Month of Mario: Mario & Luigi: Brothership (Switch)

Friends. Family. Even enemies. A person’s identity can be built up by these words that define not who you are necessarily, but how you connect to others. These bonds are no doubt important to everyone’s life, and the turn-based role-playing game Mario & Luigi: Brothership is about precisely these kinds of connections. In fact, they are so crucial to the game’s themes and messaging that it can almost spend a bit too long setting them up, but if you’re going to have a connection with this game, it should be one of trust, because even when it’s slowly working towards something, it will pay off in the long run.

Mario & Luigi: Brothership takes place in the land of Concordia, a world apart from the Mushroom Kingdom where the adventurous plumbers Mario and Luigi usually save the day. However, a strange portal pulls them and others connected to them over to the land of Concordia in its time of need, the large continent broken apart by some unknown vile force. What was once an interconnected land of joy is now a set of lonely islands drifting through the sea, but the brotherly bond of Mario and Luigi help them to overcome the trials of these isolated islands and work towards reconnecting them into one land.

When things begin in this adventure, the game certainly takes its time introducing the world and its game systems, and even vital information like who the main villain is and what their overall plan entails are sat on for quite a while. Instead, Mario & Luigi: Brothership wants to work more on its theming, and this actually ends up being a fairly smart approach. It would have been very easy for the game to tell you characters matter to each other and Mario and Luigi are the types to leap at a chance to help people regardless of how well they know them, but this RPG takes the time to write out many interactions that focus on growing those bonds. You’ll meet plenty of characters sailing around on your own boat-like Shipshape Island, Concordia actually delightfully themed around electrical connections that make them a perfect fit for a story about how connections improve our lives. Many characters such as the Wattanist Connie who helps to grow the Uni-Tree needed to reconnect the islands have a face like that looks like an electrical socket, the main villain’s goons are called the Extension Corps have heads shaped like various connectors, and the way islands attach to Shipshape even look like golden wires that end in a plug.

Admittedly, while it’s always enjoyable to see some new clever pun or usage of the electrical connector theming, it doesn’t quite carry the game’s early hours as well as it should. Those hours are crucial to laying some groundwork, but up until the first of four Great Lighthouses required to rebuild Concordia, the game is taking things a bit slow and easy. You’ll meet some memorable characters like Maykit, a craftswoman who speaks in what reads almost like beat poetry, but after the lighthouse the game gets much better at not only providing greater gameplay challenges, but even working on emphasizing bonds that are not only meaningful to the characters, but to the player. A pair of star-crossed lovers called Burnadette and Chilliam are encountered who are so absolutely enamored with each other to a ridiculous and cutesy degree that you can’t help but root for their happiness. The IDLE gang, a group of four kids who designate themselves the protector of their island, actually start to become more than rapscallions as they gradually learn what it means to be a hero rather than a pretender. Across multiple islands you start to have these characters follow along and have their own stories progress, and check-ins with characters you know from earlier like Connie and Maykit start to turn the people you encounter into a growing friend group. Shipshape Island becomes less a means of conveyance and more a gathering point where you happily speak with characters whenever you revisit it, whether it’s the gossiping trio of ladies who have a fun way of giving tips on sidequests to more plot crucial characters, you end up truly caring for the inhabitants of this world you’re trying to save in ways that can make you laugh at their hilarious antics or even tear up when it’s time to say goodbye.

Mario and Luigi themselves are mostly there to do the heroic legwork, not exactly silent because they’ll speak in bits of gibberish that aren’t translated into the textboxes we can actually read, but Luigi actually is given a good deal of focus in a rather positive manner. Much ado has been made about this game changing away from some of the series conventions, Mario & Luigi: Brothership coming nine years after the previous Mario & Luigi RPG and mostly trying to chart its own course with a new land and characters in an effective manner. For some reason people seem to get tripped up though that this game elects to make controlling Mario and Luigi more fluid, older games often asking you to control both their jumps at all times whereas here Luigi will follow you around as you control Mario, jumping as needed. This doesn’t mean his role is deemphasized at all, the game presents many puzzles during exploration where Luigi and Mario will split up to operate devices or navigate areas where you do need to control them in tandem. There are times the brothers will work together like rolling into a ball or somehow spinning quickly enough they turn into a UFO that can gross gaps, and even a great deal of short minigames arise where you need to identify which brother to perform an action with at the right times. Luigi takes things even further with his Luigi Logic, the green-clad younger brother sometimes having a spark of inspiration that leads to him concocting a new solution to a problem that can manifest as a new way of overcoming a navigational problem or even attacking boss characters with new unique attacks that often play out close to brief minigames themselves. Luigi’s ingenuity pairs well with Mario’s general capable nature, both brothers stronger by working together rather than the game’s flow getting tripped up by making you have to do every action every time with both brothers.

