Mario & Luigi Brothership - A grand style return
The Super Mario series has always distinguished itself for being top tier offering in terms of platforming adventures, whether in two or three dimensions. You can always count on Mario to deliver a quality adventure even with their more mediocre titles.
But did you know the series also had a strong presence in the RPG sphere?
The first effort was made back in 1996 with Super Mario RPG Legend of the Seven Stars for the Super Nintendo, developed by a golden era Squaresoft, fresh off masterpieces like Final Fantasy VI and Chrono Trigger. In 2000, Intelligent Systems, famous for the Fire Emblem series, took it upon themselves to continue the series with Paper Mario on the Nintendo 64, while on the handheld market it would be AlphaDream’s turn to leave their mark in 2003 with Mario & Luigi Superstar Saga on the Game Boy Advance.
Every developer brought their own unique spin in terms of aesthetic, mechanics and humor, creating stories that, while still remaining in the confines of the Mario series, managed to really expand the world and settings, creating new unique experiences that broke away from the limitations of the platform games. Those are simple but very effective games, perfect for the newbies that wanna get their feet wet, that still offer a lot of fun and value for the veterans. If you’re passionate about the genre but never delved into the world of Super Mario RPGs, I really think you’re doing yourself a huge disservice.
Unfortunately, being a good game doesn’t always mean financial success, and thus in 2018 AlphaDream went bankrupt. The main representative of the Mario & Luigi series was no more and with the Paper Mario series, always venturing further from their RPG roots, it really felt like there was no future for this genre.
Fortunately in 2023, Nintendo brought back this genre with a vengeance! Super Mario RPG received a full blown remake on Nintendo Switch, a year later Paper Mario and the Thousand Year Door received an excellent remaster and still in the same year we got the return of the Mario & Luigi series with Brothership.
Mario was back in the genre fiercer than ever, but this was also the very first time that the Mario & Luigi series wasn’t handled by AlphaDream, so how did the new developers stand to the task? Did they manage to keep the typical tone of the series? Did they make some new and drastic changes? Let’s find out together!
Mario & Luigi Brothership
About the Plot
The story begins with Mario, Luigi, Peach and Bowser getting transposed by a mysterious force into the world of Concordia. Concordia was a world composed of many islands held together by the Uni-Tree, but unfortunately the latter ended up destroyed in a cataclysm and since then the islands are scattered in the vast ocean at the mercy of the water currents. To make things worse even Cozette, the guardian of the Uni-Tree, has disappeared, and thus it all falls on the hands of her apprentice, Connie, to create a new Uni-Tree and bring Concordia back together.
Mario and Luigi meet Connie shortly after their arrival in Corcordia. Connie has a plan: on the Shipshape island there’s a sprout of a new Uni-tree, and in order to make it grow they need to find all the islands, connect them to Shipshape and then reach the center of the continent. Mario and Luigi decide then to help her bring Concordia back to its natural state.
In the way of our heroes stands Zokket and their Zok Troops. For them the destruction of the Uni-Tree was just the beginning. They'll make sure Concordia will stay divided by shredding every bond, not just physical but also emotional between all the inhabitants, thanks to their weapon: Glohm.
As you might already guess by the naming conventions, this story has a very tongue and cheek tone and rarely takes itself too seriously. Mario and Luigi will travel across the various islands in the archipelago with each island having its own little ministry: for example saving a clan of sculptors work by the wrath of jealous beast, help a disco dancer find faith in himself again or help a couple of Ice and Fire make peace between their clans so that they can join in marriage.
This series excels with the characters and their very exaggerated and funny interactions, and this game is no different. During our adventure we’ll meet various colorful characters, some of them are going to join us for the full duration of our adventure, and of course both Bowser and Peach will have their role to play as well.
Peach in the RPGs isn’t usually the kidnapped princess and in this game she’ll be the leader of a group of wanna be adventurers called… I.D.L.E. Don’t laugh, they’re very proud of that name! Meanwhile Bowser, finding himself in a brand new land ready to conquer, is gonna be in the frontline against Zokket’s army.
