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

Is this the best Mario & Luigi title? No. Is it the WORST Mario & Luigi title? Also no. Is it better than the previous titles from recent years? I would say so. Where exactly does it rank amongst the other titles? Honestly, this is a conundrum I have been struggling with since about the halfway point of the game. It's been rivaling with Superstar Saga, which I consider to be the second best game of the series, but not as good as Bowser's Inside Story (which is now a high standard to meet and I can see people liking this more), albeit, it's still just as, if not more ambitious than Bowser's Inside Story, which is something to appreciate in of itself. While this isn't the BEST title, I will say it absolutely has the best story of any of the others. Sure, there are points where it is dialogue heavy and it may make you wanna skip through just to be playing the game again. Sure, it may be a bit "hand-held" through the first few hours. But man, I would be lying if I said most of the game wasn't a ton of fun. My biggest complaint with it though is that there are very few times where it allows you to make a decision under the guise of the story changing depending on what you choose, but it's really Telltale level decision making prompts because it doesn't matter what you choose when they ultimately still amount to the same outcome either way. This is not only one of the longest games I've ever played, but by FAR the longest Mario game that there is; however cracking at 10 GB that shouldn't really be the biggest surprise. There is SO MUCH that the game can give you to do. Even without the side quests (which I still recommend doing most of) this will probably still be the longest Mario game you'll ever play and it doesn't suffer at all from that length. The battle system is as clear-cut as ever. Though there's not much to say about it overall apart from just the basic new Bros. Moves, what really changes the game is the Plug mechanic. From a first impression, they won't really seem like they contribute much, but as you progress further into the game, you'll find/craft more of them that do different things by themselves and more when they're used alongside others (some of these in particular are a REAL life saver when you need them), but they only have a certain number of usages and they all vary with each plug. When they run out of charges, you let them recharge for a period of time while optionally swapping them out for different plugs. Conceptually it seems convoluted, but it's VERY easy to get used to and strategize with once you use it more. Easily the most collaborative battle system in the series as well and I really like it! I believe the biggest aspect of the game that will raise a lot of eyebrows at first is the absence of Yoko Shimomura, who previously composed the soundtracks for every Mario & Luigi game that came before, along with RPG. Just from listening to a couple tracks from the game, it becomes very apparent, however this is not at all a bad thing, as Hideki Sakamoto still does, in my opinion, a fantastic job! There's so many tracks in this that I know I'll be going back on YouTube and revisiting in the future. This is also what I would be consider to be Kevin Afghani's (the new voice of Mario and Luigi) shining example of what he can really contribute. It seems as though he's MAJORLY improved in such a short amount of time and it shows so much that his and Martinet's contributions are starting to merge smoothly together. The fact that we live in a time where we still get new Mario RPG games and I'm old enough to be able to appreciate them to their fullest extents is a miracle. I don't know that this game is going to be for all fans of the traditional Mario & Luigi games, but I personally really liked it and enjoyed my time thoroughly! Although if you say it's worse than Paper Jam, I will tell you that you're out of your goddamn mind. This is a real time commitment, so whenever you have that and the energy, check out this very solid entry to the series! (Fuck you IGN!)