Mario & Luigi: Brothership – a wonderful role-playing game that requires plenty of patience

Fans of Mario role-playing games are being spoiled by Nintendo right now. Following the remakes of SNES classic Super Mario RPG and Gamecube insider tip Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door, Mario & Luigi: Brothership is a brand new RPG featuring the famous plumber brothers.

The game impresses with beautiful graphics, an exciting combat system and the usual quirky Mario RPG humour. Note, you’ll have to be patient until the game gets going.

The story – slowly getting better

Mario and Luigi have to save the world – again. This time, however, it’s not the Mushroom Kingdom, but a foreign land called Concordia. Interestingly, its inhabitants look like walking plug sockets. The former continent has broken apart due to an evil sorcerer’s plan. Where once there was a huge land mass, individual islands now drift aimlessly through the sea.

Our two moustachioed brothers are tasked with rebuilding the isolated islands using magical powers. The story seems very simple, almost trivial at the start. With a little patience and time, however, it develops into a heart-warming allegory about the importance of interpersonal relationships.

While Mario and Luigi want to reconnect the islands, they also help the inhabitants reconnect with family, friends and loved ones. The last third of the game in particular is one of the best storylines I’ve experienced in a Mario role-playing game.

Exploring the vast ocean

To find and connect the many floating islands, Mario and Luigi chug around on Shipshape Island – half island, half ship. Its magic tree helps me connect all the islands I’ve found. I use the world map to navigate predefined ocean currents and keep an eye out for new islands. If I spot one, I shoot myself onto the island with a cannon to explore it.

A lighthouse waits for me on each of the larger islands. I activate them to connect the island with the magic tree on Shipshape Island. To get to the lighthouses, I have to complete quests, fight through dungeons or solve puzzles, depending on the island. Once I have connected an island, I can visit it again at any time using fast travel.

The range of islands I can discover is huge. I explore beautiful jungle areas on Twistee Island, burn myself in lava lakes on Skorcheen Island or visit a metropolis on Lottacoins Island. Apart from the wonderfully dumb names, the islands also impress with their visual splendour.

The environments are colourful, full of detail and offer an astonishingly high level of visibility. It’s also nice to see how Shipshape Island fills with life and blossoms over time. The initially desolate ship becomes home to numerous unique characters who go on adventures with me.

Both the brothers’ animations as they explore are also extremely well done, underlining the quirky humour that runs through the game’s story. In short, Mario & Luigi: Brothership is one of the best Switch games ever. Even the occasional lag spike can’t spoil the harmonious overall impression.

At this point, I also have to praise the game’s soundtrack – it’s one of the best I’ve heard in a release this year. It was written by Hideki Sakamoto, who previously composed for Super Smash Bros. Ultimate, among others.

Each island has its own title track, tailored to the particular characteristics of the region. Those cheerful melodies have been burned into my brain forever – especially the absolute masterpiece on Twistee Island. In the video below, you can hear the track from minute 0:14.

Back and forth, back and forth, back and forth

I find it intriguing when my island ship sails through the sea in real time while I’m playing. If my crew spots a new island while I’m on another one, I’ll be notified. Immediately I travel back to the ship so as not to miss this newly discovered land mass. This lends a certain urgency to my nautical exploration.

This backtracking is fun at first, but gets on your nerves after a while. The constant fast travelling and lengthy loading times keep taking me out of the action. An ordeal for impatient gamers like me.

The side missions in particular suffer from these technical limitations. Most of them are written well, but consist of boring fetch quests with a lot of backtracking. They often only offer lame rewards that aren’t worth the effort and loading times when travelling.

Fortunately, the main missions are less excessive with the backtracking and offer more exciting tasks. Some main missions even present me with important decisions that have an impact on the story – a first for the game series.

Overall, however, I’d have liked a little less quantity and more quality here too. With around 45 hours of gameplay, the game feels too big and at times too spread out. It should be noted that only around half of all available missions and activities are included in this playing time.

Together, we’re strong

When exploring the islands, I control Mario and Luigi at the same time. As we know from previous games, the siblings repeatedly use «Bros. Attacks» to solve puzzles and overcome obstacles. In Brothership, the two plumbers can transform themselves into a hovering UFO, which they use to overcome gorges, or into a rolling ball, which they can use to enter small openings. Wonderfully bizarre.

The brothers also work together in battle. As in previous entries, this is turn-based with a dash of real time. I attack enemies either with a jump or with my hammer. I control Mario and Luigi using different buttons – with a well-timed button press, I can increase damage dealt or reduce damage taken.

I can cause extra damage with «Bros. Attacks», also known from previous entries. To trigger these devastating attacks, I have to engage in some pretty challenging quick-time events. It’s fun, even if I sometimes wish I could skip the rather long cutscenes for these special attacks.

Role-play Light

Overall, Mario & Luigi: Brothership is a simple role-playing game – very much in the tradition of its predecessors. I don’t have to worry much about any statistics or attributes of either brother.

The game attaches great importance to me spending as little time as possible on preparation and menus. Don’t think too much, just do it – that’s the credo. It’s a role-playing game for anyone who finds the complexity of other genre-related titles with all their multilayered statistics and special abilities too much of a good thing.

At the start of the adventure, this simplicity almost becomes the game’s undoing. It takes a while for the combat system to become exciting and challenging. The game lets me fight for too long using boring attacks against even more boring enemies. The fact that both before and after an encounter I have to suffer through far too long loading times also frustrates me.

But my patience is rewarded with an excellent second half, which convinces with damn cool boss fights, exciting combat situations and a completely new gameplay mechanic.

Plugs

New to the combat system of Mario & Luigi: Brothership are the so-called Battle Plugs, which I only unlock relatively late. I equip up to five of these consumable bonuses before a battle. They give me various offensive or defensive advantages and can also be combined.

Some plugs are powerful and turn the course of a battle completely. Want an example? With Kaboom Attack, all enemies nearby the attacked monster also take damage. With Surprise Iron Ball, tons of bullets also fall on the head of attacked enemies. If I combine both, these bullets fall on the heads of all enemies nearby the attacked monster. Awesome.

The new bonuses are also fun on the defensive side. With Auto Mushroom, Mario and Luigi automatically consume a mushroom when their HP is running low. Damage Shield automatically protects me from three enemy attacks and Back-Atcha Attack gives me an extra counterattack when I’m hit.

Despite the variety provided by plugs, it doesn’t make the role-playing game unnecessarily complex. It’s less about putting together a strategy that’s as efficient as possible and more about experimenting with the bonuses and having fun.

The game even forces me to test new combinations again and again. This is because battle plugs discharge after a certain number of uses and can only be passively recharged by completing combat rounds. Overall, battle plugs are a great idea that I’d like to see in future Mario role-playing games.

Mario & Luigi: Brothership is available from 7 November. The game was provided to me by Nintendo for testing purposes.