Review of Mario & Luigi: Brothership – A seafaring adventure will make your problems disappear | Great Mario

IIf there was ever a series that reminded me of vacation, it was the Mario and Luigi role-playing games. I fondly remember squinting at the Game Boy Advance screen in 2003 and commanding my plumbers through thrilling, dynamic battles from a sun lounger. Brothership is the first new game in the series in nearly a decade, bringing a brisk seafaring adventure to the thankfully better-lit screen of the Nintendo Switch.

In a classic Mario plot style, our heroes are kidnapped from the Mushroom Kingdom through a giant portal and awaken dazed and stranded in the oceanic world of Concordia. This place is absolutely beautiful. As you hop around the first of the many brightly colored islands, you can practically taste the sea breeze. A stunning Wind Waker HD-style floral light effect gives this bright and airy adventure a washed-out, sun-kissed feel.

Before you can put your feet up, however, the brothers discover that the once-great archipelago of Concordia has fallen apart, and it falls to the ever-benevolent Plumbers to take the helm of the floating Shipshape Island and sail around to reconnect the islands. So much for vacation.

Brothership's combat is a breezy delight, as the simple timed button presses of attacks, jumps, hammer strikes, and counters feel far more engaging than they should be. Where turn-based combat in other games can often be tedious, Brothership's is a captivating dance that throws new ideas, abilities, and unexpectedly flashy attack modifiers at you with joyful abandon.

However, getting the most out of the fights requires patience. At the start of the game, Mario and Luigi don't have any of these wonderful tools and the only thing you'll be hammering at is the skip button. This series is notorious for bombarding players with walls of text, but Brothership's opening hours seem particularly egregious. Before the mustachioed siblings can truly familiarize themselves with the lay of the land, they are approached by an endless crowd of Concordians – a race of conversation-hungry anthropomorphic acorns. While the Paper Mario games delight in dishing out clever puns, the jokes here feel half-baked and there's no voice acting to liven up the script.

Luckily, Brothership soon gets some wind in its sails as you unite a rival nation of ice and flame, triumph in an island-wide dance-off, solve a dark detective noir mystery, and even join a ragtag band of teenage pirates. The inhabitants of each island you save gratefully flock to your ship and island home, bringing with them new technology and equipment, and as the hours went by I even began to feel a certain affection for those pesky acorns. The phenomenal score certainly helps: an infectiously cheerful, nautical soundtrack full of pompous horn sounds and swelling sea shanty accordions.

As I sailed the seas, I also discovered a series of optional islands full of puzzles, from Middle Eastern-inspired market towns to dusty dunes filled with the snapping jaws of sand sharks. Another highlight are boss fights, which take place in dimly lit dungeons and offer a welcome change from the sun-drenched locations above. And Luigi is Finally He shows more of the respect he truly deserves: he can use his Luigi logic to find collectibles, solve puzzles, and develop clever strategies to beat bosses. All of this is presented with a grin-inducing comic feel: Brothership is a very silly role-playing game that offers a lot of fun.

In a year that saw not one, but three Mario-themed RPGs, I was ready to be blown away by Brothership. But thanks to compelling combat, varied platforming, and well-considered difficulty, Brothership not only lives up to my childhood nostalgia for this series, but even exceeds it. It's an inviting dose of sun-kissed enjoyment at the start of a dreary November.