- Platforms
- Nintendo Switch
- Publisher
- Nintendo
- Rating
- E
- Genre
- RPG
- Release date
- Nov 7, 2024
Overall Score
Rating Overview
Rating Summary
In Mario & Luigi: Brothership, the iconic duo embarks on a nautical adventure in the new setting of Concordia, a vast sea dotted with islands that were once part of a single landmass. The Uni-Tree, which held the islands together, has wilted, causing them to drift apart. Mario and Luigi, along with a young researcher, pilot a ship housing a new Uni-Tree sapling. Their mission is to reconnect the islands by linking them to the Great Lighthouses that amplify the sapling’s power.
The Good:
- The artwork is beautiful.
The Bad:
- The gameplay is mind-numbingly repetitive
- The combat controls don’t feel as responsive as they should
- The story is barely existent (kind of an issue with an RPG)
- Puzzles are overly simplistic and practically solve themselves.
The Ugly:
- None
Mario & Luigi: Brothership Review
Brothership possesses all of the requisite RPG accoutrement – character leveling, side quests, gear, and item acquisition. Unfortunately, it’s all very rudimentary and unimpressive. The character leveling system shows Mario and Luigi’s advancement but only allows players to manually modify one special aspect of each character every seven levels, which wouldn’t be such a big deal if the combat weren’t so tedious.
In fact, everything in Mario & Luigi: Brothership seems designed to make players lament that there’s more to do. One of the major reasons for this is the way in which most puzzles are solved. Anyone who’s played an RPG in the last forty years knows that puzzles are the key ingredient to maintaining player interest. Unfortunately, Brothership goes out of its way to suck the fun out of most of them by all but solving them for you. In fact, Luigi has an “inspiration” mode in which he literally alights with a leap in logic, which results in either a cut screen requiring you to do nothing more than hit a button to initiate his actions or, at best, highlights the obstacles, switches, etc needed to move forward, often accompanied by a bit of dialogue to direct you to the puzzle’s solution perfectly. The result is that the player is left feeling as though they are doing little more than steering on a track with limited turns.
While everything in Mario & Luigi: Brothership is repetitive, the combat is the worst offender. Turn-based and very reminiscent of early RPGs in which the heroes enter the combat screen on one side and the various monsters on the right, the combat options are limited, and most are only slight variations of one another, as are the monsters.
Ultimately, adults will feel their brains seeping out of their heads very early into the game, and even kids (if they are anything like my 10-year-old son) will eventually grow bored. If you’re looking for a good Mario game, get yourself Super Mario 3D World + Bowser’s Fury.
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James Carrick
James Carrick is a passionate film enthusiast with a degree in theater and philosophy. James approaches dramatic criticism from a philosophic foundation grounded in aesthetics and ethics, offering insight and analysis that reveals layers of cinematic narrative with a touch of irreverence and a dash of snark.
I’m going to have to disagree with you about the “Chivalry Taken Out Back, Shot, and Drowned” bullet point.
Knowing Nintendo, it is highly unlikely that it took the implications you refer to into consideration when developing this plot point. What is far more likely is that it took into consideration the reputation of the damsel in distress trope itself.
Over the past decade or so, the trope has received criticism not only from radical feminists who think the trope itself is sexist, but also from ordinary players who see it as unoriginal and anti-innovative. Nintendo appears to have taken such criticism to heart, which is why the trope has been much less present in the Switch era (2017-present). In fact, since the Switch era began Peach has needed to be rescued in just five games: Super Mario Odyssey; Super Smash Bros. Ultimate; Luigi’s Mansion 3; Paper Mario: The Origami King; and Mario & Luigi: Brothership. Although it is unclear whether Nintendo went this route to please the radical feminists, ordinary players, or both, it has nonetheless drawn the ire of conservative players who see it as a subtle insult because, from their point of view, it amounts to calling them, personally, sexist for enjoying playing the older games.
After Paper Mario: The Origami King came out, Nintendo wouldn’t release another game featuring Peach needing to be saved for over four years. During this period the movie came out, which led to speculation that the trope would be discarded entirely going forward. While this speculation has since been definitively disproven by Mario & Luigi: Brothership, what that game actually does with the trope can’t be considered a total victory for either side of the “is the damsel in distress trope sexist” debate. Why? Because the trope is optional as opposed to mandatory. While on paper it seems like a win-win because it gives both sides the opportunity to choose the story they want, in practice it neither affirms nor denies the validity of each side’s respective argument. Neither side sees this as a good thing, because from their perspectives it is a binary choice. One argument is valid, and the other is not.
Perhaps that was Nintendo’s intention? If so, from a purely pragmatic standpoint it’s a genius move. But from an ideological standpoint, it’s a disappointment.
This game doesn’t have a single ounce of wokeness in it. You’re wrong.
“Oh no, there’s a possibility that Peach isn’t a damsel in distress for 0,5% of the game’s time. It’s enough for me to dissuade you from buying it.”
After Paper Mario: The Origami King came out, Nintendo wouldn’t release another game featuring Peach needing to be saved for over four years. During this period the movie came out, which led to speculation that the trope would be discarded entirely going forward. While this speculation has since been definitively disproven by Mario and Luigi: Brothership, what that game actually does with the trope can’t be considered a total victory for either side of the “is the damsel in distress trope sexist” debate. Why? Because the trope is optional as opposed to mandatory.
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