After (almost) 9 years of wait, Mario & Luigi 6, and a new true, original Mario RPG is finally here! And dare i say, it was about time, after 9 years of either remakes,
mediocre (Yes, i'm looking at you Paper Jam), bad and not-a-RPG games, like Paper Mario The Origami King, which was an okay game all things considered, but not an actual RPG.
But was it worth the agonizing 9 years wait? Let's find out and see all of the good, the bad and the ugly this game has to offer.
Battles always have been one of the most important aspects of Mario & Luigi (and in my opinion, of JRPGs in general). And i'm happy to say, Brothership's battle system is as
great as ever. The battles make great use of the series' transition to full 3D, with attacks that make use of more dynamic camera angles.
Brothership changes quite a few
things from the usual Mario & Luigi battles. The most notable of all being that jump and hammer normal attacks are combo attacks when all of the two Bros are available, kind of like
Superstar Saga's Bro Attacks.
The usual style of Bro attacks introduced in Bowser's Inside Story returns, but the balancing of them has been changed significantly. The grand majority of
Bro attacks now require an "Excellent!" rating to deal good damage, since pretty much all of them have a finishing move that does at most a good 40% of the damage.
There are 10 Bro attacks in the game, 5 of them are new and 5 of them return with some pretty substantial changes from older games. Each Bro has 5 attacks, and i'd
say the balance is overall pretty decent, with a good 50% of attacks still being useful in the late game portion. I think the game could have used 2 more new Bro attacks,
but it's not a massive deal breaker, especially since the new ones are pretty cool.
The brand new system introduced in Brothership's battles replacing badges is the Plug system : The game offers you a wide variety of plugs that you can swap mid battle
that have a lot of different effects, with limited uses that recharge on a turn cooldown that can be divided in 3 main categories :
Field gameplay is another one of Mario & Luigi's most important aspects, and it's the aspect in which Brothership departs the most from the others, in both good and bad ways.
First of all, jump and hammer moves are now combined, and they use the A/B and X/Y buttons respectively. This is a great change, however, what is not great is the complete
removal of hammer interactions with Mario, Luigi and the NPCs : you cannot hammer mario with luigi from the back anymore, you cannot hammer NPCs anymore, and digging has been completely
removed. This is just a bad change since it added more interactivity with the world and the brothers, and now it's gone.
The game also offers 3 Bro actions that are selected using the right stick : UFO, Ball and Fire+Ice, and all of those 3 get an upgrade after you unlock the move for the first time. I think that they are decent enough but not amazing,
the UFO being my least favourite one since it's mostly just a slower and less fun to use version of the spin jump from the other games, even if it's pretty cool to see.
I think they are used decently well in the whole game with some good platforming sections and puzzles, even if the dungeons in this game are a bit too formulaic :
they always go like this : Complete a room and bring the key to the central area to unlock another room until you have them all to unlock the boss gate. There are really only 1 or 2
dungeons that actually feel like classic Mario & Luigi dungeons.
The puzzles now rely a lot on the Luigi logic mechanic, that allows luigi to act by himself in certain situations by pressing the L button, which is used very well
throughout the game, however i don't like how much Luigi is automated now, since he now jumps automatically with Mario, and making jump manually is detrimental, since most of the times he'll just
end up jumping while standing still or just not jumping at all.
The overworld exploration also feels like a step backwards and is structured a lot more like in Partners in Time, since the worldmap isn't properly connected like
the other Mario & Luigi games, which had a big interconnected map. At least it's different enough from Paper Mario's Sticker Star's and Color Splash's god awful
stage structure, but i would rather return to the structure of the other Mario & Luigi games.
Still, the whole ship island thing is a charming idea and is a good hub world, and the island themselves are still pretty fun to explore.
Overall, the field gameplay is still good but not great, definitely on the weaker side of the series.
Brothership is a mostly great looking game. The art direction is great, the environments look good, albeit with some textures being a bit crusty, it has excellent animation and character models that
do a great job of bringing AlphaDream's Mario characters into full 3D for the first time, with plenty of original character and enemies with the charming designs that
you'd expect from Mario & Luigi games, even if the lack of modified pre-existing Mario characters and enemies is unfortunate but it makes sense considering the game is set
in another world.
The addition of proper cutscenes is fantastic, especially when they look so good, animation in particular, elevating some moments in the story to new heights the series has really never seen,
even if the compression on pre rendered ones is kinda crusty. This was probably done to make transitions between in-engine and pre-rendered cutscenes instantaneous.
However, the game does not fare well in the performance department : The game targets 30FPS, which is already crappy enough, but it can't even hold the target properly all the time,
with frequent dips under 30FPS that sometimes go under 22FPS and distracting microstutters, and for some reason, some menus absolutely murder the framerate. This is just bad programming. The game is made in Unreal Engine 4, by the way. (Stutter Engine 4, amirite fellas?)
