4/5 ★ – TNGLiam's review of Mario & Luigi: Brothership.

Platform: Switch Time Played: 52 hours Status: Beaten Mario & Luigi: Brothership is one of my dream games. Like a game that I would pray each and every year to finally be announced or come out, just like The Thousand-Year Door and Super Mario RPG remakes before it. This last year of Mario RPGs has been legendary, never have I been eating so much when it comes to a gaming franchise that I love dearly. Literally every six months for the past year I’ve had a new, dream Mario RPG to just sit down and love with all of my heart. While The Thousand-Year Door is definitely my favorite Mario RPG of all time, the Mario & Luigi series is one that I find myself having a lot more love for than the Paper Mario series as a whole. While Super Mario RPG making a return was a crackpipe dream that somehow felt possible until it actually did, and the Paper Mario series going back to its roots seeming like an inevitability that just took its sweet time, Mario & Luigi truly felt dead in the water to me once AlphaDream went under in 2019. Of course over the years some hope did slowly come back to me. Sure they were the ones in charge of crafting this unique series of games that seamlessly flowed from one to another, until Paper Jam swallowed the brand synergy pill of course. And nine years after Paper Jam, we finally have the next full installment in the series, outside of the two 3DS remakes released during the Switch’s early years. Taking place in another world, Concordia, Mario & Luigi: Brothership continues the series’ trend of introducing new and original types of people, locales, cultures, and freshness to the Mario universe through the people of Concordia, whose faces are all shaped like outlets, with a lot of other creatures throughout the game also resembling electrical appliances, although not nearly as much as the people of Concordia and their names. While Connie is my absolute favorite of the new cast of characters (she’s just so darn cute and sweet), Snoutlet, IDLE, Buddy, and Arc (who I wished had a lot more significance, it kind of feels like they threw him to the wayside) are such fantastic additions to the cast, and I loved seeing them play their own parts in the overarching narrative. I didn’t care for other characters like Technikki, Dyode, Willma, Billdit, Maykit, Bernadette, Chilliam, and Adaphne as much as the aforementioned ones, but I did really appreciate just how big the cast of side characters grew, especially with Peach and Starlow coming into the mix eventually. While the Extension Corps consisting of the buffoons Ecks, Ten, and Shun are nothing but your typical trio of dumb lackies with one being “the skinny one,” one being “the small one,” and one being “the big one,” with them just impeding your journey’s progress, Zokket genuinely proved to be one of the best villains out of the Mario & Luigi series in my eyes, nowhere near as memorable as Fawful specifically in Bowser’s Inside Story mind you, instead reaching the heights of Cackletta and Princess Shroob, definitely surpassing Antasma, but Zokket was just such an intimidating villain in my eyes, and you just don’t see original villains like that in Mario games that often. The last I could think of is Fury Bowser, and he just LOOKS intimidating whereas Zokket is a genuine looming threat throughout the game’s narrative. Like at one point bro just pops up out of nowhere on Shipshape Island (the game’s hub) just to do some personal recon on Mario and Luigi to see if they would prove troublesome, doing fucking calculations and shit on how much time he had left to scout them out, all while not really giving a fuck. Zokket is cool as fuck, and truthfully I wish that Zokket stayed as the main villain for the entirety of the story. It took so long for Zokket to finally be a main player in the narrative, and while sure, that demonic egg that he kept fawning over was a looming threat fairly early on, and the twist that Zokket was actually Cozette while very easy to see coming was a welcome one nonetheless, I feel like having Zokket and Reclusa work together similar to how the Dark Star and Fawful were both active antagonists at the end of Bowser’s Inside Story would’ve been a lot better overall, as you’ve spent the entire campaign building up Zokket just to cast him aside for Reculsa, who has to start from scratch when it comes to leaving an strong impression upon the player. Don’t get me wrong though, Reclusa is an awesome villain, especially for the Mario universe. The overall theme of monitors and cords and shit was really cool, and felt super reminiscent of Mega Flowey from Undertale, and the Doom Flowers he spits out to put people into their own dream world was also very similar to the Infinite Tsukuyomi from Naruto. That long ass dream sequence in Peach’s Castle courtyard during the endgame was fucking awesome, like when do you ever get the chance to hear an official rendition of the Peach’s Castle theme but instead played as a horror track? Anyway, I really do think that given the limited time between Reclusa’s introduction and the game’s ending in comparison to the game’s girthy runtime that they actually did a really good job at upping the stakes with Reclusa, having literally every single location in the game changed to be filled with these creepy ass flowers causing civilians all over Concordia to be put into perpetual sleep, with this red eerie glow and purple aura added everywhere. Just really cool. My only critique with this is that because there is no post game, once Reclusa takes over, you’re literally never able to go back to normal. Sure things