Mario and Luigi: Brotherhood is Nintendo’s most crucial game on Nintendo Switch this holiday season. How is this platform duo’s latest RPG adventure shaping up? According to the novel batch of previews, it’s as stunning as you’d expect, though perhaps it lacks that spark that could take it to the next level or feel like a true evolution of the long-running handheld series.
Out November 7 Mario and Luigi: Brotherhood sees the titular brothers explore a novel tropical island region called Concordia, where they meet ancient friends and novel enemies on their turn-based, combat-fueled journey. This is the first installment in the series that began on the Game Boy Advance to appear on more powerful hardware, and the 3D remake looks great while maintaining the bright, cartoonish look of the earlier games. But how does it play?
The game involves connecting separate islands to the main Shipsale hub. Mario and Luigi’s jump attacks are still controlled with their respective A and B buttons, but a novel feature called Luigi Logic allows the taller brother to wander around things alone or automatically track Mario around the game’s more varied terrain. Meanwhile, the series’ rhythmic turn-based combat is enhanced with novel items called combat plug-ins, which players craft and which provide special bonuses to critical hit rate and other statistics.
Andy Robinson at VGC writes that the game “feels like a triumphant finale in the year of Mario’s return to RPGs.” He added that during his demo, the game ran smoothly despite all the visual improvements (unlike the recent frame rate stutter in The Legend of Zelda: Echoes of Wisdom), making the experience overall “lively and dynamic, just like the classic games that spawned it.”
Eric Francisco at GamesRadar was similarly impressed, not necessarily because of the core gameplay, but the overall vibe. “It is obvious that there are few mechanical innovations in this successor,” he writes. “Yet small the things, dressings and toppings for this mushroom dish had me thinking about it for days. They are enough to completely justify this fraternal meeting.
Tom Phillips at Eurogamer he thought the game was equally enjoyable despite its familiar formula and repetitive battles, thanks in vast part to all the little touches and quirky characters that populate its world. “I watched brothers turn into spaceships, get caught in combat by a sneaky enemy attack pattern, go on a quest to retrieve hair wax for a faded Concordian pop star – I found a lot in Mario and Luigi: Brotherhood it made me smile,” he writes.
Michael McWhertor at Polygon he praised some of the game’s novel ideas, even though he found the hands-on demo a bit more uneven. “The most enticing aspects of this game are its depth of combat, branching narrative, and cast of colorful characters inspired by electrical outlets,” he writes. “I had some reservations about the gameplay – the game ran a bit sluggish and battles didn’t feel as speedy as on previous mobile devices Mario and Luigis yes – but I’m still excited about the novel entry in Mario and Luigi franchise after all.”
Steve Watts at GameSpot had a more detailed critique that I found unnecessarily frustrating without the option to swap controls in the settings. “However, I was a bit confused by the way menu confirmation works,” he writes. “Mario’s button prompts are always assigned to A and Luigi’s are always assigned to B, as usual in this series. But when you select an attack from the menu, A means confirm and B means cancel, regardless of which brother you choose. This means that remembering that when selecting Mario’s attack, you use A to confirm and then A for timing prompts, but when selecting Luigi’s attack, you use A to confirm and then immediately switch to B for timing prompts synchronization. I’m sure it would come to my mind with practice, but during the short preview session I got confused and mistimed more than once.
Leanne Butkovic at IGN was cautious about making any grand announcements due to limited demo time, but came away hopeful that the latest release would be possible Mario and Luigi has enough fuel in the tank for the entire adventure. “There is such a chance Brotherhood ends as the story progresses or the use of combat plug-ins becomes routine,” he writes. “But given that so many other aspects of the gameplay immediately felt so well thought out, I hope the series has learned a lot from five games and two remakes to create something that feels fresh and whole.”
Mario and Luigi: Brotherhood this is one of the last chances for the Switch to go out with a bang, although people have been predicting it for years, even as Nintendo continues to extend the life of its portable hybrid to make it the longest in the history of console creation. At least it seems destined to bring joy and please crowds at the end of the year.