Mario & Luigi Brothership's soundtrack is lame. It's without any shadow of a doubt the worst thing about the game, and it's a far cry from the great soundtracks the other
Mario RPGs have. The battle theme is one of the weakest one in the series, the boss themes are pretty decent but don't hold a candle to the other ones from the rest of the series,
and most overworld tracks range from pretty good to just bad, and the event themes are terrible, forgettable and generic.
The final boss theme is not memorable but it actually works very well in game, so i'll let it slide, but it's still disappointing.
They honestly really shit the bed with the soundtrack and it's a real shame, but it's not a massive surprise considering how Nintendo's music quality
has gone down the drain in the Switch era. At least The Origami King's and TTYD remake's music was excellent, so we still got some good Mario RPG soundtracks in the end,
but Brothership fails miserably in meeting my expectations for the series.
The side content in this game is completely different from the other Mario RPG games. All of it are now actual side quests, which range from pretty good to just lame or useless.
I'm not against introducing side quests in Mario & Luigi, however i'm not fine with it when the Boss Arena, the secret final boss and the Bro attack challenges get dropped
in favour of those. They were one Bowser's Inside Story's best new feature and seeing them get erased is just criminal. Also, since digging has been removed, you now mostly get beans
for completing side quests.
I think the side quests are a good addition, but they shouldn't have come at the cost of the traditional M&L side content we all know and love.
I'm glad to say that the unique, charming and funny writing of the Mario and Luigi series has not gone away. The humor is great, and the characters are quite a bit more
fleshed out than the usual Mario RPG casts. The pacing is not amazing, especially in the prologue and ch1, since the game broke tradition by not having any tutorial bossfight or area.
The only prologue you'll get is a short pre-rendered cutscene before the game's title screen and a super short section with Mario only. As i said before, the game has really not enough bosses,
ESPECIALLY at the beginning of the game, but thankfully the pacing gets better at chapter 2. The story and some other things about the game feel like that they took more
inspiration from traditional JRPGs than usual which was a really cool thing to see and a nice change of pace, and it makes sense considering that this game has been made by the
same company that made the Octopath Traveler games.
WARNING : Full story spoilers! Click to expand...
The story starts out by Mario, Luigi and their friends and foes being sucked into an alternative world by a mysterious portal that opens up in the sky (Mario & Luigi Isekai???).
Mario and Luigi get separated in the portal and Mario ends up waking up in a beach and immediatly seeks out Luigi, finding him in Shipshape Island, the game's hub world. Two characters named
Connie and Snoutlet, the latter being our new sidekick character replacing Starlow, explain that Concordia, the game's world, is kept connected by a massive tree at the center, and it has been
destroyed, scattering various parts of the world into the sea and making them islands.
The Bros must now relink all of Concordia to Shipshape Island's new central tree,
which Connie takes care of after her master, Cozette, went MIA, and restore all of the 4 lighthouses to hopefully find a way to return to their own world. The game then introduces us to the Extension Corps and Zokket, the villains of the game, that want to plunge
Concordia into complete solitude and isolation. To do that, they are kidnapping the residents of the various islands to the 4 lighthouses to produce Glohm, a substance that makes people
antisocial and makes monsters stronger and super aggressive.
In chapter 2, the bros need to find a way to breach the barrier protecting the great lighthouse. The Bros encounter the I.D.L.E. on Desolatt Island, a group of kids that
are blocking the access to Desolatt's lighthouse behind their "trials". After relinking Desolatt Island, they then join the heroes.
The Bros then hear that Princess Peach has been spotted on an island, and while trying to find her, they meet Technikki, an engineer that can build a rocket to destroy the Great Lighthouse's wall.
The Bros then find Peach and return to Shipshape Island with her and Starlow, and later down the line Peach joins I.D.L.E, assisting the Bros on their journey on various occasions.
After the 2nd great lightouse is restored, the Bros go and find a doctor that knows how to cure Glohm. It is later revealed that Zokket's true objective is to make an egg containing someone known as "Reclusa" crack to conquer the world.
At the beginning of chapter 4, Shipshape Island gets attacked by Bowser, who was in the midst of an offensive against Zokket's flying fortress, flinging Mario & Luigi onto an island currently
controlled by Bowser's army, that managed to trick the inhabitants that Mario & Luigi are evil, and put a bounty on them. We finally get to see Bowser Jr. which gets more spotlight than you might expect,
having made a new friend in Concordia, tying into the story's whole theme of bonds and brothership. Mario & Luigi escape the island, but they later have to
return to it to spy on Bowser's minions, because the doctor ran out of fruits to cure Glohm, since they know how to get to the island where they grow. And in the meantime,
the Bros also discover that Bowser has built a new castle on that island. After the bros reach the top of Bowser's castle, they have a confrontation with him, in one
of the best Bowser bossfights in the series. After Mario & Luigi beat Bowser, the Extension Corps appear and kidnap Bowser Jr.
