Sonic Unleashed but with Lighthouses instead of Temples.

Pro:

Art style.

Brothership has fully transitioned from starting off as a 2D pixel based sprite game to the rudimentary 3D models of Paper Jam before now being in full HD on the Nintendo Switch.

Due to no longer being relegated to the handhelds of Nintendo’s past the game takes more advantage of the more powerful hardware of the Switch compared to the 3DS.

The art style now has much more in-depth shading and colour gradients across the costumes of the characters adding extra detail compared to their more flat looking counterparts from prior games. As this is the first game to have full body shadows on the character models updating in real time with the lighting engine as the player sees the shadows warp with the different light sources affecting the character models.

Brothership hasn’t lost the usual Mario & Luigi style of the characters models being more exaggerated and with bold colours to help stand out from the other Mario franchises, and I think that Brothership has some of the best character designs in the franchise. 

With this region feeling very unique compared to the Mushroom kingdom and more akin to the Beanbean kingdom with the Beanish from Superstar Saga, Bowser’s Insider Story and Dream Team.

Expressive character models.

One of the strongest parts of the various cutscenes and even Bros. Attacks is how expressive and dynamic the characters are even though they have no full voice lines.

Brothership has the most energetic performances of the brothers from the entire franchise as there’s more stretch and pull in their character models more akin to Jak & Daxter from Naughty Dog or Ratchet & Clank from Insomniac Games. This gives their attacks more impact and staying power.

The cutscenes show this off in great detail with the more dynamic camera angles leaning on more of the Dutch camera angle tropes in cinema that helps this game stand out not just from the Mario & Luigi franchise but the general Mario franchise as a whole.

I would recommend that players do not skip cutscenes and if they do accidentally then to rewatch them online as they have some of the best slapstick in the franchise, even off the bat with Luigi always failing to land on the islands after being shot out of a canon until he learns to stick the landing throughout the story.

Bosses.

Brothership features less mandatory bosses than prior games with only 13 required in the main story and of those bosses a few are repeats like with Bowser and the Extension Corp who the player fights a few times each.

All the unique bosses all felt very distinct and are approached in very different ways and this is shown best when Luigi Logic is introduced to change up the various dynamics of the battles. Aside from Luigi Logic though the bosses rarely fight in the same way as they all have very distinct fighting styles of Gorumbla who fights with hand to hand strikes or throw pieces of rubble at the player.

This is easily seen with Pipegunk the boss who is a pile of poison ooze that changes properties depending on the surrounding temperature as his changes between a fire form that can burn the player to an ice form that is spiked. The Luigi Logic for this battle sees Luigi taking control of the remote and changing the temperature rapidly so Pipegunk takes massive damage from the temptation shift and is stunned for several turns leaving him open for massive damage from Bros. Attacks.

Plug system.

The new combat mechanic to Brothership is the Plug mechanic due to the new NPCs and enemies in this game being based on electrical outlets and various cords.

They add great variety to battles and augment nearly every part of the battle system with plugs that reduce the damage the player takes, stops status effects for defence but more that benefit the player going on the offence. 

During the play through I tended to maximise using 5 attack boosting plugs while only swapping in defence ones when low on HP, but for offence a bunch of them boost Jump & Hammer attacks so when stacked together it leads to them dealing more damage than certain Bros Attacks.

I would highly recommend players engage with this system as it greatly expands the combat system and cuts down on the combat system becoming repetitive, as it even speeds up the longer boss fights by inflicting enemies with status conditions or boosting the damage that Bros Attacks do.

The only downside to this system is that the plugs do not recharge outside of combat or when using the Heal blocks that fully restore HP and BP. So players need to manage their remaining plugs and their chargers otherwise could start a major battle with only 1 charge left before it’s on cooldown for 20+ turns.

Music.

I greatly enjoyed the soundtrack to Brothership and think it’s one of the best soundtracks in the Mario & Luigi franchise. It has a lot more laid back and relaxing tracks with less energy tracks to listen to during the exploration of combat against the bosses.

I would recommend players listen to the soundtrack through headphones to make it more clear and less intermixed with the other audio sources overlapping.

The stand out tracks for myself were the main boss theme and the final bosses 3^rd phase theme specifically, otherwise the one that players will hear the most being Shipshape island is a great song to relax to before shooting off to the next island.

Con:

Pacing.

This was the biggest issue with the game. My playthrough lasted 38 hours in total and that was with doing around 80% of the side quests due to accidentally voiding some of them due to the expiration system that stops side quests from being able to be completed due to progressing in the story.

The prologue for the game took way too long in this game at over 3 hours long. I classed the prologue as until the first boss where the player gets access to the majority of their moveset for the first time with Hammers and Bros. Attacks. This meant the player had to spend all that time doing the same repetitive combat with jump attacks and QTEs that put the player to sleep as there was no way to speed up this process as the player can’t skip dialogue in this game.

For the majority of the plot the player has to slowly sail around the map screen using various ocean currents in real time. As players do not get access to point to point fast travel until the very end of the game when most side quests have expired. So if the player has already done all side content and ready to move on with the story they have to wait in real time to sail over to the next island making it feel like playing a phone game that uses real world timers to gatekeep content so the player can’t just keep advancing.

However the pacing becomes such an issue just due to how much backtracking is in this game. As the player is required to revisit each of the islands multiple times during the story but even more so during the sheer amount of side quests. 

