Mario & Luigi: Brothership review for Nintendo Switch

While Nintendo rarely publishes duds, it feels like the last year or so has seen the venerable company on another level in terms of releasing great games. Off the top of my head, since October last year we’ve had a combination of amazing original games (Super Mario Bros. Wonder, Princess Peach: Showtime!, The Legend of Zelda: Echoes of Wisdom, and others) and some really stellar remakes and remasters (Luigi’s Mansion 2 HD, Super Mario RPG, Mario vs Donkey Kong, and so one). By any metric, it’s been a pretty impressive run.

And then there’s Mario & Luigi: Brothership. They can’t all be winners, right?

Okay,that’s probably needlessly harsh. While Mario & Luigi: Brothership doesn’t come anywhere close to the heights other Nintendo-published games have achieved over the last year, it’s by no means a bad game. It has some good qualities, even. It’s undeniably the case that, fairly or not, Brothership is being graded on a curve compared to Nintendo’s other recent games.

Mind you, even if Brothership had been published by some other company (with different characters, obviously), it’s hard to imagine perceiving it as substantially better. In fact, you could probably even argue that the game gets a bit of a bump thanks to the goodwill and backstory associated with its iconic brother duo. Without Mario and Luigi, we’d be looking at a dull, talk-heavy RPG that spends way too long to get to the point without any interesting characters.

Mind you, as it stands, we’re still looking at a dull, talk-heavy RPG that spends way too long to get to the point. Brothership metes out new mechanics and plot development at a snail’s pace, interspersing interesting bits and pieces with far too much exposition and action that just feels like it’s there to pad things out. It wasn’t long before I dreaded talking to the inhabitants of Concordia, since it almost inevitably meant getting into conversations for which the fast-forward button did very little. There’s the odd cutscene you’re able to skip, but those are far too rare. Instead, you trigger long dialogues where little of value is said, and you’re stuck mashing the A or B buttons to move on to the next line.

Similarly, Brothership feels like it takes a really long time to dole out the abilities you need to advance in the game. A few hours in, you get hammers, which you can use in combat or to break obstacles blocking your path forward. A few hours after that, Luigi Logic (which, to be fair, is introduced as a basic idea fairly early on) gets added to Luigi’s arsenal in battles, giving him an overpowered attack to add to your rotation. Many hours after that, you get Battle Plugs, which are modifiers that give your attacks a boost.

Obviously, every game needs to introduce new concepts gradually; if your characters are all powered up at the beginning, there’s nowhere to progress. But the way Brothership does it feels like lots of unnecessary handholding that’s only there to artificially pad the length of the game. The fact that Brothership also includes lots of side quests that also feel equally pad-y doesn’t help matters much either.

The frustrating thing about that is that it’s easy to imagine a more streamlined version of Brothership that lives up to the likes of Super Mario Bros. Wonder and Echoes of Wisdom. The world of Concordia in which the game takes place is a vibrant, enjoyable place; as you visit each new island, you almost always uncover some new creature or character or feature that sets them apart as unique from the others. They often feature interesting environmental puzzles that strike the sweet spot of taking a bit of effort to solve, but never feeling impossible. On top of that, the game looks very nice, serving as yet another reminder that for all the complaints about Switch hardware feeling old and outdated, Nintendo rarely seems to have issues making games with gorgeous visuals.

And, most importantly, the battles are pretty enjoyable. If you’ve ever played any Mario RPGs the turn-based system will feel pretty familiar, but the additions here undeniably add a lot, whether you’re using Luigi Logic to obliterate a boss, or swapping in new Battle Plugs to enhance your fighting ability. It’s a mark of how much fun they were that even someone like me, who generally doesn’t like turn-based battles, didn’t mind one bit when I stumbled across an enemy.

Unfortunately, everything between those battles leaves a lot to be desired. Mario & Luigi: Brothership takes far too long to get to the point, and the journey to get there isn’t nearly as interesting as it needs to be to make it feel worthwhile. Again, there are some great ideas here, and the game looks amazing, but unless you want your hand held for dozens upon dozens of hours, you’ll probably find yourself a little let down by it all.

Nintendo provided us with a Mario & Luigi: Brothership Nintendo Switch code for review purposes.