Mario & Luigi: Brothership has many islands to explore, many of its more interesting and creative themes appearing later in the adventure, that early period again feeling a little weaker for it. While you have a jungle and flowery island at the start, later you get more unusual settings like an urban area with skyscrapers or places with more focused tasks like an island-wide search or mystery to solve. Most islands will at least provide a good deal of navigational challenges involving using the brother’s abilities or some local gimmick, these broken up with encounters with enemies but not always culminating in a boss encounter. This is again why the early game can feel a bit slow, the number of islands perhaps meaning it was wise for not all of them to have a huge fight at the end but it still feels like the game was a bit cautious at the start, perhaps worried that younger players might not yet be ready for more involved encounters. Thankfully, the game does start to pick up after that Great Lighthouse and at the same time, the battles start to increase in danger and complexity. Initially, the turn-based fights of Mario & Luigi: Brothership focus mostly on your jump and hammer attacks, the player able to time button presses to make them deal more damage. You can also time your button presses right when the enemy attacks to potentially avoid incoming attacks or even turn it into a counter, jumping onto enemies trying to ram you or smacking back projectiles with your hammer. This does mean early fights are involved even if they’re still a bit simple, but once the game starts to ramp up the difficulty some, you’ll soon see even standard foes can sometimes take out a third of one of the brother’s life bars if you don’t counter or activate the much easier but much less potent Emergency Guard.

With an increase in enemy strength though comes an increase in your own options. Bros. Attacks are powerful combo attacks that can deal huge damage, feature strange and inventive animations, but cost some BP that is harder to recover than your health. Usually the game puts a healing block to top off HP and BP near bosses so you can use Bros. Attacks in regular fights if you do feel overwhelmed by the enemy numbers or ones with more difficult attacks to dodge, some enemy groupings surprisingly tough since they can even execute combo moves of their own. What really makes the combat take off after the early game though are the Plugs. While you can gradually unlock and buy new equipment or level up the brothers through battle to become tougher, Plugs provide temporary boosts in battle that last for as many turns as their charge does before they need a good bit of time to recharge. The plugs come in a wide variety of forms, some can protect you from incoming attacks by making counterattacks easier, making you resist statuses like being tripped or set on fire, or just lessening damage a bit. Others will give your attacks new functions, such as making your attacks icy, sending out a shockwave to hit more than one foe, or dropping an iron ball for a little extra damage. Plugs can give you useful options like giving you some BP back after a Bros. Attack, automatically using a healing or revival item if its needed, or making enemies more likely to drop items after battle. With some synergies existing between Plugs, Plug management becomes an incredibly important and rewarding aspect of combat. They can be set and adjusted during battle which can sometimes be a bit fiddly in smaller fights, but it gives the combat a new robust layer that can completely change how you tackle a fight and in turn allows the opposition to put up a stronger fight.

Whether they are bosses or basic baddies in Mario & Luigi: Brothership, you can expect each type to have some unique attacks to counter, meaning facing off with them is often a learning experience to as you grow used to what they can dish out and how you can counter it. Even with smart Plug management there are some bosses that can test your combat abilities, Luigi Logic mid-battle often not only a neat new twist to how the fight is handled briefly but sometimes a relief since they help turn things in your favor so strongly for a bit. The themes during battle are generally very good as well, the soundtrack generally featuring plenty of horns and accordion with many standout tracks even outside of the energetic fight songs. Twistee Island, Shipshape Island, Lottacoins Island, Slippenglide Island, many locations have memorable music backing them that helps with giving them more character, although another area Mario & Luigi: Brothership stumbles a bit is in giving you reasons to revisit old islands. Side quests, some that are only possible to complete for a limited time, will arise which send you back to old locations and not always to do the most interesting of tasks. Some are funny or help you revisit a likeable character, but others are pretty plain since oftentimes the tasks involved aren’t too complex or rewarding.

