HANDS-ON: Mario & Luigi: Brothership is the long awaited return of a beloved series

Mario RPG fans have been eating good lately! After begging for scraps from Nintendo’s table for so long, we were finally fed with some big Switch releases over the past year. First, there were the remakes of Super Mario RPG and Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door. Now, we’re about to get Mario & Luigi: Brothership, a shiny new entry in the fan favorite Mario & Luigi series.

Brothership not only marks the series’ debut on a home console, but also its first wholly new entry since Mario & Luigi: Paper Jam in 2015. After nearly a decade, it’s no wonder some fans had given up hope on ever seeing a new game in the series again, but here we are! In a little under a month, we’ll get to play through an entirely new Mario & Luigi adventure. I got to have some hands-on time with the game ahead of its release, and I’m excited to report that it’s shaping up to be everything you’d hope for from a full fledged Mario & Luigi adventure.

If you’re new to Mario & Luigi games, the basic premise is as follows: You control both of the titular Mario Bros., traveling to various lands in order to complete quests, solve puzzles, jump on platforms, and defeat enemies in turn-based combat. Brothership has some great new elements, but that classic formula is still very much intact. One of the biggest new features is hinted at right in the title: the Brothership. It’s not just a catchy name, it’s also a reference to the vehicle you’ll be using to traverse the open seas throughout the entire game.

Brothership takes place in the land of Concordia. Concordia is made up of a series of islands which were once linked via magical connections in the sky that strongly resemble electric cables and plugs. Unfortunately for Concordia (but fortunately for allowing this video game to exist), those connections have become severed. Your ultimate goal in Brothership is to travel to all the islands you can find, and reestablish those links.

You’ll get around from island to island via the Brothership itself, a large, boat-shaped landmass populated with various NPCs and unique item shops. Don’t expect this to be a simple vehicle to get you from place to place, it’s a genuine island full of activities that are worth exploring. There’s a reason they named the game after it, after all! It’s big enough that I wasn’t able to fully explore it during my limited playtime.

You’ll be returning to the Brothership after all your missions, and one of the best parts about it is that it changes as the game progresses. The more islands you visit, the more characters you’ll encounter, and the more you’ll start to see those characters visiting your ship. Often those NPCs will have new dialogue and quests for you to take on. In this way, the Brothership acts as your own personal mobile hub world, expanding and changing throughout your journey. It’s a feature that I always love seeing in games, because it really makes the world feel alive, and rewards you for your exploration. The same goes for the other islands that you’ll visit during your travels. As you link them together, their inhabitants will move around, giving you new reasons to revisit old locales.

As you sail around on your majestic boat-island, you’ll have some freedom of choice in where to go next. At any given time you’ll see a handful of islands on your map that you can choose to visit in any order. Some of these will be main quest islands, while others will contain optional side content. The Brothership will follow currents by default, automatically slowing down when approaching an island. You can either choose to stop there, or tell the ship to speed up again and move on.

You don’t have direct control of the ship, but you can choose when you want to switch currents or jump off to a local island. This limited amount of control is a nice touch that keeps you engaged with where you are on the map at any given time. You’ll get the sensation that the world is a living, breathing place that could exist with or without you. If you’re a fan of other seafaring exploration games like The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker or Spiritfarer, you should get a kick out of this navigation system.

The first area I got to check out was Twistee Island, which will be either the second or third island you encounter after starting your game. Here I needed to help a character named Dyode who was in desperate need of some hair gel in order to look cool for their upcoming musical performance.

If you couldn’t tell from that description, Brothership takes place in a wacky world of weirdos with pun-filled names like “Technikki” and copious amounts of tongue-in-cheek humor. The trademarks of the series are all here, including Mario and Luigi’s fast talking gibberish noises that stand in for their dialogue, an effect that still makes me laugh pretty much every time.

That silliness and whimsy is also reflected in the look of the world, which is larger and more vibrant than ever. As this is the series’ debut on more powerful hardware, you can expect to see them taking advantage of the newer technology. That’s not to say that Brothership is a graphical powerhouse, but it has more depth and dimension than its predecessors.

Animations are silky smooth, usually hitting with superb comic timing, especially when it comes to Mario and Luigi’s cartoonish antics. The NPCs I encountered tended to be a bit stiff in comparison, but their fun designs made up the balance. In general, the world is pleasant, colorful, and comfy. Everything from the cute characters to the bouncy tunes make for an inviting, smile-inducing experience.

Obviously, you’ll be spending a lot of your time in combat. The timed button attacks and defensive moves that you probably remember return once again. Anyone new to the Mario RPG games will quickly adjust to hitting the A (or B for Luigi) button at just the right time in order to deal some extra damage or to dodge an incoming attack. It’s as satisfying a mechanic as ever, and it feels even snappier this time around.

