As the title screen booted up, my hopes rose like the wind that fills the sails of great ships. But my hopes, like an anchor, would soon sink into a dark sea of disappointment. The Nintendo video game, “Mario & Luigi: Brothership,” was a disappointment for players and a disgrace to the Mario and Luigi franchise as a whole.
“Mario and Luigi: Brothership” is a game that runs exclusively on the Nintendo Switch. It costs $60 and can be bought on the Nintendo website or in many general stores and game stores, such as Target or Gamestop. It uses a lot of nautical references, which is appropriate for a game set mostly on an ocean. These examples include lightowers, cannons, and coral reefs.
The game begins with Mario and Luigi transporting to a land known as Concordia. This land was once unified by a magical tree whose nectar held the land together. But the tree was destroyed, causing the world to shatter into a collection of drifting islands. Mario and Luigi meet a young girl named Connie, who has a magic watering can that helps the tree to grow, and has a mission to unite the islands once again.
Mario and Luigi join this mission and navigate their giant boat-shaped home base to other islands. There, they will have to complete trials to reach the lighthouse on each island to reconnect them with the tree’s nectar. These trials build the majority of the game.
There was one aspect of the game that far exceeded my expectations. The combat mechanics have an aspect of Pokemon combat, which really surprised and pleased me.While there are a lot of gamers who just don’t prefer Mario games to other Nintendo games, this really is an interesting twist on typical Mario game combat. Mario combat is live time, which means that enemies move at the same time as players, rather than Pokemon’s turn-based combat. Turn based combat makes it so that enemies do not move at the same time as players, which can be useful in planning out what to do while on the players turn. It was refreshing to see that Nintendo was breaking away from familiarity.
The first issue I had with the game is that it is a single-player game. With Brothership in the game’s name, this was very confusing to me. I was incredibly disappointed to find out that I wouldn’t be able to play with my friends, as I expected to. This game had a key opportunity for two-player functions, or even multiplayer, but Nintendo missed a huge game mechanic.
Also, instead of a group of players controlling their own characters from a selection, one player directs both Mario and Luigi in mixed character controls. Mixed character controls are a control layout used in games where a player has to control multiple characters at once. The player also has a variety of special techniques and abilities that use the capabilities of both brothers. Some of these allow players to more easily traverse areas that are difficult to navigate, and others allow them to access otherwise closed-off paths.
As in most Nintendo games, there is a main group of villains in “Mario & Luigi: Brothership.” This enemy group is known as the Extension Corps, and is simply uncreative; The group is essentially Team Rocket from the first Pokemon game set but made of cords, such as an Auxiliary output. They use interesting tactics to breed crazy monsters that the players will defeat, and these monsters serve as the bosses of the game.
Still, the favor earned by the combat style was soon lost, as the game also retains a Pokemon style as Mario and Luigi do not heal after every battle, and the areas where the brothers can heal are very far apart. I often found myself in desperate need of regeneration, without a heal block anywhere in sight. Furthermore, the difference between enemies and bosses is so great that players can be strong enough to cheese the normal enemies and still get destroyed by the completely overpowered bosses. Typical enemies include self-aware plant bulbs, invisible chameleons, armadillos, rusted pipes, and angry pigs.
The animation of the game also seems to have regressed since previous games such as “Mario Party” and “Super Mario 3D World.” This animation in this game reminds me a lot of “Paper Mario” but in 3D. Paper Mario graphics toy with using 2D graphics but layering them for depth. The graphics are not very lifelike, but rather too simplistic. They just don’t compare with previous games visually or in-game appeal.
In conclusion, the graphics in the game are lacking, the enemies are not appropriately difficult compared to the bosses, and the lack of multiplayer functionality is a massive disappointment. This game is not worth the cost and was just a huge failure on Nintendo’s part. There were so many missed opportunities, and the favor earned by taking new risks was just not enough to balance out the shortfalls.
