The Mario RPG games were a blind spot for me until just recently, with the release of the Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door. The Mario and Luigi series I don’t think were ever on my radar at all, with the only thing I know of being that they’re similar but ultimately distinct from the Paper Mario games. I was surprised to see the buzz around the series coming back with Mario and Luigi Brothership. I was excited to see what I missed, with no expectations for this particular series when I jumped into the latest entry. Ultimately I’m left impressed, with a couple of gripes but an interest to play even more of these games.
Mario, Luigi, and the rest of the usual Mushroom Kingdom crew find themselves teleported away to a world called Concordia. This was a world where everything was connected by a massive tree called the Uni-Tree, and when Mario shows up it is now a series of broken apart islands. He needs to join together with his brother Luigi and their guide Snoutlet (definitely not a pig, mind you) to sail around the sea and reconnect each of the now disparate islands.
Your base of Shipshape island has a canon and a world map to decide the path you want to take, with your ship moving on a set path in real time. This isn’t freeform sailing like with The Wind Waker, but instead a map of currents that branch into others. Spread across this ocean are main story islands, islets, and reefs. Reefs can’t be explored, but are cataloged with someone on your home base island to give you rewards. Islets don’t join back up with Shipshape, and are fun little one off puzzle islands.
Each of the main islands feels like a world in one of the main Mario platformers jammed into a smaller RPG zone. You’ll have a goal to get to a lighthouse at the end to connect it back to the main island, and to get there you’ll be battling groups of enemies and solving platforming puzzles. The merging of these two elements is pretty strong, as you’ll have to use Mario and Luigi separately and together to make it through.
This could have been overly complicated if the development team wasn’t careful, but how they go about controlling both leaves little friction that could get in the way of enjoyment. You’ll mostly control Mario, but every face button has two actions dedicated to each brother. Mario has A and X to jump and use a hammer, with B and Y allowing Luigi to do the same. Luigi also has a context sensitive action tied to the L Button, which can either get him to automatically do an action (breaking boxes, for example) or standby to help Mario solve a puzzle. This is called Luigi Logic and will be crucial to solving most puzzles you come across. Alternatively there are Bros. Moves which have Mario and Luigi team up to transform to expand their platforming potential.
I was pleasantly surprised at how in-depth the combat ended up being, and think largely it worked in keeping me engaged. The two big reasons I tend to not prefer turn-based combat with action prompts is that battles can easily get bloated, and the timing for prompts being too strict. The flipside of this negative is that the player always feels directly involved with everything that happens, and often when playing these the former outweighs the latter. Brothership plays to the strengths of this subgenre of turn based RPGs, with very few of its weaknesses.
Battles in Brothership are snappy, and feel like small scale platforming puzzles in their own right. Animations are fluid and frankly gorgeous, and understanding them will be the key to doing well in battles. There are essentially two phases for every fight: Attacking and Countering. Your two standard attacks for each brother’s turn are Jumping and Hammer attacks. Each of these will have timed button presses to have both brothers work together to maximize damage, and the consistent framerate helped me get my footing and actually enjoy the action prompts. The game targets 30 FPS with almost no drops, and the timing on button presses is adjusted to make it work.
Having active battles like this means every enemy needs to have good dynamics by themselves and with other enemies. Brothership understands this with its enemy variety, with new groups being introduced regularly from island to island. When variants show up, the attacks they send out will have different timings or new things to dodge, and I think this works well. I was rarely bored with Brothership, besides the times where an island went on too long and I solved its pool of enemies a bit too early. This unfortunately happens often in the game’s dungeons, which frequently feel like they’re just one or two rooms long and feel like slogs at their worst when they don’t have enough variety.
Another layer of complexity established not too long into its runtime are Battle Plugs, which are crafted by a resource called Lumenade on each island. These give substantial passive buffs on both brothers for a limited amount of turns, before needing a set amount of turns to recharge. You can mix and match them, with additional effects unlocked for certain combos. I love this system frankly, and makes a series of battles feel like they exist in self-determined “arcs”.
Maybe this set of battles you’ll want to do more damage to flying enemies with an Iron Ball dropped after each attack? Maybe you want to have your build focused on counters, with more forgiving timing and damage? Maybe you’ll want to get more attack actions, with extra splash damage added? This encouraged me to experiment with my loadout during the cooldown of some of my favorite battle plugs, and can be switched out on the fly any turn based on your needs.
To give you even more to do, each brother has access to their own Bros. Attacks, which are Super Mario themed special moves you’d find in most RPGs. I can’t discuss most of these, but a good example would be how Mario and Luigi have their own version of kicking Koopa shells around. Mario’s version has him kicking a red shell back and forth with Luigi to do a lot of damage to a single enemy, with Luigi’s involving kicking a green shell at enemies and having Mario kick it back when it bounces off. Each of them requires mastery of the button prompts, and are trickled out to you at a satisfying pace.