do during the ending where you’re saying goodbye to everyone you met along the way, but you can’t leave Shipshape then. Anywho, that final boss against Reclusa? Literally best final boss in the series besides of course Dark Bowser and Dark Star Core which could never be topped, so this even being CLOSE to that is awesome. The flying segment was fantastic, the music played in the background was the best that the game had to offer, and the battle itself was just really cool. The combat and game’s structure in general is very similar to that of Dream Team, with this game almost feeling like a direct sequel to it, ignoring Paper Jam because I mean what the fuck did that add to the series? This game changes up the traditional combat by having literally every move be a cooperative attack between Mario and Luigi, not just their Bro Moves but also their jump and hammer attacks, with the bros helping each other deal an absolute wallop of an attack on the enemy of your choice. A good half of the Bros Attacks in this game return from the likes of Bowser’s Inside Story and Dream Team (rip Partners in Time and Paper Jam I guess), but the ones that do return great. You’ve got the returning Shell attacks from Dream Team with Mario’s being improved significantly as it feels a lot more like a single-enemy oriented attack instead of feeling identical to Luigi’s like it did in Dream Team. You’ve also got Bomb Derby back from Dream Team and Paper Jam; and the Jump Helmet and Yoo Who Cannon from Bowser’s Inside Story. The Jump Helmet’s been changed to have a different camera angle which works just as well as before, and Yoo Who Cannon is basically the exact same but with an awesome finisher at the end. The new Bros. Attacks introduced here are also awesome. Mario’s Hatch Me If You Can is tricky to get right when you first get it, but slamming that egg down with Yoshi leaping out for a huge ass ground pound is really cool, and a great utilization of Yoshi in general. Luigi’s Zapperator is a really cool one where you’ve just got to alternate between button presses, charging up the storm cloud and pressing the button on it before the timer fully goes out so you don’t fail the attack, definitely a move I relied on frequently. Clockout Blow is probably the coolest looking Bros. Move in the entire series on a purely visual level, you zip around as Mario and Luigi, slamming enemies with your hammer at lightning speed, only to fling one up the air, do a crazy combo on them, and then blast them back down to the ground. Truly fucking awesome. Max-Mix Vortex is maybe my least favorite of the new ones, sure it takes a fair amount of skill (at least in my eyes) to properly time getting an even amount of Fire and Ice balls in the circle, and the tornado looks awesome, but it’s really only good for crowd control, and even then there are quicker moves that get the job done sooner with the same damage output in my eyes. Now Conductor Connector, that shit is awesome. Connecting wires of pure electrical power on a solar system level, and sending that large laser straight at one enemy is fucking awesome. Like these fuckers could DEFINITELY take on Sephiroth. In general, the Bros. Moves in this game are absolutely phenomenal. Maybe not as quick and snappy as Bowser’s Inside Story or Paper Jam (at times), but Brothership just isn’t as snappy as those games, and that’s okay. It never feels overly slow and tedious to fight enemies, it feels just right. Not perfect, but just right. Actually, the special attacks Luigi thinks up of during certain bosses are actually pretty fun. Not all of them are the best or anything, especially the very first one as the timing on that is really off, even during the rematch later in the game. One thing that I didn’t particularly like about these though was how it basically felt mandatory to do them if you wanted to defeat the boss in a certain amount of time, otherwise things would take way too long, but that’s just a nitpick I suppose. The Battle Plugs act as a fantastic evolution of the Badge mechanics from Inside Story and Dream Team, paired with the Card system from Paper Jam. Attaching certain plugs to the amount of sockets that you have at that point in the game works flawlessly, especially when just fighting regular enemies, as most Battle Plugs only apply to Jump and Hammer attacks from my experience. Either way, the Battle Plugs really enhanced my enjoyment of the combat for me. I really like picking just what I needed for any given battle, and thus dishing out a shit ton of critical damage on multiple enemies at once. There definitely were a couple of neat plugs that I never managed to get my hands on, but still, this was an awesome mechanic and I really hope that something similar is done in the next installment, whenever that may come out. One thing that I can’t really tell if I liked or disliked was the traversal through the game’s world. Because Zokket has split up the continent of Concordia, there are tons of islands littered across the sea that Mario and Luigi have to reconnect to Shipshape Island, more specifically to the Unitree, to regain its Connectar, so instead of being set up like past games where there’s either a big connected world, or you’re able to access certain parts of the world as you progress, here you sail between islands, kind of separated like their own self-contained chapters, sometimes you’re even given the choice of going to two islands and whichever you pick first is up to you. What I didn’t particularly like about this is that not all islands feel equal in their scope, importance, and overall entertainment. I mean that’s the case in every