Our Verdict
With tight battle mechanics, engaging puzzles, and new characters that become more endearing as the story goes on, Mario & Luigi: Brothership has all the hallmarks of a great RPG. It’s still no Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door, but it’s not far off.
While much of the industry has spent 2024 speculating about Nintendo’s next console, the Japanese giant is still quietly going about its business and putting out fantastic games. Sure, we’ve seen a lot of ports in the last twelve months, including a couple of iconic RPG games from Mario’s back catalog, but now it’s time for something new, Mario & Luigi: Brothership, which somehow feels like a continuation of the long-dormant series and something completely new for the iconic platforming brothers.
For those who don’t know, the Mario & Luigi series began way back in 2003 with Superstar Saga for the Game Boy Advance, but we’ve been waiting since 2015’s Paper Jam for a new series entry. A lot has changed in those nine years, including the shutting down of AlphaDream, the company Nintendo turned to to develop all the series games up until this point. So, it’s a new adventure with a different developer on a now relatively old console. How does it fare? Well, not to spoil this review, but it’s a Mario game, so it’s great. How great, exactly? That’s what we’re here to explore.
I’ll start with the premise if you haven’t caught any of the trailers, After some peculiar goings on in the Mushroom Kingdom, Mario and Luigi find themselves whisked away to Concordia, where everything is not well. The archipelago, featuring multiple small and even smaller islands, has become disconnected, and it’s your job to return things to normal. It’s a bit cookie-cutter, but it gets you into the action nice and quick, and the narrative becomes more and more endearing as you get on with your quest to reconnect the land.
When I say reconnect, I mean it literally, as the theme of Brothership is, for some reason, electricity. When you reconnect an island, you’re doing it with a massive plug, while most of Concordia’s residents have sockets for faces. If I’m being entirely honest, it’s a bit of a peculiar theme, and it feels at first almost as though the game has shoehorned Mario and Luigi into a completely new game series. I also don’t trust Luigi holding a plug around all that water, but that’s another issue entirely.
As this is a seafaring adventure, you need a boat, but that boat is an island itself, Shipshape Island. This is the closest thing the game has to a hub world, featuring shops, warp pipes, and a cannon you can use to blast the titular brothers over to new islands. While you’re aboard, you choose which currents to travel while trying to find new islands to connect to Shipshape Island, which is almost painfully slow at first. I thought, after a couple of hours, I’d be complaining about the ship’s lethargic speed, but fortunately, as they tend to, a couple of Toads turn up before long, offering a much-needed speed boost.
The islands of Concordia are wonderful little biomes, and while in my preview I found them a little tame, the further into the game you get, the more interesting they become. There’s also islets, even tinier bits of land floating in the ocean with some treasures for you to find, and reefs, which function as a sort of collectible, including one particular reef that resembles the turd emoji too much to be a coincidence. The ocean is full of surprises, and as well as side quests that encourage you to revisit islands, it means things never get too linear.
After getting your bearings in this new land, you bump into some new characters, such as Snoutlet, who serves as your guide and tutorial machine, and Connie, who’s more than willing to dig into some serious exposition by explaining the lore and lay of the land. Much like the islands, I wasn’t all that taken with the pair at first, but at this point, I’d die for Snoutlet. It might be because of how much we’ve been through together or that he slightly reminds me of my dog, but I love that flying piggy bank, and I hope to see more of him in future Mario games.
As you adventure through the islands, you unlock Luigi Logic. Essentially, when Luigi’s glowing, you can press a button and he’ll come up with a solution to a puzzle, figure out a way to get around an obstacle, or manifest with a special attack to inflict massive damage on a boss. It’s a neat little gag for the game, suggesting that Luigi is secretly a logistical mastermind that’d be better put to use solving the climate crisis or innovating the Mushroom Kingdom’s security systems – god knows they need to sort that out – but instead, he’s just helping his brother track down some missing Toads.
