It’s been a pretty solid couple of years for fans of Mario RPGs, with Nintendo finally delivering classics like Super Mario RPG and Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door on Switch. Now it’s time for something new, Mario & Luigi: Brothership, the first original game in the spin-off series since 2015, and I was lucky enough to play a couple of hours of the game ahead of its November 7 release date.
As with most of the best Mario games, it doesn’t take long to get into the action. The game opens with Mario and Luigi fooling around in the Mushroom Kingdom before a hurricane of light arrives and whisks them away to Concordia, or at least, what was Concordia. As we all know, Mario doesn’t often end up somewhere by accident, and it only takes a couple of minutes to realize that the man in red is there to once again save the day from a mysterious calamity. It’s slightly cookie-cutter stuff, yes, but it’s tasty nonetheless.
Without spoiling too much of the exposition the game bombards you with in the first hour or so, Concordia consists of a bunch of islands that were once connected to a big magic tree – Nintendo loves a big magic tree – but have become untethered. It’s your job to sail the seas aboard Shipshape Island, get blasted across to new islands via a cannon, and link them all to a single source again using a big ol’ plug. Oh, and all the residents of these islands have plugs for faces, including your other companion, Snoutlet, a flying pig-type thing that the game uses to dish out tutorials and more exposition as you get going on your quest to reunite the islands. Yes, the theme is electricity, for some reason. It’s best not to ask questions and just go with it.
Peculiar theming aside, Snoutlet, the plug-faced residents of Concordia, and the islands themselves are all quite charming. Even the first few enemies you encounter are pretty cute, and there’s not a Goomba in sight. For me, it might be a little tame, and while there’s a problem to solve in connecting the islands, it doesn’t feel like there’s the normal level of threat you’d associate with a Mario adventure. Still, I have to remember that Mario games are for a wide audience, some of whom might need a bit of a soft introduction to get to grips with the mechanics, and there’s still plenty of time left for Brothership to up the stakes.
You explore Concordia with a top-down camera angle, slightly akin to Super Mario 3D World. Like in other Mario RPGs, the plumber brothers’ gymnastic ability is toned down, with no double or triple jumps, but single jumps alone provide the pair with enough mobility to get around and bash some floating boxes to pick a few coins while they’re at it. Each time you visit a new island, you have to work your way up to that island’s plug, before you ride it through the sky to connect it to Shipshape Island. With that done, you can choose to head back to the island you just visited to explore newly unlocked areas or continue with your journey and find a new island to connect.
Most Mario RGPs have a gimmick mechanic, and Brothership is no different thanks to Luigi Logic. With Luigi Logic, the man in green can concoct a plan to help the brothers solve a puzzle or get themselves out of a sticky situation, and the game points out when it’s time to turn to Luigi by making him glow. I’m still yet to see Luigi really get the brain cogs turning, but it’s a fun idea, made better still by a wacky in-game animation that sees Luigi emulate Spongebob Squarepants’ ridiculous take-it-around-town bubble-blowing technique while solving a problem.
When it comes time to battle, anyone who’s played a turn-based Mario game should recognize the mechanics. Each time you choose an attack, you get a button prompt, and if you time it to perfection, there’s a damage boost. It takes a little while to get used to the different inputs for different attacks, but once you adjust, it’s a great way of making you feel involved during combat.
Then, there’s the Battle Plug system, this game’s unique combat mechanic. After a while, you can equip plugs to Mario and Luigi’s attacks, which provide further damage boosts, inflict status ailments, or heal up the pair. This is where the combat comes into its own, and it feels like you need to get smart with plug combinations as you progress through the game and take on bigger battles. It’s similar, in a sense, to Final Fantasy 7’s mana system but with Saturday morning cartoon-type attacks instead of summoning magical entities and performing magic attacks.
Still, my favorite thing about Mario & Luigi: Brothership so far is how it looks. Its cel-shaded style is gorgeous, and the brothers’ Laurel and Hardy-esque reactions are a cartoonish delight. The game’s developer has leaned into the slapstick style that suits the pair so well, and it makes the adventure all the more enjoyable. The dialogue is a bit toned-down compared to the tongue-in-cheek nature of something like Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door, but that is distinctly not what this game is going for. It’s more Mario Sunshine meets Zelda: Wind Waker in terms of vibes, which I can still very much get behind.
All in all, Mario & Luigi: Brothership is shaping up to be another engaging addition to the series. It looks great, the new characters are charismatic, and the combat is rewarding, especially when tackling trickier opponents. I’m not sure yet if it’s going to blow anyone away in the way previous turn-based Mario adventures have, but there’s still a lot left for me to uncover. Given how excited I am about that prospect, I’m willing to go out on a limb and say this is still looking like another must-play for fans of Nintendo’s iconic platforming plumber.
There you have it, our Mario & Luigi: Brothership preview, and we’ll have a full review just before the game launches on November 7. Still, if you can’t wait to pick up a new game starring Nintendo’s beloved mascot, you can check out our guide to the best Nintendo Switch games or take a look at our Super Mario Party Jamboree review.