Mario & Luigi: Brothership, what to do about you?
I love Mario RPGs. I was elated to close out 2023 with a remake of one of my most-replayed games in Super Mario RPG, finally got to play the classic Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door with its Switch release, and have a fondness for early Mario & Luigi titles. To say people like me have eaten well lately is an understatement, but the exciting prospect of a brand-new Mario RPG after multiple welcome retreads can’t be overstated.
That goodwill can get a game a long way with the right crowd (so, me). Because I so wanted to love Mario & Luigi: Brothership, I pushed through the game’s opening hours devoid of core mechanics or any plot direction whatsoever. My patience continued for another dozen or so hours as the villains and more nuanced battle options became fleshed out, especially as executing those became necessary for downing more challenging enemies.
Another dozen hours passed, and then another. My sense of entertainment slowly gave way to frustration as I waded through the muck of story padding and everything overstayed its welcome. Finally, an end-game backtracking quest broke me so I lost my tolerance with Brothership so much that I had to put the game down for a handful of days.
Bloat is a real problem for Brothership. While I respect the team’s ambition for attempting a pseudo-open-ended structure where you explore a diverse array of lovingly crafted islands, requiring regular backtracking to said islands obfuscated the plot, stripping those locales of that initial charm. I don’t use “lost plot” as a turn of phrase, either; nearly every beat is drawn out to the point of losing impact, with way too much time spent on simple side stories and one-note characters.
There’s a good story to mine out of this game, and the right narrative designer could’ve trimmed the fat down to a brisk 20-hour island-hopping adventure. The theme of the bonds people share—underscored by a race of electrical outlet humanoids (they can literally plug together… a blunt but effective instrument here)—makes perfect sense for a series all about familial protagonists working together to overcome odds. There’s also a true grandeur here beyond what you’d expect out of the Mario series, with mid-to-late game cutscenes that could’ve packed a real punch if paced correctly. They had all the pieces for something special but not the know-how to utilize them effectively. The true shame of Brothership is the bloat resulting in a feeling of disconnect from these beats.
If you’re fully exploring islands and pursuing side quests, the game can easily take upwards of 50 hours to complete. Putting the story aside, the simple Mario RPG formula doesn’t hold up for that length of time. Mario and Luigi have two normal attacks (jump and hammer) that require the same basic button combinations every time and a combined total of ten cinematic “Bros. Moves” that require playing small minigames to rack up big damage. These tire out with mass repetition, and you don’t get two of the most interesting ones until the game is near its conclusion. To use the word again, all of this is tedious busywork without much redeeming value beyond an initial impact.
Granted, everything built around these combat mechanics does spice up the proceedings. There’s a ton of enemy variety, both visually and in their unique attack patterns that the bros can counter. Learning the precise timing to deflect attacks keeps you on your toes at all times, especially in the late game where failure to do so can be lethal. You also have a wide variety of weapons and accessories to choose from, letting you shake up your approach to your liking (at least as much as a two-person party allows). To this same end, you can choose from a handful of bonuses at a few level-up thresholds. These alter the duo’s stats and abilities, though given how Mario and Luigi come pre-statted for distinct roles, there are clear “correct” options that undercut a true sense of choice.
Lastly, there’s the game’s signature plug mechanic. Plugs are combat modifiers, adding elemental or area-of-effect properties to attacks, amplifying Bros. Moves, increasing the usefulness of items, and so forth. These are essential to success in the late game, meaning you need to micro-manage your active plugs for each given battle. This is tedious in its own right, though watching their inherent synergies play out can be satisfying. There is a slight catch: you need to fully explore islands—including backtracking to them after first completion—if you want to collect the currency used to craft plugs. The fun of plugs is their mass variety, so if you choose not to prolong the game’s already overstuffed runtime, you (unfortunately) miss out on fully experiencing what sets it apart from its Mario RPG peers combat-wise.
