Test - Mario & Luigi: Brothership : Test: Nice, beautiful, harmless

There was certainly no shortage of Super Mario role-playing games last year. After the two successful remakes of Super Mario RPG and Paper Mario: The Legend of the Aeon Gate, a third representative of the genre with a similar taste is now appearing. Unfortunately, it's not just the level of saturation that makes us barely warm to Mario & Luigi: Brothership.

Don't ask for logic when Mario and Luigi throw themselves into a role-playing game. It's always about a game in the purest interpretation imaginable. Silly, childlike and perhaps even naive in every way. Anyone who hasn't figured this out in 2024 will probably never be able to understand the philosophy of the Japanese video game veterans for the rest of their lives.

That's exactly why it's no use looking for greater meaning in the plot of Mario & Luigi: Brothership. The terminology alone contains fantasy, but also imbecility. Drift islands? Basically island ships, i.e. land that sails across the water? Can it get any more oxymoronic? Don't worry about it, it'll just give you a headache.

This refers to the split remains of a country called Konektania, which are scattered around the sea and want to be reassembled into a large landmass with the help of the plumber brothers. As soon as they discover these islands, they fire a cannon at their landmass and look for a large connecting cable that connects the remote islands to the main central island, so that the large energy tree in the middle is supplied with juice. Although a boss usually has something against it.

You don't need to worry about everything else about how, where and what, as it's all lost in the endless rhubarb typical of role-playing games. The main thing is that the brothers are on the road together again and fight rounds of cuddly monsters on their quest.

Strong together: the combat system

Battles against monster parties are one of the series' consistent strengths, and this spin-off is no different. The Mustache brothers fight in rounds and help each other with every action. If one swings the hammer, his brother stands behind him and hits the other with his hammer to intensify the blow.

If Mario jumps onto a monster's head and is thrown back, Luigi catches him so his brother can launch a second attack. Or they kick turtle shells back and forth in the best one-two style until one of the two sends the thing out at full speed and crushes a whole horde of opponents like bowling pins.

As usual, timing is the most important factor. Only if you execute commands on the controller at the correct time will you get the maximum damage out of an attack. However, you also have to make sure you give the right command. If you want Mario to do it, you always need the A button or the X button. When it's Luigi's turn, your fingers must be on B or Y. This also applies to parades and other defensive actions. For example, if an opponent throws a projectile and you want to jump over it.

For those familiar with Mario role-playing games, this is nothing new. No matter which offshoot you started with, whether on the console or a handheld, the basic rules have always been the same. Only the detail in the execution changed. So if you already have experience, you can find the system within five seconds and have fun right away.

Where are they all?

Everything sounds great. Then why our comment that we wouldn't warm up to Mario & Luigi: Brothership so well? Quite simply: the mechanics are right, but the content is too generic for us. Because even the most fun combat rules become boring if you repeat them sixteen times in a row against the same opponents who always defend themselves in the same way.

On some of the islands you visit, you will only find a single enemy type in two color variations, and since you want to be prepared for the boss, you farm as many experience points as possible to level up. The fact that you can surprise the troops visible on the upper world from behind to strike first makes no difference, because from the third island at the latest, opponents tend to revise every first attack with a healing spell.

So that means you go through the entire battle several times in exactly the same way, with exactly the same attack methods. If anything, the only thing that changes is the order in which enemies strike back, but since even their formations are often the same, you switch to mental cruise control after the third party.

It's a real shame, because in its good moments the game gets a lot out of the combat system. As soon as you encounter plugs (i.e. opposing socket creatures) and not just faceless creatures, the demands increase a little. However, the combat system only really comes into its own with the bosses, because these big chunks always change their strategy.

Better yet: they show certain weaknesses, which Luigi analyzes as the smartest of the two brothers. Special actions that involve pipes, cannons and other peripheral objects in the battle area provide strategic spice. How nice it would be if such peripheral objects were available throughout the game.

After all: the plug system, which gives you freely assignable skills for each of the brothers, at least gives you a little freedom to develop your own strengths. Although they can only be used to a limited extent, they can also tear a lot of holes in the hit point cushion of stronger groups by increasing the probability of critical hits or making area-wide attack combinations possible. Players who like to experiment combine as they see fit and can achieve a lot here.

Between walls of text and idleness

Far be it from us to classify Mario & Luigi: Brothership as monotonous. But the accusation resonates in many aspects at least to the extent that we have to be careful not to use the word “generic” in an inflationary way. The entire design suffers from this.

The graphic style of the new Mario role-playing game is beautiful. Thick outlines, bright colors and a lot of comic book character give this episode a distinctive touch to the series, which was previously only at home on Nintendo's handhelds.

It's just Mario. Somewhere between brightly colored bombardment of cuteness and wonderful carefreeness lies a piece of childhood happiness that Nintendo conjures up time after time. Not always immediately successful, but now so practiced that it couldn't go wrong to a large extent.

Maybe it's because of this routine that the character design in Mario & Luigi: Brothership doesn't stick. Is the word “any” too harsh a judgement? Perhaps. There is nothing inherently reprehensible behind the idea: small creatures whose faces are modeled on American sockets. Yeah, that's something. But unfortunately there is also little substance that leaves something behind in the long term.

Mario and Luigi babble in wonderful fake Italian, which seems quite amusing when the game starts, but it wears out just as much as the poorly conveyed humor of your companion named Watts, who looks like a flying piggy bank but insists that the slots are open his supposed nose are eyes.

This may seem cute at first. Cute alone is a bad way to live in a world in which numerous video game characters compete for attention day in and day out. If it wasn't a Mario game, but an RPG with any number of heroes, the design would probably fly under the radar.

The fact that the game's story gives little material to the design makes it even clearer. Yes, the strange island ships are supposed to be connected by the mustachioed heroes using extra-long power cables, but that's what this world has in common with its inhabitants.

Even exploring the seas is like being on rails. You choose a current on the map and wait until you discover a new island. Oh, how exciting! And the islands? Well. Pretty okay, I would say. Graphically beautiful, but unspectacular. Snow and lava themes don't cut it because they're part of the basics of the role-playing landscape.

When all the characters have endlessly long conversations in which nothing of value is said, tutorials take three times longer than you would like and every introduction to a new area, no matter how trivial, is introduced with a long tracking shot, at some point your patience will break.

Brotherly competition

Not everything is eaten as hot as it is cooked. That's why you shouldn't take our criticism as harshly as it comes across on paper. Mario & Luigi: Brothership does not fail in its role as an entry-level role-playing game. It doesn't hurt anyone, it's just that the fun doesn't unfold to the fullest because many possibilities remain unused. Because it gets too stuck in a “it’s Mario, so it’s any good” routine.

And sometimes also because good ideas were not thought through. For example, the small puzzles that you have to solve on the islands in order to get to the boss. They consistently require cooperation between Mario and Luigi, but with a few exceptions (such as when they both have to throw objects around with their hammers), they only allow Mario to control while Luigi moves automatically. It's unfortunate when the AI ​​doesn't think properly.

In time-critical puzzles, Luigi sometimes doesn't give you time to move forward, and in skill tasks he occasionally gets in the way. It's almost as if Luigi is working against his brother rather than with him. Everything remains solvable, but you just roll your eyes.

Other tasks over which you have complete control are too trivial. As funny as it may look when the brothers pose in a dance pose and then transform into a whirling UFO that overcomes abysses, this solution to a trivial obstacle overcoming, shot at sparrows with cannons, seems unspectacular.