game, but there’s typically no boss at the end of each one, and sure sometimes that’s not all that bad, but the lack of bosses in this game was certainly felt by me. I my favorite of the games locations were Raynforst Island, Florall Island, Allsand Island, Bulbfish Island (for the really unique main quest), Offandon Island (for the super sweet friendship between Buddy and Bowser Jr.), and Jellyfish Island for just being one huge club. Each location does feel distinct but nothing really stands out, and it doesn’t help that Heatfreeze Island, Slippenglide Island, and Skorcheen Island reuse a lot of their assets between each other and you backtrack through them fairly frequently. I did find Bowser’s Castle on Wayaway Island to feel really repetitive. It took me nearly three hours to crawl through that dungeon and around the halfway point I was already tired of the Mario 3 Castle theme playing over and over again. The Great Lighthouses at the end of each part of the ocean were honestly not the greatest notes to end off each main portion of the game for me. They typically just ended up feeling really samey and not the most thrilling or enthralling sections. I did enjoy Fortress Zokket and Soli-Tree though, although it was absolutely insane how long it took to get through the ladder, a five-hour final dungeon is ridiculous for Mario RPGs. I just wasn’t expecting it to be soooo long to get through that middle section with the elemental orbs and the different rooms to get to each plug to unlock the next area. Anywho, what I actually disliked about world traversal here was how Shipshape moves across the map. Sure later in the game you can speed up the ship which makes things a lot easier, and near the end you can even just jump straight to exactly where you want to go, but that slow slog of waiting to get to the islands you want to go to was brutal, especially when you had to do a side quest at one of the Great Lighthouses, as even with the faster speed those took forever to get to. The soundtrack is something else I want to discuss. For every entry prior to this, including the remakes, Yoko Shimomura composed the soundtracks in the series, except for some of the recompositions in the remakes. Unlike Super Mario RPG’s remake, Brothership did not bring back Yoko Shimomura, but instead brought on Hideki Sakamoto who had previously worked on Lifelight from Smash Ultimate along with some of the Yakuza and Pokémon Mystery Dungeon games. This game’s soundtrack is fairly distinct compared to those of the previous games due to the difference in composer, feeling a lot more “jazzy” in comparison? Although I’m not jazz expert so please don’t crucify me if that’s not a good way to put it. Still, this game’s soundtrack feels a lot more in line with those from the more modern Paper Mario entries, and that overall led me to have similar opinions on this game’s soundtrack as I do with Paper Jam, in that there just isn’t a hefty amount of songs to sink your teeth into or to get stuck in your head forever like the first three games and some in Dream Team, although Brothership’s soundtrack is definitely better than Paper Jam’s overall, don’t get me wrong. I didn’t particularly care about many of the side quests in this game, although I’m not one to care about side quests in games in general. Although I will say that I did like the special, limited-time side quests that tied into the main story and helped expand upon some of the game’s side characters. Like the one with Peach and IDLE helping Dorrie, Starlow visiting Bowser, with Bowser once again calling him Chippy, a nice return of their dynamic from Bowser’s Inside Story; and even Cozette’s brief side quest where you see her sorrow for what she did while brainwashed as Zokket. All of those though were pretty nice and a great overall addition. A big topic when discussing this game is if its bloated or not, and honestly I think it is. Dream Team felt bloated as well, and while Brothership is a lot more bloated, it doesn’t affect the game overall as much as its predecessor. It took me 52 hours to beat this game, but that includes doing a vast majority of the side quests and side content. Dream Team took around the same amount of time to 100% complete, although its story felt a lot briefer than Brothership’s. It just feels like this game could’ve easily been 35 hours long instead, with the amount of times you have to revisit islands, or the amount of roadblocks placed in your way that could easily be avoided. Like the giant wall in front of the second Great Lighthouse, I’m pretty sure someone mentions just shooting Mario and Luigi out of the cannon so they fly over it, but then the idea is brushed past in favor of finding a way to blast the wall down? Why? So you have a reason to go to four more islands before going there. Things like that. Or having to run around right before the final area to collect people’s physical bonds, sure it ties back into the game’s overall theme of the importance of bonds and how they essentially hold our world and lives together, but I’m sure it didn’t have to be an hour-long main quest to break up the pace of the endgame. Anywho, Mario & Luigi: Brothership is a great Mario RPG, all of my nagging is really only because so many of the RPGs from the Mario franchise are masterpieces, and this game could’ve tweaked a lot of things to reach that status, so while its not the greatest Mario RPG on Switch, it definitely is a great return to form for the Mario & Luigi series, and therefore I can only hope that what’s to come from this series will only improve upon what is already here in order to make something even greater.