In the early game, Luigi Logic slightly takes away from the discovery factor, as you can effectively solve a puzzle just by clicking the L button. Fortunately, this isn’t the case as you get further into your quest, and Brothership is more than willing to tickle your puzzle brain. In fact, the sections of this game that turn Mario and Luigi into detectives trying to crack clues might be the best bits, forcing you to think outside of the box and embrace your inner Phoenix Wright. Still, if you’re not one for puzzling, Brothership is pretty generous with its clues, and you can elicit any solutions you’re struggling to come up with from NPCs without too much effort.
Outside of Luigi Logic, the Bros. moves are another set of mechanics you need to get used to using to move forward in your adventure. We’ll get into how Bros. moves work in combat later, but they help you explore islands and get to new areas in the overworld. The first one you unlock turns the brothers into a frantically spinning UFO, which you can use to traverse any gaps in the land. It’s a neat idea and provides yet another reason to revisit islands you thought you’d complete just in case you can now access any new areas.
In terms of combat, it’s a continuation of what fans of turn-based Mario games should well be used to by now. In battle, Mario and Luigi each take turns, but almost always join together for attacks, which have you jumping on enemies, hitting them with hammers, and occasionally coming together for a powerful Bros. move, dealing more damage for the sacrifice of some battle points. Put simply, there’s enough variation in Mario and Luigi’s moves to keep things interesting, especially when certain enemies have specific weaknesses you can exploit if you’re paying attention.
The unique twist to Brothership’s battles is the battle plug mechanic. While making your way through Concordia, you find sprite bulbs, which you can use to make battle plugs after a while. You equip Mario and Luigi with these boosters and deal more damage, counter more efficiently, or get an HP increase from a mushroom, depending on which you value most. It’s an interesting spin, and while at points it can make battles feel like a bit of a forgone conclusion as it slightly overpowers the plumbing brothers, it’s a smart way to tie into the whole electricity thing the game has going on while also offering some tactical nuance.
My only problem with battle plugs is that they need recharging after a certain amount of moves, and alongside healing up Mario and Luigi, it means there’s often a bit of admin to do in between enemy combat. It’s almost always worth doing, and as I’ve said, it offers a tactical edge, but I wish the plugs lasted twice as long as they did, just so I wouldn’t have to keep going to the menu and changing my selection, almost perpetually waiting for my favored power-ups to recharge.
Still, Brothership’s biggest highlight is the boss battles. The bosses themselves offer a lot of variety, so you can’t lean on a specific combo or attack you’ve used to obliterate lackeys, and there’s always a Luigi Logic minigame or two mid-battle to keep things from becoming stale. In fairness, the battles could be a little trickier, and even in the late game, I only found a proper challenge by forgetting to heal Mario and Luigi before facing a threat, but that might be in part due to my willingness to grind and complete side quests. I love a side quest.
In terms of visuals, Brothership has a cel-shaded vibe that could be seen as a bit of a creative risk, but it looks brilliant. It just adds to the Saturday morning cartoon vibe of the Mario & Luigi series, giving the whole experience a cartoonish feel that gels with the playful world of Concordia. Like all Mario games, there’s still a bit of threat from the game’s big bad, but the game never takes itself too seriously, and I can get behind that.
Usually, when reviewing a Switch game, I’d get into the performance section here, as Nintendo’s handheld is known to struggle with more ambitious games. That isn’t the case here, though, and if anything, Brothership is an example of just what is possible on Nintendo’s seven-year-old console. I know it’s a little thing, but there’s something beautiful about just looking out on the slowly moving clouds while you’re sitting in Shipshape Island’s cannon hunting for new islands, and they’re as lifelike as I’ve experienced on the console.
Ultimately, Mario & Luigi: Brothership is another fantastic entry for a spin-off series I hold quite close to my heart, even if it doesn’t reach the heady heights of some other turn-based Mario adventures. The battles are great, especially the bosses, the explorable islands all offer something a little different, and the storytelling is simple but incredibly effective. If you’re a fan of Mario’s previous RPG escapades, this one isn’t going to disappoint and makes a case for Nintendo to continue adding to the series in years to come.
There you have it, our Mario & Luigi: Brotership review. For more of our thoughts on this year’s Nintendo offerings, check out our Super Mario Party Jamboree review and The Legend of Zelda: Echoes of Wisdom review. Or, if you’re looking for something new to play, check out our picks for the best Nintendo Switch games.