This becomes more essential since if the player doesn’t want to grind XP to increase their level and stats then they need to do at least some side content otherwise will be under levelled for the bosses. This happened during my play through when fighting against Bowser, as being slightly under levelled and having issues with the QTEs due to Dyspraxia lead to several deaths at the hands of the later bosses.

The player also can’t pause the game during combat either so the only time the game cares about pacing is when the enemy is attacking using very slow and long combo strings. So if the player needs to put the game down to deal with something else quickly then they either have to use sleep mode and hope they remember where in the QTE they were or possibly risk getting killed if they were against one of the later game bosses, as they attack multiple times per turn.

Frame rate.

While not noticeable at first it became quickly apparent when using the Fast Sailing option that the player unlocks after a couple of hours to speed up Shipshape island, but it has the big downside of causing the frame rate to sharply drop when walking around the island.

This over world frame rate drop becomes an extreme at the very end of the game when the player is finishing up side quests before they are made impossible to finish due to plot reasons. These plot reasons are also the cause of every island dropping the frame rate as there is a red filter that covers the overworld along with heavy particle effects in the air that the player cannot avoid.

The frame rate also drops during fights with multiple opponents and the bigger boss fights that features heavy particle effects and long combo strings. As with bosses like the 2^nd fight with Bowser brings in multiple minions but also has him attacking multiple times per turn with a lot of particle effects driving down the frame rate even more.

Quick Time Events.

The Quick Time Events in this game were also some of the tightest in the franchise and some questionable hitboxes at times when the hammer would go through their hitbox and not register like what happened in the first Bowser fight.

Other QTEs that became an issue were with a few mini games like with the dancing mini game against Dyode have to press A, B, X and Y in time to pass his challenges, and this sounds fine enough but at the end of the game before the final boss you have to do the hardest version of his mini game while not being allowed to miss a single note.

It says you can miss one note in the failure screen but this isn’t true as after recording one of my failed attempts where even one note was missed caused my whole attempt to fail.

As a player with Dyspraxia these QTE issues felt frustrating as the prior game from 9+ years ago had more responsive and precise controls that didn’t feel unfair. I am unsure if some of these dropped inputs were also due to the performance issues that were common in battles with more enemies or with the games bosses.

Plot.

Mario and Luigi games usually have pretty good stories with interesting characters and villains as seen with Superstar Saga and Bowser’s Inside Story. Unfortunately Brothership really let the series down with it’s subpar main villain and final villain.

The majority of the plot for this game features the player navigating across the vast ocean on various water currents until Shipshape gets close to an island, then the player has to solve the islands one main problem then reconnecting the island to Shipshape.

This gameplay loop is the same for all 15+ islands in the game and gets very repetitive with it’s mission structure as the player doesn’t really change up until Bowser is introduced into the story.

The final villain who is introduced at the very end of the game was also the least interesting in the franchise as their main goal is for everyone to feel lonely and not have any friends. Their final plan was pretty fresh for the franchise as while putting everyone in VR headsets that look like flowers until the user starves to death until they are the only living person in the land.

Load times.

An issue that became more noticeable is how long the loading times in this game became.

Not counting animation length for the Bros. Attacks but getting into and out of combat can take nearly 10 seconds at times, but even entering and exiting buildings takes too long when the game doesn’t even have much to load the player will be stuck looking at a black screen.

The loading times first became noticeable when playing through Lottacoins and Bulbfish islands since the player will be forced to enter and exit buildings. This leads to a majority of the time spent waiting for the game to continue and pacing to start up again as with Lottacoins the player is forced to enter and exit rooms repeatedly to solve the multiple gate puzzles.

Movement.

For some reason the movement in this game is restricted to 8 directions instead of the typical 360 degree movement of most traditional games that involve platforming.

This usually isn’t too much of a hassle apart from when trying to do precise platforming when Luigi randomly walks off platforms onto spikes due to the angles causing a reset. This also causes Luigi to get stuck behind obstacles due to poor pathing and restricted movement which then automatically forces Mario to walk back towards him taking control away from the player.

Save system.

In an annoying antiquated decision they brought back the Save Block mechanic to perform a hard save but don’t allow the player to save at any time from the pause menu.

There is no reason in the modern age of gaming to restrict being able to save at any time outside of combat especially since the Switch can run out of battery if not charged making players lose progress unless they get to a Save Block.

The Save Blocks are also spread too far apart to be convenient for the player to use, as the majority of the time it’s easier for the player to warp pipe back to Shipshape island or just backtrack through the current island to get to a Save Block.

Invisible walls.

During the platforming sections in the overworld across all the items there are invisible walls on most platforms that stops the player moving quicker by skipping small sections of walking.

These walls are conveyed usually by a low fence or roper barrier that Mario & Luigi can clearly jump over when stood next to them, but it becomes more egregious when the player unlocks the UFO Bros. Power and should be able to clearly fly across the small gaps from these platforms.

Can’t skip dialogue.

This was an issue further into the game when they became more heavily text reliant to tell the plot during the main story but also during the numerous side quests that span the entire game.

Players can only hold the B button to speed up the rate that dialogue scrolls through the speech balloon and some cutscenes to get to more dialogue.

Given how repetitive the majority of side quests are it would make it a lot better paced if the player had the ability to quickly skip through dialogue by continually holding down the B button like it works for the bigger cutscenes that players wouldn’t want to skip.

Conclusion:

A welcome return to form that comes with a litany of issues that the majority of players could overlook.

It’s been 9 years since the last main entry (Not counting the two remakes) but fans of the series will get more out of the game than newer players who could be off put by the slow pace and constant backtracking.

Score: 7.0