Mario & Luigi: Brothership Review Round-Up – Feature

The last time a brand new Mario & Luigi game came out, we used a format we dubbed “Review Revisit” to share more thoughts about Mario & Luigi: Paper Jam. We also did it for Paper Mario: Sticker Star. So it felt right to break out the format for the latest Mario RPG Mario & Luigi: Brothership. The response to the game hasn’t been definitive, with a wide variety of opinions and takes ranging from adoration to disappointment. Where did the intrepid NWR staffers who decided to set sail on this Nintendo adventure land? Is this the new direction we all want in Mario RPGs? Or does it fail to hit the highs of the past?

Justin Berube: Mario & Luigi: Brothership, the sixth game in the series, opens up with several patrons of the Mushroom Kingdom being sucked into an alternate dimension known as the world of Concordia. This only sets off the myriad of issues I have with the title as once this happens smart players know that the people of this world will never matter outside of this game and in the end everything will return to normal. This makes it hard to deeply care about the world or story of Concordia, which is a shame because RPGs rely on story elements to encourage the player to move forward.

The combat system in Brothership is as fun as ever, but the battles for the first 40 hours of the experience are way too easy. Once you hit this point there are a couple of good boss battles to be found, one of which incorporates an amazing minigame into the combat. Sadly, this really isn’t enough to make up for the investment worth it to get to that point. The balance feels off here as the final boss felt extremely easy, while a boss several hours before had a better overall fight and challenge. Additionally, a few of the Bros. (Special) attacks take way too long to execute bogging down the combat in many cases.

The pacing is one of the biggest issues with Brothership. The beginning of the game felt like torture with excessive pointless talking and tutorials that any experienced player needs less of. I think it took at least five hours before I got my first Bros. (Special) attack. The game also heavily encourages players to return to each area immediately after doing the initial task there in order to collect important items needed to upgrade a new Plug system vital for combat. This, along with other elements that come up later, make the game seem extremely padded for no good reason.

The writing in Brothership is also a bore. Most of it is meaningless and the jokes rarely land. It feels like the game is playing everything so safe or the writers didn’t even try in the first place. The side quests usually don’t have great rewards either making most of the optional interactions not worth it. There is, however, a bright spot with a side character named Buddy who shows up extremely late in the game. Doing everything related to Buddy and his quests is one of the bright spots of Brothership and it’s sad that we will probably never see him or the endearing relationship he forms with one traditional Mario character ever again.

Ultimately Mario & Luigi: Brothership is a game that’s hard to get through as it overstays its welcome. Completing everything in the game took me around 60 hours and I’m not lying when I say this game would have been better if that playtime were cut in half if not more. Maybe the magic is gone, or maybe the Mario & Luigi formula has been done to death making it hard to compare Brothership to the bright spots of the franchise. If they are to move forward with more of these, which I don’t know if we really need, the entire formula needs a major change. I say ditch Mario & Luigi all together and do Wario & Waluigi, Donkey Kong & Diddy Kong, or Peach & Daisy because sadly what we got with Brothership is a bit stale.

Neal Ronaghan: Mario RPGs are very important to me so when a new Mario & Luigi game was announced, I was hopeful it would hit the highs of Mario & Luigi: Superstar Saga or Bowser’s Inside Story. Unfortunately, this entry hits somewhere below the two titans of this sub-series. Brothership is easily the most fun I’ve had with a Mario & Luigi game since the DS, but it’s also a game that frustrates me constantly. The animation is incredible, but the new electrical outlet-inspired characters are flavorless and boring. The combat has a nice rhythm to it, especially with some of the stylish Bros Moves, but it takes forever to get going and Luigi’s menu commands use the A button instead of the B button (even though his timed attacks require the B button).

While I acknowledge this is largely a RPG series for children, the over-tutorialization and extremely plodding opening hours wore on me and I honestly only stuck with it because of the sunk-cost fallacy and the fact I said to other folks at NWR we should do this feature. To an extent, I’m glad I did because I enjoy the rhythm of the game after a few hours where you essentially do cute and bite-sized vignette adventures on new islands as an overarching story builds in the background. But going back to this being an RPG series for children, my 6-year-old kid grew weary of this before he reached the point where the game gets better.

Even as it gets better, Mario & Luigi: Brothership overstays its welcome, inching into the 30-40-hour mark (unless you’re a completionist like Justin above me). There’s a reason I celebrated how the Super Mario RPG remake streamlined an already comparatively short game. Mario RPGs don’t need to be 40-hour affairs. I feel like for everything Brothership does right, it takes a step back in some other faucet. This is a mostly enjoyable game that is bogged down by chicanery more often than I’d like.

Willem Hilhorst: Mario & Luigi was always my first and favorite Mario RPG series. I got introduced to them via Superstar Saga and kept up with the series ever since. Colorful worlds, charmingly written with a fun and inventive combat system set them apart from the other RPGs I played at the time. So, the death of Alpha Dream in 2018 stung quite a bit. That made it so the revival of the series with a brand new entry was quite surprising, though I had my reservations as the series did have a bit of a bumpy track record since Bowser’s Inside Story.

Enter Mario & Luigi Brothership. Stunning with its gorgeous cel-shaded visual style, expressive character animations, and creative worlds and characters. Sadly, after more than seven hours with the game I cannot bring myself to keep playing the game. Tutorials are always a bit of a challenge and Nintendo in particular can be brutal about these at times. In fact, the original Bowser’s Inside Story was quite guilty of this as well. But what always got me through these walls of texts, was the funny writing and wild story setup that got me engaged into their world. Mario & Luigi: Brothership doesn’t just stumble, it falls straight off of a cliff into the sea.

It dawned on me at about hour five. I simply wasn’t having fun. It took hours to expand the move set of the bros. with not just the hammer, but also a single bros. move, staples of the series that usually took less than two hours at most. Now, pacing in RPG’s is always a challenge. But while the original trilogy of M&L also could be a bumpy ride, I was assured of one thing: having a good time with the dialogue. Mario RPGs always defined themselves with a distinct, often fourth-wall-breaking, tone in its writing. But Brothership is all about style with very little substance. Characters fail to make an impact, relying on one-note jokes and Mario and Luigi themselves just feel passed over, being literally dragged into another world. While I like the creativity in the designs, with everything being a combination of nature and electrical engineering, the writing does very little to engage me into the world and its characters. Few outright jokes show up and most of the writing comes across as belittling towards the player.

I still think the combat system is quite a bit of fun, even though it takes two bosses before it really gets going. I think I instinctively started grinding, not necessarily because the game feels challenging. Combat is pretty simple and as you’re quickly drowning in coins, it becomes pretty easy to upgrade equipment. I think what struck me most is the lack of customization of both Mario and Luigi. In previous games it was fairly easy to make each of them feel distinct with their stats spread. But this time around it only happens when you ‘rank up’, choosing a trait. But these traits take a long time to obtain and include stuff like unlocking a second equipment slot. It just feels like too many instances where the ball was dropped to keep a brand name relevant, but not understanding how all these cogs together made the M&L stand out from the rest.

I don’t feel comfortable scoring Mario & Luigi: Brothership at this time. I can tell you that this might be my personal most disappointing release of 2024. I had high hopes for the return of this series, but in all honesty, I think I may have preferred it to stay buried. Brothership made me question the enjoyment I’ve had with the series in the past and whether it isn’t just rose-tinted nostalgia. Perhaps this brothership has sailed for me.