The main theme of the story is the creation of connections between various people, whether they be bonds of friendship, family or even some healthy rivalries. The Glohm affects people like some kind of disease, encouraging them into isolation, rejecting affection and embracing loneliness. One of the moments I found to be most impactful in this story is close to the end, when Zokket’s becomes powerful enough to trap people in some kind of limbo by using some special brainwashing plants.
I couldn’t help but think this was drawing a parallel between our current climate in a world that is growing more and more detached with reality and fascinated with quick satisfaction with social networks or artificial intelligence. A bit of a stretch for a Mario game? Most likely, but I couldn’t help but make the comparison especially when you have a villain that is constantly boasting about the superiority of his fake eternal happiness against living in a world full of connections that might end up causing you pain once they get severed.
As enjoyable as the story is, I couldn’t help but find it a little bit stretched at times. Some islands feeling a bit redundant and a couple of situations where you’re forced into a hut for McGuffins that felt a bit excessive. Nothing majorly pace breaking but I couldn’t help thinking that the game could’ve gotten a move on already.
In terms of presentation the game is just excellent, this is the first game of the series to not be extremely limited by the capabilities of a handled console, and the jump in quality compared to the latest AlphaDream titles is absolutely impressive.
The game is bursting with colors, the graphics have this sort of cell shaded look that really makes the characters and locations pop, the models for Mario and Luigi are extremely animated and very expressive, which opens the door to a lot of very funny scenarios and interactions. We also have animated battle cutscenes between Bowser and Zokket, which are really well animated and full of action, I was very surprised by the direction in these sequences.
In terms of soundtrack, unfortunately we had to say goodbye to Yoko Shimomura, and in her place we got Hideki Sakamoto. I won’t deny it, the first impact was rough, Yoko Shimomura has a very distinctive style and at this point I was very much used to her presence. Hideki Sakamoto though did a pretty damn good job in her stead, he managed to find the right kind of tone that was fitting this series like a glove, some of the tracks really stuck into my head, especially the theme on Conductor island. I honestly hope he can keep his place on the soundtrack for the future so that he can manage to surprise me even more.
About the Gameplay
If you never had a chance to even try a Mario RPG before, you might be asking yourself “How do you even adapt it?” After all, Super Mario is a game where a plumber goes from level to level in a series of obstacle courses where he and only him is the main character. The answer is trying to insert the classic staples of a turn based RPG while trying to keep the classic platform exploration of a Mario game as much as possible.
During the exploration we’ll travel between various islands with Mario and Luigi, Mario will be the only character we control, with Luigi trying to follow us as closely as possible, with the game pausing in case the two get too far apart. This is a change from the past where we had to control both characters at the same time while also being able to switch between them.
Personally I’m much more of a fan of this new approach, not only is much more comfortable moving just one character around, but this new feature will allow us to direct Luigi around to various interactable objects and exploit his positioning to solve various new puzzles, like follow him closely while is hiding inside a barrel to prevent us from being caught in a stealth section.
I also love how all of these scenarios all start with an idea from Luigi: this game has decided to go out of the usual scheme of him just being the scaredy cat brother and instead giving more creativity and ingenuity, it’s a character trait that I honestly really enjoyed.
I also have to compliment Acquire for how they decided to handle the Shipshape. At the news that the game was going to be a seafaring adventure, my mind instantly jumped back to my recent experience with Ys X Nordics, and how the sea exploration in that game was very slow and tedious. I was afraid that this game could suffer the same fate, but to my welcome surprise it ended up being the complete polar opposite.
We don’t actually drive the Shipshape in first person, instead the island will always be moving on predetermined rails across the map: all that we need to do is just point the ship in a particular water current and it’ll sail towards the destination in the background. We can explore, do side quests, fight and the ship will always be moving and, with the later ability to just boost up the speed, everything becomes almost instantaneous.
I only had a couple of moments when I had to just sit there and wait to reach the destination, and even then I reached my destination in less than a minute. Overall, a masterful work!