Just about every aspect of the game feels snappy, in fact. You’ll be in and out of battles before you know what hit you (an enemy, probably), with minimal load times to get you back to the overworld. There’s a constant need for awareness thanks to those timed button presses, so there’s hardly ever a time when you aren’t actively engaged with the game.

The timed button presses shouldn’t feel too repetitive either, because there seems to be a ton of variety in how each enemy attacks. You’ll definitely need to face a foe a few times before you get the hang of their patterns. For example, one bird-like enemy might fly out and grab Luigi, requiring Mario to respond at the right moment and knock him back down to the ground again. We’ll see if there’s more repetition in the full game, but in the two islands I visited, most enemies seemed wholly unique.

The enemies can be aggressive coming after you in the wild too, and aren’t always easily avoided in tight spaces. Fortunately, there’s no penalty for running from battle, so you can always flee if you just don’t feel like fighting.

In addition to standard attacks, you also have the option to use Bros. Attacks, super moves which require BP (Bros. Points, of course). Bros. Attacks are more elaborate moves which require a sequence of timed button prices, and they’re generally accompanied by some stellar animations.

New to the series is the “Battle Plugs” mechanic. Battle Plugs are a new form of power-ups or passive effects that you can unlock and equip as the game goes on. At the start, you won’t be able to have many active at a time, but you’ll unlock more slots as you go. Some examples of Battle Plug effects include making your attacks stronger against flying or spiky enemy types, increasing the window for your button timing, supplying you with automatic healing mushrooms, or dropping spike balls onto enemies for additional damage after an attack.

One of the great things about Battle Plugs is that you’re free to switch them in and out on the fly, even in the middle of a battle, with no penalty whatsoever. Some plugs work better with others, or even create special combos when paired together, and the game clearly wants you to experiment freely. Swap Plugs in and out based on which enemies you’re currently facing, or if you decide you need some more defensive power - it’s totally up to you.

This is the new mechanic that seems to really shake up how battles play out. I know I’m looking forward to unlocking them all so I can mix and match and find the combo that best suits me.

As you might expect, successfully defeating enemies in battle will reward you with experience points. Instead of traditional experience point numbers, your progress toward the next level will be indicated by red and green flagpoles on the post-battle screen. It’s a nice thematic touch that feels designed to be as friendly and welcoming as possible (like a lot of things in Brothership seem to be).

When you reach a new level, you’ll get the usual stat upgrades, but every few levels is marked as a special milestone upgrade. These milestones let you customize each brother to your liking by choosing an extra bonus for them, giving you something to look forward to as you keep playing.

My playtime was spent mostly on two island locations, Twistee Island, and a later one called Merrygo Island. While Merrygo offered a bit more complexity and challenge, both featured a variety of fun puzzles and quests. I really appreciated that the combat and dialogue was broken up by some very unique side activities and minigames.

For instance, in one section you’ll need to navigate through a forest without touching any bugs (while carrying someone who’s deathly afraid of bugs). Later on, you’ll get to take part in a rhythm/dance minigame, as well as find your way through a maze of moveable walls. Nothing felt repetitive in my time with the game. That bodes well if they can keep it up throughout the rest of the adventure!

Another of my favorite new mechanics in Brothership is “Luigi Logic”. They’re really taking advantage of this game being about both brothers, and this is a prime example of how. In certain areas, you’ll be able to press L to activate Luigi Logic, which allows Luigi to help you out with various tasks.

Sometimes, Luigi Logic tasks can be simple, such as having him collect coins or power-ups for you while you take care of something else (SO convenient). They can also be more advanced, such as having Luigi stay in position to press a button for a puzzle, while you move to higher ground to see its effects. Luigi can even transform into wacky new forms, like a flying saucer, in order to fly you across gaps.

It feels like a lot of effort went into fleshing Luigi out from a gameplay perspective, so he’s more than just a second green Mario following you around on screen. In a way it simulates playing cooperatively with another player, which is perfect for a game that’s all about the relationship between these two brothers.

I only got to play Mario & Luigi: Brothership for a little over an hour, and it already feels like I don’t have enough room to mention all the little quirks and details I experienced. Here are just a few:

The brothers can now pass objects or back and forth to each other in order to carry them to new heights! Some enemies can spawn additional enemies in battle, with some unique and rare spawns appearing depending on how your fight goes! There’s an endless minigame on Twistee Island where you toss a ball back and forth between each brother without dropping it! You have a flying companion who looks a LOT like a pig, but insists that they are NOT a pig! Princess Peach is also in the game! In just about every nook and cranny of the game, I was stumbling over something clever or interesting to explore.

Nintendo is promising a big, expansive adventure with this one, and I only caught a glimpse of it. If you’re a longtime Mario & Luigi fan, you already know you’re going to love this. If you’re new to the series, this will hopefully be a great place to pick it up. Look forward to it when Mario & Luigi: Brothership drops on Switch on November 7th, 2024.