It’s good when Nintendo bring back franchises from the past. Even better when they bring something back and it turns out good… which is usually all of the time. I’m hard pressed to remember one that was bad, perhaps I’ve stricken it from my memory. But anyway let’s continue 2025 with more positivity as we see the return of the Mario and Luigi rpg series.

It was 2018 when the last Mario and Luigi game came out, 2015 if you don’t count the remakes. So it has been a decent amount of time since a new entry came out, and this is the first time it’s been on a home console namely the Switch. Sure you can play it as a handheld, and the series till this point has only been on handhelds. But anyway the return of the franchise saw its debut on a stronger system.

Can’t really say it needs to be a stronger system though. One of the good things about the cartoony styles is it can be timeless in its designs. Many people prefer the original designs in the Mario and Luigi games to their remakes as they had more charm to them. This isn’t a bad thing against Brothership, just saying it has that cartoony charm.

The game sees the brothers venture into a new world (hashtag Mario and Luigi Brothership is an Isekai) namely the ocean world of Concordia. Full of Plug/Socket and other electrical appliance references. All the regular people for example have plug socket faces. The brothers must connect the separated Floating Islands, linking them up to the Central Brothership with its Unitree.

If you can’t guess from the name of the central point, there is a major theme of bonds and connections going on. The initial incident of things going wrong in the world had the islands separated and your job is bringing them together, and its peoples. And those people are the colourful eccentric bunch you have come to expect from the Mario and Luigi games, not the no one but Toads that happened in Paper Mario following its third game.

Game play has you controlling primarily just Mario in the Overworld now, with Luigi following and mirroring you. If jumping over something, Luigi, while you can make him, will just do it as Mario does. Abilities that have the brothers combine their skills to open up new paths are unlocked as you play through the story, ranging from making a UFO to go over longer distances, to ice and fire ability to… you can guess.

Those that have played the earlier games (and liked them) are happy to find the battles work in much the same way. A turn based rpg based on whose speed is higher goes first and if high enough you can have multiple moves before your foe. There are button inputs as you attack or are attached to effect battle. With this game though they may be added a little too much to the regular attacks as when both brothers are active you have to press about 3 buttons timed for jump attacks as the other brother comes in to boost the attack of their partner. Brother moves are the Big Special Attacks that are unlocked as you play through the story and use up the BP resource every time you use them for big flashy moves. While some may complain about the mini game nature of these attacks, it’s kind of a standard element of the series and some of the out there ones are rather enjoyable. That said some of the later ones get a bit too complicated for me to reasonably do those, preferring for some simpler but still highly damaging ones as to not waste a turn with a failure.

The new mechanic for this game is the Battle Plugs. Unlocked shortly into the second section of the game, these are plugs that give bonus effects in battle. They can range from a damage buff against certain types of enemies, Automatic use of items, and some very powerful ones like automatic excellents on attacks (I used this when I wanted to use one of those brother moves that I didn’t feel confident in pulling off) or even instant bonus action. As you go through the game you unlock more slots and plugs so some combinations late on make fights very easy, though they then have to recharge so then it’s regular fights till you get a quick auto win combination ready again.

As I played through the game and levelled up enough, I was unlocking the customization of the characters. I’m not talking about the equip-able items which are there. As you reach a certain level you go up in rank. With a rank up you get a choice of traits to give the character that lasts the entire game, but you can only pick one each rank up, though the last gives 2. In the end I gave Luigi a build that focused on Luck and by going all in on that… I was doing so much nutty damage by the end the final boss went down very fast.

I have about two issues with the game. The nature of the story means it’s very much a going to a set location, solving problem, then onto next location without them being fully one. Each location is a separate island rather than a single grand map with regions. The other main issue, is the lack of bosses. There are bosses and they are great fun, good mechanics that make each fight memorable and unique. But there’s often not enough of them. There isn’t a single boss per island, it’s a lot fewer, and one of the later regions doesn’t see you fight a single boss till nearly the very end of that section. There also is not anything to do post final boss. No extra hard optional bosses that are designed to be faced by players who have beaten the game. There are 3 optional extra hard bosses, but those are not post game. They are the hardest bosses in the game but it’s just harder versions of previous major bosses. Still well worth doing since they each give powerful equipment that if beaten early enough will mean not needing anything else for a good while. Just would like a bit more bosses to face and something to do after beating the final boss to show more off on my super Luigi build.

Is this a good game though? well yes. It has that charm the Mario and Luigi games had and I was missing with the presumed death of the franchise following those 2 remakes. The combat system did not get overly cluttered like Paper Jam did and the new additions do add some fun moments of feeling a bit overpowered, even if only for a little bit. It’s well worth your time and for me that was over 40 hours that, lack of bosses in some areas aside, felt like a very memorable journey.

Rating: 🎮🎮🎮🎮🎮