In the platform games, Mario takes care of enemies by jumping on them, and here is no different. In combat we make use of both Mario and Luigi, a very limited party in terms of number but not in terms of options. Our normal attacks comprise both a jump and a hammer that we have to alternate depending on the situation: for example we cannot jump on spiked enemies and we can’t hammer down flying enemies. The initial approach is very simple but some enemies will change their combat stance often in order to force you to change your approach accordingly.
One of the biggest features of this series is the ability to completely avoid enemy damage: with a bit of timing it’s possible not only to avoid but even counter enemy attacks with the help of our jumping or hammering. The most skilled players might even challenge themselves into doing a no hit run, and it’s honestly a pretty fun aspect of this series. If you have issues with the timing there’s a handy emergency shield you can use to mitigate some of the damage.
The best way to dish out big damage is by using the Bros. Attacks, combined techniques that can even do AOE damage to all enemies on the field. They work like some kind of little minigames, some harder to master than others but all of them useful in their own way.
To help you further there’s the introduction of Battle Plugs, items that give you passive perks during battle for a certain amount of rounds: they range from better defense, automatic usage of healing items, attack power ups, even guaranteed critical damage on certain enemy types. The best thing about this system is that all these effects stack together and can create some pretty devastating combinations. For a series that, to my experience, always kept its damage numbers in the low hundreds, I was shocked that I was able to reach even a thousand damage! For a moment I thought that these plugs might’ve been a little overkill.
This game is aimed as a genre introduction, so the difficulty is overall on the easy side, especially in the beginning. But the more you reach the end, the more complex the enemy patterns become, even the damage can be quite high, and if you’re not careful enough it’s feasible to die at some of the later bosses. So don’t be afraid and use everything in your arsenal to dish out the most punishment you’re capable of.
The only aspect I didn’t enjoy in the long run with the battles is that more often than not you’re going to face a high number of enemies. Being a game on a console much more powerful than your typical handheld it’s understandable that they want to put pressure on the player with a big crowd of enemies, but this had the side effect of making battles very monotonous.
Remember those Bros. Attacks I mentioned? Those are the only ones who can reliably take care on a crowd of enemies and when you’re in a two against six situation it’s only natural to resort to them in order to make the battle go faster, unfortunately this makes all battles feel the same and in the long run it becomes tiring if not outright boring.
Lastly I have to harshly critique the performance, being a game released in the final year of the Nintendo Switch and optimization wasn’t exactly a priority, loading times are long in general, and there are moments with really apparent frame drops when you have a lot of effects on screen. Even during the exploration of some areas the game struggles to keep even its low framerate of 30fps.
Fortunately I haven’t had slowdowns issues that negatively impacted my reactions in battle but it’s undeniable the poor Switch is having a hard time with this game, if you own a Switch 2 the loading times are fortunately cut in half, which makes a huge difference in quickening the pacing and not making you feel like staring at a lot of loading screens, especially in moments when you have battles in quick succession.
In Conclusion
Despite the performance issues and the repetitiveness of some battles, I really had a lot of fun with Mario & Luigi Brothership. It really felt like AlphaDream never really left us. The humor is intact, visually is the best 3D the series ever had and the gameplay manages to keep the same overall structure with adding some little quirks and unique adjustments.
Acquire really did a great job with this game where the only flaws ended up being feeling a little stretched out, repetitive battles and overall poor performance. But they ended up feeling some little blemishes on an otherwise very positive experience.
If you’ve never tried a Super Mario RPG I think it is the best time ever to do so, because you never had such a level of quality and variety concentrated on just a single console. Mario & Luigi Brothership might be your launching pad into the world of turn based RPGs.
So don’t wait too long and just hop on the adventure! For those of you who’ve already played it, let me know your favourite moments of this game. Have you played other games in the series? What are your favourite Mario RPGs? Let me know, I'm really curious.
Mario & Luigi are back and I couldn’t be happier, let's just hope this is gonna be the beginning of a bright future.
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