The Bros then gather the fruits and go back to Shipshape Island, and after restoring the 4th great lighthouse, they infiltrate Zokket's flying fortress, and after reaching the top and encounter
Zokket, Bowser flies in to rescue Bowser Junior. Zokket then blasts Bowser with her secret weapon, 4 glohm rays straight from the lighthouses, turning him into Glohm Bowser. Mario & Luigi defeat him
once more and free him from Glohm's influence, but they are forced to escape Zokket's fortress and jump down into the sea below. They find themselves once again stranded in the very first island of the game
where Mario awakens, and a mysterious voice guides them towards the origin of that voice, the Great Conductor, Snoutlet's master and the one that opened the portal in the skies that brought everyone
into Concordia. He reveals that Zokket is actually Cozette, that is being mind controlled by the Reclusa Egg, and is responsible for the destruction of the central tree.
Mario & Luigi then need to find an engine part to make Technikki build an engine to fly over Zokket's fortress new barrier. After the Bros gather the engine part in Bowser's Castle,
they basically turn Shipshape Island into an airship, definitely inspired by classic JRPGs of the 90's like Final Fantasy VI.
Then bros then go to Zokket's fortress for the second time, and have a final confrontation with the Extension Corps and Zokket. However, they are unable to
defeat her in time before the Egg cracks, setting Reclusa free, a bizarre mix between a Kirby final boss, a clown, and Undertale's true Flowey, with a monitor as a face.
Cozette is freed from her influence, and Reclusa proceeds to turn Zokket's fortress into a massive red tree in one of the best cutscenes and moments the series has to offer,
yet another thing that instantly reminded me of JRPGs. She then proceeds to turn the sky and sea red and make bizarre purple flowers bloom everywhere. Those flowers
attach themselves onto people's heads and trap them in a virtual reality where all their dreams come true, that will drain them of their life forces until they die. She also
says that after she's done with destroying all of Concordia while she uses the people she trapped as toys, she will do the same to the Mushroom Kingdom.
The Bros have to gather connective energy, born from the bonds of the characters they have met throughout their adventure to breach the Soli-Tree's barrier and defeat the true cause
of everything that went down in Concordia once and for all. After the bros reach the middle of Zokket's, or rather Reclusa's now overgrown fortress, the Bros get trapped into a virtual reality
created by Reclusa, where everyone in the Mushroom Kingdom, Bowser included are friends with each other and are stuck in time loop, gradually getting more distorted.
Mario & Luigi reject and escape the virtual reality by chasing Reclusa inside of it and eventually making her lose her patience. This is in my opinion one of the very best moments in the entire series.
Mario & Luigi finally reach the top of the fortress, and they get attacked by Reclusa's entire army, which bowser takes out in a last ditch effort to make Reclusa pay for what she has done to Bowser Jr. and his army.
The final showdown then begins with the bros chasing Reclusa while riding a giant plug while destroying her projectiles with fire and ice. She then merges with the tree,
and makes some weird piranha plant-like flowers with a battery clamp as their heads appear out of the ground that eat Snoutlet. The bros have to defeat them to get Snoutlet back while dodging the gigantic
tree's attacks in one of the most insane spectacles in any Mario game ever made to spawn another giant plug to reach the tree's core while dodging his projectiles again with fire and ice.
The Bros manage to reach and destroy the core, making Reclusa go out of her shell and sending her into full-on rage, in a last ditch effort to defeat Mario & Luigi. After she's KO'd,
she fakely begs for mercy for then to just mock the Bros and their brothership and transport into a portal where her and the Bros fall indefinitely, and the bros finish her off in an interactive cutscene while falling in the void,
similarly to how Bowser finishes off Dark Bowser in BiS.
After Reclusa is gone for good, Mario & Luigi, Connie, Cozette and Snoutlet return to Shipshape Island for one last time and say their goodbyes before Concordia is fully reunited again
by the central tree and Mario, Luigi, friends and foes are sent back by the Great Conductor to their world. The game ends with Mario & Luigi sleeping in the mushroom kingdom, before a Toad wakes
them up to ask for help, because Bowser is once again attacking Peach's Castle. We then see a shot of the central tree seed that Connie gifted Mario & Luigi before retured to their world starting to grow.
The story and writing are probably the best aspects of Brothership and is definitely one of the best Mario RPG stories ever made, with some of the highest highs in the whole Mario series.
Mario & Luigi Brothership is a great game that truly feels like a celebration of everything Mario & Luigi is about, and a fantastic transition to full 3D.
It's a game that can rival some of the very best Mario RPGs and one of the best Mario games on the Switch, and i can easily reccomend it to Mario RPG veterans and people who want to play their first one alike.
It's a glorious return for Mario & Luigi, and it was 100% worth the agonizing 9 year wait.