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The handheld Mario & Luigi RPG series has always been defined by its limitations. The first game’s unique control scheme, mapping A to Mario and B to Luigi, was a clever twist on the timing-based combat of Super Mario RPG, built to work on a system with just two face buttons. Later iterations maintained its heart and humor with additional elements, but it has always been the smaller, more modest handheld Mario RPG series in contrast to the Paper Mario series on consoles. Based on a hands-on preview with Mario & Luigi: Brothership, it looks as if the sweet little handheld series is finally being given the premium treatment on the hybrid Nintendo Switch, without losing its charmingly goofy sense of humor.
It’s been almost a decade since a new Mario & Luigi game released, so it’s only natural that Brothership would be a significant visual upgrade over anything we’ve seen before. Even still, the new look is immediately striking, thanks to a beautiful, bright and cheery animated style that lets the brothers squash and stretch like Looney Tunes characters. Mario & Luigi has always focused heavily on the dynamic between the two brothers, so this element lets the animations emphasize their personalities. Mario as always is the steadfast hero, while Luigi is more of a well-meaning but overconfident goofball.
This time, the super bros are magically plucked from their homey Mushroom Kingdom to a mysterious new land called Concordia. This land was once a single world held together by the glowing threads of a magical tree, but the tree became corrupted and the islands split apart. Mario and Luigi have come into possession of a new sapling to restore the world tree, which they house on their floating sea vessel. So they set off from island to island to link them back together with the tree. It’s a sweet concept that emphasizes bringing people together.
The people of Concordia have a distinct look that can only be described as: plug faces. They look like the plugs of your electrical outlet, albeit with some distinctive features to stand out from each other. Likewise, joining an island back together with the main world tree involves connecting a shimmering plug-like device, so there’s certainly a theme at play here.
Sailing is done automatically and surprisingly reminded me of a cross between two different Zelda games: Wind Waker and Spirit Tracks. You choose a set of currents to ride along, and you’ll journey in a circle on that current repeatedly until you scope out a destination using your spyglass. Since the ship doubles as your home base and it travels independently once you chart a course, you can roam around and do some shopping while en route to your destination. While the major mission-critical islands are obvious, there is a sense of discovery as well, since you can find other islands or landmarks to explore using your spyglass. And the feeling of sailing across the open ocean in a brightly colored landscape was Wind Waker through and through.
Once you arrive at a mission island, you need to find its lighthouse, which will come down to completing a themed quest. In the first island I visited, the Concordians were struggling from severely bad vibes, thanks to their Groovemaster dance leader being too ashamed to show his face due to a bad hair day. So Mario and Luigi had to venture into a scary forest to find the vendor who made the finest-quality hair wax, restore the Groovemaster’s confidence, and get the citizens dancing again.
Traversing the world lets you jump independently as Mario and Luigi as always, but this time, Luigi operates more automatically. If you clear a gap as Mario, Luigi will follow automatically without needing to precisely time and stagger his own jumps. The platforming still doesn’t feel great, exactly–this certainly won’t be mistaken for a real Mario platformer–but automating Luigi definitely helps alleviate some frustration I’ve felt with past games. You can also tap L when prompted to activate “Luigi Logic,” which sometimes activates special contextual actions to complete a puzzle, and other times just lets him take care of busywork like smashing boxes to find some coins. This definitely makes Luigi a second-banana to Mario, but he doesn’t seem to mind.
When you encounter an enemy in the world, you can get a boost by initiating with a well-timed jump. That launches you into the battle screen, where Mario and Luigi operate with their own buttons for jumps and dodges. The Mario & Luigi twist on timing-based combat has always involved controlling both brothers simultaneously and carefully reading enemy attacks to know which brother they’re targeting. That’s present here too, and on top of that, your attacks are their own canvas to show off the brothers’ animated antics. Most of your timing prompts will involve some interaction between the two–for example, a hammer attack might bounce back, only to have Luigi smack your hammer with his own for an extra finisher. These had a nice level of variety to them, with different animations triggering based on which brother you’re using, which attack you’re using, and which enemy you’re targeting.
I was, however, slightly disoriented by the way the menu confirmation works. Mario’s button prompts are always mapped to A and Luigi’s are always mapped to B, as usual for the series. But when selecting an attack from the menu, A is confirm and B is cancel regardless of which brother you’re selecting. That means remembering that when choosing a Mario attack, you use A to confirm and then A to perform the timing prompts, but when choosing a Luigi attack, you use A to confirm and then immediately switch to B for the timing prompts. I’m sure it would come to me with practice, but during the short preview session, I got my wires crossed and flubbed the timing on more than one occasion.
After a short break, we visited another island, which was a little later in the game and had some more complexities at play. The centerpiece of this island was an enormous circular maze in the center, filled with enemies, and different areas that could be used to rotate the interior or exterior of the maze to find your way through. This time, Mario was able to climb to a tall perch, giving you a bird’s-eye view, while Luigi stayed behind and manned the rotation. It wasn’t extremely difficult to solve, but it provided a little satisfying friction.
More difficult than the puzzle were the new combat encounters, but this second island was also meant to show off another new feature. A set of special passive abilities called Plugs could be equipped, giving you specialized benefits like 100% critical chance against certain enemy types. These are purchased using a special currency found by exploring the world, and the abilities themselves can be prepared ahead of time or hot-swapped during battle. What made them stand out was how they could be combined for much more powerful, almost game-breaking effects. With just two plug slots, I could equip one that guaranteed a critical hit on a flying enemy, and another that rewarded critical hits with a powerful explosion that hit surrounding enemies. When combined, I could simply target a flying enemy in the center and make short work of the whole field. I was told that more slots open up as you go and the abilities continue to stack, and just from the small taste of this system I could imagine tinkering with combinations to craft my own powerful strategies. They do come with some limitations, like a set number of uses before they need to recharge. But as a nice quality-of-life feature, you don’t use a charge of an ability if it couldn’t have triggered. For example, if you keep your anti-spike ability equipped and hit a non-spike enemy, that won’t count against your uses. This effectively reduces the need to babysit your abilities between each turn.
As you gain levels, you’ll continue powering up your stats, including the fan-favorite “Stache” stat. And as a new wrinkle, every eight levels you also pick from a list of specialized, permanent upgrades. One might give you an extra HP for each level from then on, while another might permanently boost your EXP gain. These can’t be re-rolled, so it gives you a deeper level of decision-making about how you want to shape your Mario and Luigi strategy.
Though we didn’t see the feature in action, we were told that tethering new islands will allow NPCs to move freely between all the other islands you’ve joined, opening up new side quests and other opportunities for exploration. Each island seems fairly quick to complete initially, but the ability to go back and find new quests suggests a potentially deep layer of exploration.
Just how deep it goes remains to be seen in the full game, but what I’ve seen so far is certainly impressive. The Mario & Luigi series has long been a de facto second-tier Mario RPG, the little sibling of the dual series. Mario & Luigi: Brothership is an opportunity to come into its own on a bigger stage, and thanks to a comical animated presentation and some surprisingly deep RPG hooks, it’s finally moving beyond its own limitations.