There’s actually one more issue with battles to note, though it has nothing to do with game mechanics: Brothership’s performance is shockingly bad, with framerate dips and stutter throwing off inputs. While the performance issues are the least problematic in battles, they do rear their heads enough to be notable. Adding salt to this wound, every encounter has a loading screen that takes around four to five seconds to enter and exit the battle screen. It goes without saying how grating this becomes, making engaging in battles feel like a punishment. The developers should’ve made any cuts necessary to reduce this to nearly nothing, as such an issue has been the death knell of better RPGs (think the PlayStation port of Chrono Trigger).
Brothership is a 30-FPS game, which wouldn’t be an inherent problem if the game could maintain that framerate, which it can’t. This is most prevalent when piloting the bros around islands and the titular hub, which feels bad to control and messes with light platforming sections. At worst, some tasks can become a complete chore, including a volleyball minigame that feels near impossible given frequent stuttering right before carefully timed, rhythmic inputs. Some areas—especially in the game’s final hours—even see framerate drops into the single digits for sustained periods of time. While the Switch is old hardware, this level of performance is still not acceptable, and frankly, it’s surprising Nintendo released the game in this state.
The only thing that helped distract me from these performance issues was the game’s drop-dead gorgeous visuals that successfully translate the Mario & Luigi art style into 3D. It feels like you’re playing the game’s box art, with expressive squash-and-stretch animation that sells this ultra-cartoonish twist on Mario. The image is soft due to its low resolution—something I’d be a little kinder about if it was a tradeoff for good performance—but even then, it’s a visual treat. There’s also ample variety in the different locales, helping disguise how they follow a largely similar level design rubric. Oh, and Mario and Luigi’s new companion, Snoutlet, is a real charmer, alongside a related late-game counterpart I won’t spoil.
On the topic of characters, we need to talk about Luigi, who gets special attention in this adventure thanks to his “Luigi Logic” ability. This manifests in so many forms that it’s hard to nail down exactly what to classify it as: sometimes, it’s a simple story crutch where Luigi figures out how to solve a problem in a cutscene; other times, Luigi spells out the solutions to the simplest of puzzles which feels massively unrewarding. There are also opportunities to direct him to autonomously smash crates and pick up collectibles, during boss battles, and he has a few chances to pull off a powerful movie via a minigame. All of this is branded under the Luigi Logic term. While the gameplay results are a a mixed bag, ultimately it’s nice to see Luigi take on an uncharacteristic leadership role (albeit in the most Luigi way possible).
I also need to praise the soundtrack. Music is the highlight of many Mario RPGs, and this is no exception, with peppy tracks that mine big band for all its worth. Every island has its own theme (some have multiple) and it’s rare that any didn’t hit for me. The major caveat is the ominous music that plays during the end game backtracking quest, its dourness overriding all the other great tunes that make return trips to islands just a tad more palatable. It’s akin to the purple sky of Final Fantasy XVI: you get why the team needed to make the aesthetic choice, but that doesn’t mean it’s conducive to fun. I’d also be remiss not to note that while the sound effects are pretty satisfying, they stack on top of each other, which makes moments like damaging or killing multiple enemies at once extremely loud and abrasive. All these criticisms aside though, fans of other Mario RPG soundtracks are going to eat well with Brothership, though if that’s all you’re looking for you’re better off listening to it on its own.
In fact, that’s my general takeaway here. Mario & Luigi: Brothership has you covered if—and only if—Mario RPG mechanics are your favorite thing and you want the largest mass of them yet. If they aren’t, you’re probably going to struggle to get over the initial five-hour hump before the game truly begins. While I didn’t outright hate most of my time with the game, would I have even seen it through to its conclusion if I weren’t reviewing it, even as a fan of Mario RPGs who wants to see Nintendo make more? Possibly not.
Perhaps the best thing to do about Mario & Luigi: Brothership is to hope Nintendo realizes the missteps here and has the resolve to try their hand at the franchise once more instead of abandoning it again.
