Mario & Luigi: Brothership could be the best in the series | Hands-on preview
As one of the many branching sub-franchises of the Mario-verse, the Mario & Luigi titles have always been well written, clever in their dual-character interplay and role-playing mechanics that made it a natural successor to Super Mario RPG and a bedfellow to Paper Mario.
There has not been a mainline entry in the series since the slightly lacklustre Paper Jam, but the success and brilliance of the recent Thousand Year Door and Mario RPG remakes have shown that there is still a place for this style of Mushroom Kingdom foray, and after spending some time with the beautiful Mario & Luigi: Brothership, I am pleased to report that it looks very much like a powerful return to form for the adventuring plumbing siblings.
Mario & Luigi: Brothership is one of the most beautiful looking, classically Nintendo titles seen on the Switch, a stunning combination of cel-shading and gorgeous 3D artwork. The animation is exceptional. Nintendo has promised that this game demonstrates the closest brotherly bond between Mario and Luigi yet seen, and this is borne out in the way they interact throughout the game, all hand holding, arms around shoulders, and combining in wonderful and outlandish ways, including transforming into a super-cute flying saucer to hover across the map.
Brotherhood aside, there are a couple of key main gimmicks of Brothership. As per the title of the game, are the fact that the boys are living on a huge floating island-vessel which sails around the high seas of the land of Concordia. You can set the course of the ship on an overworld map screen, and shoot the brothers from a cannon to reach any new islands that you encounter.
The other theme of Brothership is seemingly based around plug sockets and electricity. Nintendo has a habit of creating loveable new characters seemingly at will, and Snoutlet proudly joins that pantheon. He is a handsome pink piggy bank, whose snout resembles a Japanese type-A plug socket. Despite his appearance, he vehemently denies that he is a pig. Other denizens of Concordia that you meet also have the same electric plug features. There has to be a shoutout for the way everyone speaks, too. It is very amusing, with everyone talking a strange garbled style, a bit like the way Midna did in Hyrule back in the day.
Continuing the electricity theme, when exploring you can collect glowing spheres of energy that allow you to construct your own Plugs – the Brothership version of the Badges or similar buffs seen in Mario role-players of old. These can be equipped during battles to provide a variety of effects. They are limited use and will run out of charge, but you can make new ones between battles, and the more new types you craft, the more become available.
Negotiating around the islands of Concordia is intuitive and fun as you use different combinations of Mario and Luigi to traverse obstacles and pair up to solve some clever puzzles. I played through two sections of the game, one from and hour or so in, which introduced a lot of the basic gameplay, and then a portion much further in where some of the juicier mechanics are in play, such as the ability to equip the aforementioned plugs and use satisfying dual Bros moves in battle.
I have always been a sucker for timing-based, heavily involved combat in a role playing game, and Mario & Luigi: Brothership may have the most hands-on reactive battle system ever put into a Mario title. You control both of the heroes at the same time and have to use different button commands for each, using timing to execute dodges and carry out attacks. It is quite tricky in the early stages as the pair are quite underpowered and some of the enemies encountered take a fair bit of damage to put to rest. Once you have levelled up and unlocked more of what the game has to offer, combat becomes an immensely fun experience. The buffs you can use make a real difference without unbalancing things; some of the enemies are still tough and learning their attack patterns is a challenge. I cannot wait to really get stuck in to this one, as I get the impression that what we saw was only the tip of an enormous iceberg with a huge number of islands, characters to interact with, and ways that the different archipelagos can be interlinked and tinkered with.
Fans of the series will lap this one up, I am sure. But Mario & Luigi: Brothership also has a level of challenge and deep gameplay mechanics that run far deeper than its super-bright cartoon aesthetics. It looks like being one of the best entries in the series thus far and I am excited to see what more fun I can have sailing around Concordia with two of gaming’s most beloved and enduring icons.
Mario & Luigi: Brothership is coming to Nintendo Switch on November 7th.
