Filled to the brim with content aplenty,Mario & Luigi: Brothershipis a wonderful new entry in the Mario & Luigi series that pushes it to new heights. The adventure through Concordia is something special, but seeing it all through is a hard ask.
These heights also come with some questionable lows where the game struggles. With a messy story that can make zero sense and a badly paced opening couple of hours, this adventure has left some sourness that we need to discuss.
9The Ability to Speed Up Shipshape Island
Real-Time Sailing Is Unnecessary
The first five or so hours of Brothership feel like a complete slog. The main problems are the basic battle mechanics being your only option and slow traversal options that frustrate an otherwise fun start. Shipshape Island’s slow travel mechanics really highlight this, as you end up waiting around for minutes as the ship sails past where you need to go.
By the time players have unlocked the option to speed the sailing up, many may have dropped the game due to how dull and slow things feel in the first couple of hours. So why do we not start with the option to speed up Shipshape Island? This would remove the frustrations and leave the start of the game at a better pace.
8Side-Quest Rewards
Empty Fetch Quests That Could Be More
The lengthy adventure through Concordia is filled with hundreds of side-quests to complete, ranging in scope and size. These quests often have a straightforward task as simple as talking to an NPC or defeating a basic enemy, and so there isn’t much drive to do them outside of rewards or completion reasons.
Unfortunately, the rewards are pretty lackluster, commonly giving you basic items such as mushrooms or beans that you can buy at any store. The few good rewards are mainly tied to the Special Quests. This leaves the regular quests being nothing worthwhile outside some wacky dialogue or world-building.
7Why Are They In Concordia?
Was Goomba Number 54 Key To Saving Concordia?
Mario and Luigi are taken to the world of Concordia to help piece it back together, being the only ones who can be due to their unbreakable brotherly bond. Thepowerhouse boss Bowserand kind Peach are also here for reasons of their own. Their minions, however, puzzle us. The only reason they may be here is to make the game feel more Mario-like, but other titles in the series show how refreshing a completely new cast is.
Super Mario Bros. Wondergave us many new enemies and characters who revitalized life in the stale Mario universe. Brothership does this as well, but we wish it went further and gave us some more notable starring roles for the new characters and relied less on the past.
6Obtaining The Bros. Attacks
Butchered Beginnings
Brothership can be called slow in many respects, but the combat takes what feels like forever to have more than just the basic Jump and Hammer attacks. It takes the entire first two islands to even get the Hammers and even longer for the Bros Attacks.
You only obtain such an important battle mechanic after defeating the first mini-boss. This moment ends up feeling squandered by your sigh of relief that finally the combat can start to get interesting. We can understand that the developers wanted players to be eased into each mechanic to not overwhelm them like many other RPGs do, but it takes this too far.
5The Tone
Is This Mario & Luigi Or Final Fantasy?
The Mario & Luigi series is well known for its light-hearted, comedy-centric stories that always keep us laughing. Brothership seems to abandon all of it for a serious tone and an over-the-top JRPG-like antagonist who feels out of place in the colorful world of Concordia.
The story isn’t bad, but the complete shift in tone comes out of nowhere and doesn’t feel right. It goes from what was a relaxing sea-faring adventure connecting some islands to suddenly people being put inside a fake reality containing everything to make them content, so the villain candrain their lives away like a psychological horror game.The tone doesn’t feel like a Mario & Luigi plot.
4Luigi Using The A Button
An Unacceptable Change From Series Past
One of the core series staples of Mario & Luigi is the fun control scheme that involves controlling Mario with the A and X buttons and controlling Luigi with the B and Y buttons. As soon as you enter the first battle with Luigi, you can feel something is immediately off.
For some reason, you have to use the A button to confirm his menus, yet still use B in his attacks. This throws off any veteran of the series and feels wrong, even for new players. Everything else in the game uses B for Luigi, so this just doesn’t make sense in any regard.
3The Great Conductor’s Actions And Purpose
The Greatest Plot Holes
The guardian of all of Concordia, the Great Conductor, is more like a lazy observer than a loving guardian. Instead of directly involving himself, he took Mario and Luigi to the land to save the day and mentored Snoutlet to guide the brothers toward their purpose.
Having the title of guardian while letting the world break apart into many islands makes us so confused. In the end, the brothers do manage to save Concordia, but the Great Conductor plays almost no role outside of giving them the tools they need to fix it. His role in the story feels under-baked the way it is, and he could have done a lot more.
2The Story Pacing
The final act of Brothership is full of incredible action and tension. It is the strongest part of the game and any Mario & Luigi game. The danger the brothers have to face is unlike anything they have ever faced before in the series. There is just a slight problem and that is that getting to the true story is around over 85% of the way through the 50-hour playtime.
We wish that the story had been paced better, as the climax is incredible with wonderful cutscenes and a dire atmosphere. However, thanks to the awkward and slow pacing of the story, many may not even have the patience to get to the best part of the adventure.
1The Battle Plugs
The Best Addition Held Back For Over 10 Hours
Being Brothership’s greatest new mechanic, the Battle Plugs make combat more customizable. They work by changing or adding effects such as de-buffs, status conditions, and bonus effects to your attacks, which is an incredible touch that makes battles much more enjoyable. The ability to use these, however, is given to you quite late into the adventure,at over 10 hours in.
For those grueling 10 hours, you are collecting a resource named Connectar which is only used for the Battle Plugs. Not only are these having no use for a fifth of the adventure just plain ridiculous, but every time you get a bunch, Snoutlet will comment “Oh, I bet we can make something with this later!”, taunting you to collect more despite their currently useless nature.
