Platform: Nintendo Switch
You should always remain calm when bees buzz around you. Not only are they essential pollinators, but if you anger them, you might end up chased into a portal to another dimension. You’re not likely to see that valuable survival tip on an Attenborough documentary, but it is how Mario and Luigi get transported from the Mushroom Kingdom to the strange new world of Concordia in the opening minutes of Brothership, and would Nintendo lie?
Typically for a Mario & Luigi game, the titular brothers are soon at work solving a crisis in the unfamiliar setting, this time that the entire world has fractured into floating islands, each scattered to the currents of a vast global ocean. With new friend Connie guiding the way, the pair are soon travelling around Concordia, solving problems on each island and reconnecting it to a unified energy source on the central Shipshape Island – an island in the shape of a ship, oddly enough – while tracking down the mysterious forces who may be responsible for the splintering in the first place.
It makes for a great nautical adventure, and a nice way to break the game into bite-sized chunks – although early on, before players gain the ability to speed Shipshape Island up, waiting for those literal chunks to sail into view is a real drag. Most islands Mario and Luigi rediscover function as wider puzzles to solve on the way to reconnecting them to Shipshape, while introducing an ever-expanding cast of quirky new supporting characters. There’ll be some enemies scattered around, but each location is really tailored for exploration and world-building – always a great strength for Nintendo. Great Lighthouse islands, meanwhile, serve as chapter dividers – some of the largest dungeons the series has served up, increasingly challenging, obstacle-packed lairs capped off with signature boss battles, with each one conquered opening up more of Concordia’s oceans.
Like its predecessors in the Mario & Luigi series, Brothership is a turn-based RPG, but one where the conventions of the genre are stripped right back. There’s no expansive roster of party members, just the famed red and green plumbers, and at their most basic, battles involve either jumping on enemies or, if they have a spiky noggin, whacking them with a hammer. Yet in Nintendo’s expectedly charming fashion, that simplicity forms a strong foundation for ever-more complex tweaks that keep each encounter fresh.
Mario and Luigi are truly living cartoons here, often to an almost Looney Tunes degree with a strong element of physical comedy.
This is mainly down to the series’ real-time elements. Both brothers attack on each other’s turn, boosting the other’s jumps by flinging them even higher into the air, or super-charging a hammer blow with a physics-defying extra wind-up hit, with success determined by well-timed button prompts. Reacting sharply to enemy attacks can also allow a counter-attack, a dodge, or at least a shield from incoming damage. Powerful team-up Bros Attacks allow for combo moves, such as dribbling a red shell back and forth before booting it, Mario Strikers style, right at an enemy for massive pain. It all helps keep turn-based engaging, giving players something to do with every single attack beyond just watching events play out. It's all bolstered further by new “Battle Plugs”, modifiers that can be crafted to alter battles further. Some might deal additional damage or inflict status effects, extend attack combos, or bolster Mario and Luigi’s own stats. It’s a surprisingly deep system.
In both story and combat, Luigi is (rightly) the star here though, thanks to his “Luigi Logic” skill. The under-appreciated Mario brother (fun fact: their surname is canonically Mario) will get flashes of inspiration at key points, opening up new ways to progress or providing strange new abilities for the duo.
While there’s no controlling these moments of insight out of battle – they’re all scripted, usually to introduce new mechanics or team-up “Bro Moves” (like waltzing into a whirling dervish to transform into a UFO and hover over gaps) - in boss fights Luigi Logic will open up new ways to handle enemies, often involving the environment around the battlefield. They’re not foolproof – you can miss the timing to throw a massive plant boss into a cyclone, for instance – but they can turn the tide of combat, and often in hilarious ways. Mario and Luigi are truly living cartoons here, often to an almost Looney Tunes degree with a strong element of physical comedy. The leap to the Switch helps of course, allowing for far better visuals – although an odd colour gradient effect that sees both brothers’ tops move from their signature red or green to blue never stops being distracting.
Unfortunately, while Brothership is a great outing in its own right, it’s somewhat hurt by the law of diminishing returns. Brothership arrives almost a year to the day after the Switch remake of SNES classic Super Mario RPG, and just four months after Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door was rescued from GameCube purgatory. Although the Mario & Luigi series is technically separate to those other Mario RPGs, they all share very similar mechanics, making for a lot of repetition in just 12 months. For anyone who’s dived into those remakes, this is likely to feel like too much, too soon – especially since, like those games, this is also a bit too determined to hold players’ hands in places, over-explaining details or preventing exploration at times. Still, for anyone who loves the series, or just enjoys a low stakes RPG in general, this is a fun and breezy adventure that rarely fails to charm.