Engaging with the side quests can lead to the adventure feeling longer because of the weak design in a good deal of side quests, although near the end the game does start to drag its feet as it wants to wrap things up with something thematically appropriate but takes a bit too long to actually play out. By that point the game has already done wonders for investing you in its world and characters and yet still feels the need to keep working on it despite it pushing the climax back. While the rare bits of actual slowdown outside of battle that effect little and frequent load screens when island hopping aren’t great, they’re pretty easy to overlook compared to the game not seeming to pace out what is otherwise a standout story with many lovable and wonderful new characters as well as smart use of familiar Mario series main stays. Not only is it a nice surprise when something otherwise mundane like a Bob-omb shows up in this otherwise brand new land, but it uses familiar characters like Bowser Jr. and Peach in new ways too, Mario & Luigi: Brothership feeling like an RPG that actually values the story it’s telling rather than just concocting a plot that lets the Mario Bros. run through and beat baddies in a range of locations.

THE VERDICT: The calm waters of this voyage’s opening hours might make some people abandon ship early, but once Mario & Luigi: Brothership gets some wind in its sails, everything starts to improve in large leaps. Concordia’s people make up a wonderful supporting cast you grow attached to as you not only laugh with them, but you get to know them as people. The battle system becomes challenging and deep once Plugs let you alter your approach on top of the inherent interactivity of active dodging and attack enhancement. The ending does start to slowdown a bit, but for the majority of this journey, Mario & Luigi: Brothership is an all-around excellent adventure that just needed to handle its pacing better to be appreciated for its many successes.

And so, I give Mario & Luigi: Brothership for Nintendo Switch…

A GOOD rating. It brings me great pain to have to only give this game a Good when it could have been not only so much more, but perhaps the best Mario & Luigi RPG yet. Those early hours and it dragging its feet near the end really can’t be ignored, it almost feels like the game was nervous about being a twenty hour adventure and had to slip in a few more islands or events to flesh things out and hit forty instead. It’s easy to just say a full trim of the slower parts would benefit the game, but the early game could have been made livelier with the earlier introduction of Plugs and at least a few minibosses to keep things more exciting. The early hours are closer to Okay rather than bad at least as you’re starting to get the seeds of important character relationships and a good deal of navigational puzzles to keep it moving, but the rest of the game until that slow end could have reached Great or even Fantastic if they weren’t sandwiched between less impactful parts that are too large to ignore. The Plugs do so much for the battle system, not only giving a foe as simple as a Goomba license to be a bit tougher, but your ability to counter them prevents the fights from being too difficult or dragging on. There is a lot of creativity in finding the right place for the connectivity theming to manifest in the world and many interesting islands start appearing after that first Great Lighthouse, and the writing for the people you meet might be the best the Mario series has featured because of how much care was put into making a story with more substance to it than just saving the world. The personal connections of the people of Concordia come under literal threat as you get deeper into the adventure, allowing the theme to come forward even more strongly even in battle while also getting emphasized in smaller and subtler areas elsewhere. When Mario & Luigi: Brothership is working, its peaks are very strong, and its valleys are thankfully not that deep despite being fairly wide. Asking for so much patience from the player is an undeniable detriment though meaning it can’t be all it should be.

Developer Acquire has taken the reins from the now dissolved AlphaDream, and in many ways Mario & Luigi: Brothership does chart its own course rather than feeling like it needs to retread old ideas to be faithful to the past. The brotherly cooperation is present here even if you don’t need to always press a dedicated button to make Luigi follow you around, the story caring more about its characters making a better point about their bond than a few controller buttons could. The battle system has been enhanced with the clever Plug system, but it seems figuring out how long the journey should be did mean this game might not be able to declare itself the best Mario & Luigi RPG despite having so much working that it should have been able to claim that title otherwise. Hopefully Acquire gets another shot and doesn’t feel afraid to shorten the adventure, because if the writing and creativity shown here can be presented in a cleaner package later down the line, then the future of this nearly shipwrecked series is looking bright.