Mario & Luigi: Brothership Review – Far-Flung Island Fun

Mario & Luigi: Brothership Review

I love RPGs to death, but my experience with Mario RPGs is more mixed. They tend to get bogged down with frustrating mechanics and plodding stories that interrupt the rhythm of play. Mario & Luigi: Brothership suffers from its own momentum issues (the loading???), but the mechanics are mostly solid. Combat feels great, traversal is interesting, and the level design is pretty unusual. I wish the puzzles were less frustrating and the boss fights less predictable, but I still had fun with this game.

Puzzle design in Brothership is something of a mixed bag. Some puzzles involve tons of backtracking, some are clever, and some are deeply frustrating. Also, there’s more math than I was expecting. Maybe I’m just becoming more impatient, but I felt like the puzzle sections interrupted my momentum. At least, the ones that leaned on backtracking did. Making me do laps around a building’s interior doesn’t make things more challenging, just more annoying. On a relative scale, I’m pretty confident that the puzzles are the hardest part of the game. I’m less confident that this challenge is fun, fair, or engaging. To be fair, not all the puzzles make me feel this way. But enough of them were frustrating enough for me to dread their arrival.

Puzzles Are A Pain

I mentioned the loading screens in my preview. I’m sorry to report that they continued to be a hindrance throughout my playthrough. Just a fat wad of loading screens around every corner, waiting to mess up my day. And it’s not like they’re long load times, either. It’s just that they add up pretty quickly. Hanging out for an extra six seconds isn’t a big deal at first. But having to do so every time I finish a cutscene, leave a building, or get into battle is downright egregious. I eventually got used to the battle load screens, but the transitional ones continued to bother me.

The color schemes chosen for this game really pop. In particular, there’s this gradient on Luigi’s hat that feels super refreshing. It goes from Blue to green with a seamless wave that feels like high-quality dessert. I just want to lick his hat like an ice cream cone. Mario’s hat does the same thing, but it feels slightly more subtle. The rest of the colors are intense, lush, and downright lovely. Even the enemies have a wonderful palette that rewards closer inspection. Though the animation is smooth and expressive, it’s the color scheme that really brings Brothership to life.

Colors That Really Pop

Battles are won or lost based on your timed dodge and attack skills. Fans of the series know that this is nothing new, but even so! It’s a great way to ensure that battles never get too old. Fights are repetitive but still enjoyable. Needing to execute the timed dodges and strikes ensures that your focus never wavers. I could nail those moves over and over again all day long. I was less enamored with the boss battles. They feel cool at first, but the Luigi Logic sections show up so regularly that it becomes routine. You’re just killing time and staying alive until that all-important Luigi Logic prompt is triggered. At least the fights don’t drag on for too long, which I appreciate.

While the well-timed strikes and dodges feel great, traversal is kind of floaty and ineffectual. Traversal skills feel as slow as the transitions, like a loading screen you’re in control of. Your jumps are limited, which I understand. Certain areas are gated off by jump height, after all. But any version of Mario without proper jumping powers will always feel a bit restrained and sluggish. Maybe Nintendo’s first-party dev team are the only ones who’ve mastered Mario’s movement?

Although the premise of Brothership is fascinating enough, the actual story is a little dull. ‘Drifting islands held together by energy tethers’ is such a slam-dunk of a story prompt, you know? And yet the execution couldn’t hold my focus. The bulk of your time is spent on the usual MacGuffin-style busywork. The game’s villains show up, yell at you for a while, and leave for the first several encounters. I don’t normally concern myself with narrative in games like this. Clearly my gaze is meant to be drawn to more mechanical concerns. But I liked the conceit enough that I started wanting more out of the plot, which I never really got. Thankfully the mechanical bits in question are more compelling.

Mostly Island-Hopping

If you’ve played the other games, there’s a handful of returning characters peppered throughout this title. It’s a minor detail, but one that makes Brothership feel more complete. You’ve also got a lot of little systems to dig into and master, though none of them are terribly deep. On the other hand, it’s nice to have something to try if you ever get stuck. Buying equipment, building battle plugs, finishing side quests, grinding levels. There’s even a fishing minigame, albeit a simple one. You’re consistently rewarded when you slow down and take on the extra content.

This game suffers when subjected to a reviewer’s brutal pacing. Maybe if I hadn’t been racing towards the finish line, the endless tiny loading screens wouldn’t have bothered me as much. I was also forced to discard a lot of the side content. It’s not super compelling stuff, but the act of completing it can be pretty relaxing. Searching for Sprite Bulbs scratches that completionist itch in a big way. Plus, the game is beautiful and the battles are a lot of fun. I still wish the puzzles weren’t so frustrating for me. But again, they benefit from more patience than I could spare. My momentum while playing felt wobbly and uneven, but this is still a well-crafted game. Perhaps your time (if you can offer more of it than me) will be well-spent playing Mario & Luigi: Brothership.

***A Nintendo Switch code was provided by the publisher***