Mario & Luigi: Brothership review (Switch)

As this is the first-ever Mario & Luigi RPG to be released on a full-fledged home console, we were eager to see if Nintendo would take advantage of the Switch's extra power to give us the biggest and best turn-based Bros. romp is still in the form of Mario & Luigi: Brothership.

We had some concerns during our preview. Just like us Love Due to the new graphical styles and eye-catching additions to the series' core combat, the initial areas were small-scale and not quite as challenging or imaginative as we had imagined. However! Fear not intrepid explorers, as it turns out there are more tantalizing adventures on the high seas just around the corner. You have corners at sea, don't you?

As you know by now, in Mario & Luigi: Brotherhood, everyone's favorite plumber takes on the challenge of reconnecting the splintered land of Concordia, where the entire Mario gang – and a bunch of other fellow Mushroom Kingdom members – find themselves after a mysterious warping -Incident. We've all been there.

And so our dynamic duo willingly fires up a big yellow cannon aboard the game's adorable Shipshape Island hub to face an ever-growing threat. It seems that the residents of Concordia are afflicted by a dark illness that leaves them feeling alone, as if they are disconnected from everyone and everything around them.

Concordia is all about making connections, and Mario and Luigi must now travel to each fragmented country to reconnect the world as a whole while defeating the great evil at the heart of what went wrong is. We really can't give too much away, as there are a lot of little things we can't talk about, but the adventure that follows really surprised us, both with its scale and scope and with its challenge and, yes, of that all-important variety.

Those already familiar with the series' turn-based combat will feel right at home here, but we now have an attack and defense system that focuses on the game's overall bonding and brotherhood motif, making you want to work together more than ever before to get the job done. The series has always required you to command each brother to jump and attack using separate buttons – that's the beating heart of the whole thing – but now those attack and defense sequences have been fleshed out, resulting in incredibly rewarding battles that never really get boring .

In attack; Jump and hammer attacks form the backbone of your work, with each brother playing their role as you rhythmically press buttons to get them to smash their hammers as hard as possible or get as much air in their jumps as possible for maximum damage. Then, in defense, you have to figure out the timing of enemy attacks (of which there are many) in order to dodge and repel incoming shots.

Additionally, we're adding Bros. Moves, big, fancy, upgradeable specials where you fire red and green grenades together (and a bunch of other things we can't reveal), as well as an all-new Battle Plug system, which adds a lot of strategy to an already addictive system.

Plugs initially seem like a pretty standard way to add small boons and boosts, like extra defense to help with a tricky fight or extra AOE damage when jumping. However, it's how much this plug system evolves that really gives the game the kick it needs to stand out from all previous entries.

Once you get a little further along in the campaign, Battle Plugs become more interesting. They give you the ability to automate healing and BP potions so you don't have to factor them into rounds, prevent elemental damage, drop surprise iron balls, and more. Then the ability to combine plugs together is introduced, leading to things like loot boosts, anti-air specializations, and a bunch of things that we haven't even unlocked yet after 40+ hours of play. Yes, this is a big old game and it has depth.

Battle Plugs also allow you to practically adjust certain game difficulty parameters on the fly. You can take a ton of damage from enemy shots, automate dodges and counters, and those auto-heals and potions give you a big advantage. If things are still too difficult or you just want to really relax, you can reduce the difficulty to a story-focused mode that turns our protagonists into unstoppable tanks in combat.

In addition to Battle Plugs, there are also Luigi Logic moments. From our preview you already know that Luigi's moments of inspiration are used during exploration to open boxes, activate switches, etc. This aspect is also fleshed out in many fun ways, but can also be used during boss fights for some very funny, big moments. As you reach certain checkpoints during a boss fight, some environmental details will catch Luigi's attention, leading to the chance to deal major damage that can change the flow of the battle.

All of this makes for a bright and busy, comedic combat system that you can really get into, reinforced by a range of excellent enemies (there's so much fun in how the enemy variants change later in the game). ) and an art style that makes for the most emotive video game version of Bros. we've ever seen. There's so much detail and expression in the way this pair now executes attacks, narrowly dodging incoming shots, and sweating and panicking at the thought of what comes next. Luigi in particular is a constant source of joy with his awkward landings and fearful demeanor.

This all fits perfectly with the game's overall idea of ​​connecting on a more meaningful level, and thanks to the OTT expressions that the developers use in an old-fashioned anime style, we can connect with the characters of Mario and Luigi a little more have chosen here gives us.

The only piece of the puzzle left now is the actual world of Concordia itself, and as it turns out, that's the best and most surprising part of the whole thing.

We were actually a bit worried after completing the first area of ​​the impressively large ocean world. The islands we visited were certainly fun and colorful, but at this early stage everything was a little dull and safe. Thankfully, as Concordia opens up and you discover new sailing routes while zooming around at full speed aboard Shipshape (a fun little reef spotting minigame in itself), Mario & Luigi: Brothership ups the ante by 100% a world that constantly offers us new mechanics, environmental obstacles and twists.

The islands and islets (mini-challenge areas!) that you map as you sail around begin to take on a Mario Galaxy-lite feel. Of course, there's no full-fledged platforming or anything like that, but the different gimmicks, completely different environments, and fun things to do outside of combat make for a world and a story that you'll definitely want to continue in its entirety. From rolling around on timed platforms as a big Mario Bros. ball to quickly changing the weather from hot to cold to kill enemies, there's always something new to do. Smashing paths, redirecting lava flows, working closely with electricity (the citizens of Concordia are little power outlets, after all) – there's so much variety to keep you plugged in.

Side missions can be taken on at will by the various NPCs you encounter, and these open up the replayability factor that comes from revisiting islands once you've connected them to Shipshape. Once connected to your hub, you can return to discover new paths, visit new areas and complete challenges. Of course, there are plenty of collectibles to find too, and in order to grab everything that pops up on the map and get all the good gear and secrets, you'll have to do a lot of work together to figure out the tricks behind islands that are uniformly good. designed.

Along with this ever-evolving creativity, we get a story that actually achieves some things, a script that keeps the comedy aspects of this series alive, and a menagerie of bosses that keep the crazy challenges coming. We should also mention that there are some built-in achievements to complete, which is always a huge bonus for us absolutely terrible Cheevo fans.

There Are a few negative points to think about. If you're not into random encounters of the old-fashioned, turn-based RPG nature, there's a whole lot to enjoy here. You can escape 90% of them with no problem, but there is no easy or clever way to avoid these battles as the game focuses more on whether you or your enemy strike first to gain a lead.

The gear name is also fun and there are lots of cool items to find, but we can't help but feel like not allowing us to change our appearance a bit is a missed opportunity. Boots, overalls and gloves that all look the same are just…a bit boring, aren't they? We get it and we know why it is, but what fun we could have here with gear that changes your appearance! Maybe next time?

Aside from these minor issues, and with decent performance in both docked and handheld modes, aside from the occasional small wobble in busy areas, here's what we have here light the best Mario & Luigi RPG to date. The combat is on point, the world building is consistently impressive, the platforming and puzzles are clever, and there's plenty of variety. Nintendo seems to keep finding ways to squeeze more and more magic out of this seven and a half year old console. You love watching it.