The last crucial part of customizing your experience is gear and leveling up. Gear is pretty standard, but the leveling system had a really fun twist to it. At certain level up milestones your character will Rank Up and be able to select a permanent bonus. This can be extra equipment slots, extra points for a stat on level up, or more damage for a specific kind of attack. All of these bonuses are left available on each rank up, and you can’t select them all. It makes it feel like you can build each brother for a certain specialty in battle, and I liked this a lot.
At the end of every section of the sea is a lighthouse dungeon, which I feel frequently goes on longer than they probably should. While I find combat enjoyable, it can get tiring when that’s most of what you’re doing. You can avoid enemies of course, but that’s not something I’d recommend. It’s a good idea to fight everything on your way to the end of an area to make sure you have the stats to handle a boss. So when enemy formations are “solved” and you’re just using the same techniques, the combat becomes less enjoyable. The lighthouses are also less visually stimulating than most islands, so I’d say these are where Brothership is at its weakest.
Having said that, Brothership is at its best during the Boss fights. The visual spectacle is already a step up from normal encounters, but the environments will always have a particular gimmick that Luigi can use to give the brothers and edge up on bosses. This is where Luigi logic feeds into the battle system, and is unique for every boss in the game. This could have Luigi run up and set up a contraption to drop a series of boxes on a boss, or work with Mario to toss one into a wall. The timing is less forgiving than in normal encounters, so it’s not just a way to get free damage. These are a treat to watch, and the bosses are genuinely challenging if you aren’t prepared.
Battling is probably what you’ll spend most of your time doing, but exploring every island is rewarding thanks to how much visual variety there is. Every story arc feels distinct, with some islands even having fun little themes like a mystery to solve or a building to break into with a large amount of puzzles to figure out. If an island doesn’t have a fun gimmick, there will at least always be a solid story hook or a fun new platforming challenge. I’m conflicted, probably in a good way, because despite how I think the game does go on long I love all the varied island aesthetics to visit. It makes it feel like a real adventure, which works well.
Once an island is connected there will be new paths to explore and side quests to do, giving completionists plenty to do. I enjoyed going back to old islands to find new items or Lumenade spots, but found early on that attempting to do all the side quests was tedious. They’re not awful, but not very engaging and can very quickly pad your playthrough with a lot of backtracking with little reward. But there are certain side quests that are timed, and these are the ones worth doing. The stories involved here are often interesting and worthwhile, with slightly more substantial rewards.
Progression is interesting, with each sea giving you small decisions to make to change up the order you visit islands or how certain islands play out. You’ll ultimately reach the same end, but how you go about that can have fun gameplay changes to keep things fresh. But in regards to pacing, it’s a bit of a mixed bag. I think the game is a bit long, which I was not expecting for a game like this. Having a lot of content in an RPG is great, especially to make it stand out and make players feel like their money was worth it. However overall I think Brothership could have benefited by being a shorter and tighter experience. Everything here is good, but some of the cracks show when stretched out.
This is the kind of game made by people with a strong understanding of the hardware they’re developing for, and for a console so far into its life cycle like the Switch that’s important. The art style does a lot of heavy lifting to ensure the game is sharp and runs well, with a beautiful cartoon aesthetic. It doesn’t appear to be native resolution, but the resolution output is very clean. The past Mario and Luigi games feature very charming sprite art, and I think this was a good way to bring over the spirit of that presentation into the series’ first console outing. There hasn’t been a Mario game to look like this before, and I think they struck gold. I really hope we get another Mario game that looks like this, whether it be a platformer or another RPG.
Brothership is the kind of RPG that has few glaring faults, consistently hitting satisfying notes. I personally was rarely blown away, but I was always charmed and having fun. The story fits this idea as well, with a tried and true story of the importance of making connections with others. The writing is endearing, and the themes are important for the younger target audience to learn. While some cutscenes do over-explain themselves, the dialogue and cast are fun. Peach in particular gets an enjoyable role with some of the new cast, and all the new characters work well. Like with the rest of the game, if played at a leisurely pace you’re bound to have an experience as breezy as the ocean air. I binged it, which I don’t really recommend.
Nintendo games are at their best when they’re approachable and polished to a sheen, and Mario and Luigi Brothership is great at both of these. This is a sizeable RPG that contextualizes classic turn-based mechanics in a platformer framework. This isn’t anything new, but it shows that this current run of Mario RPG remakes wasn’t a fluke. The mechanics are strong, and even as someone who doesn’t usually like RPGs like this, I had a pretty great time. Brothership might be a bit on the longer side, but I think this is a fantastic game to give to a younger gamer looking to understand the appeal of the genre. There’s a ton of personality on display that I think will make people of any age smile, and the systems are flexible enough to keep most of your time enjoyable.
Version Tested: Nintendo Switch
Review copy provided by Nintendo
