It’s a relatively small part, but in such an amazing series, it’s still great news.
This telescope isn’t quite a telescope, but it still works like one. And, more importantly, it still feels like one. You place your eyes on the glass and move side to side, scanning the glorious horizon painted by sunlit skies and churning ocean currents. What’s out there? What’s waiting for me? Where to go next?
This is my favorite moment in Mario & Luigi: Brothers, my favorite little ritual. Brotherhood is the latest entry in the beloved role-playing game series, where the Red Brother and the Green Brother go on an adventure together, completing quests and side quests, exploring and solving puzzles, and getting caught up in turn-based combat. Brotherhood’s best new idea is the telescope, as the game’s title alludes to. This time, you’re floating on a hub that’s also a ship – which is also an island, by the way, and it’s called a “Shipshape,” which is a nice pun – and you’ll often need to keep track of the elements that make up the island. Scattered islands. world of Concordia, then climb the lighthouse on each island and use it to connect the island to your mother ship. Collect those islands. Bring the world back together. continue!
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I know, thematically, it’s all a bit confusing. Islands, but you connect them via lighthouses? And almost everyone I meet is some kind of anthropomorphic plug socket or computer port? At times—anytime you think about it too much—Brotherhood’s narrative can feel like one of those joke adventures where Paper Mario once sent Luigi to explain his absence from the game. Mario will go on some sort of meaningful mission, but every now and then Luigi will check out some true RPG weirdness. You know, like collecting islands, or hanging out with talking plug sockets.
None of that matters, because ships and oceans mean that every hour or so, the Brotherhood drops you off somewhere new. You discover an island at sea, you play a mini-game to connect with your current and travel to it, and you spend any travel time leveling up or doing side quests on previously explored islands, which often change over time. And something changes, then, when you get up close: into the telescope – this telescope is also a classic – and then across the sky to a fresh beach, a fresh world.
Sometimes, but not always, Brotherhood uses these islands to truly reinvent the game. There will be characters to meet in the game, and there will be independent stories that lead them to the conclusion, with puzzles that fit the theme and scenes that feel really happy and change the genre a little bit. I would say that these things happen the most in the second half of the game, which I don’t think should be spoiled. But sometimes, the island is basically just home to a new biome—desert, jungle, garden—and more puzzles, trinkets, and combat. in spite of. This stuff is still great.
Of course, the first Mario & Luigi game was great. Superstar Legend was a bona fide classic back in the GBA days, and it became a classic in large part because it made the idea of you controlling two characters instead of just one so much fun. I remember the precise arpeggiated jumps just to get the brothers up the stairs, and the scene where I had to control the two of them as we faced the ultimate enemy: the jump rope. What day! By the time we got to “Brotherhood,” things were a little cooler. In the outside world, you can make Luigi jump if you want, but a lot of the time he’ll fend for himself and follow Mario. But you can use triggers to have him interact with highlighted objects, and then – and then there’s Luigi Logic.
I think Luigi Logic is the cutest in the game. Sometimes, while exploring the world or facing a boss, you’ll reach some kind of impasse. Luckily, Luigi will often have an idea that results in little puzzles appearing in the world, or mini-games that deal massive damage to bosses. These moments are often very simple but beautifully presented. Close-up of Luigi frowning in thought before a realization dawns on him. Finger post example! Luigi Logic.
These moments often lead to sequences that resemble classic Mario & Luigi games. Luigi will manipulate switches while Mario moves around platforms that Luigi controls, or through a maze of pipes and connection points that Luigi can turn. The game uses picture-in-picture at times, which is always a weird video game gimmick and I’m totally here for it, it just reminds us that at the center of these fairly traditional RPGs is a special ingredient: two players , a knife and a fork.
I really like the bromance, but I have some caveats. On the one hand, it could just be that my patience has grown harsher as I’ve gotten older, and I find it starting to feel more and more awkward to stop. I’ll start doing something and then there’ll be a cutscene that needs to be ignored or a section of dialogue that I can speed up but not skip. Not just because it disrupts the flow, but because it doesn’t feel like Mario, as Mario rarely bothers players. That said, I don’t know if this is a shift from developers to a less streamlined team, or if it’s actually worse here than before, so maybe blame that on me getting older.
Another big thing is that the combat system, while fun, gets exposed over long periods of gameplay. It’s still a simple, straightforward fun, with Mario and Luigi teaming up to take down enemies, requiring staggered button presses as each brother does his part – you know, Mario jumps, Luigi grabs Live him and throw him back again, and then when it’s Luigi’s turn you reverse the input. There are some clever enemy designs and bosses, and some of the special attacks have a nice back-and-forth complexity as you hammer the projectiles back and forth.
There’s also a new plug-in system in combat, which lets you unlock special moves and modifiers that can be swapped, finding synergies and managing cooldowns. But it can get a bit cumbersome over time when you’re primarily choosing to stomp, hammer, or pull off gimmick attacks. I never minded the combat, but I noticed multiple times that the puzzle portion of it—with relatively few enemies to deal with—captured my attention more. Not only that, it feels like the game is following the texture of its own material at this point. Brotherhood offers some cute sequences, but the mostly decent combat may feel a little too conventional for an invasion.
Yes, yes. All this stuff is a little annoying. While Brotherhood isn’t the best entry in the series, it’s still a Mario & Luigi RPG that’s always filled with moments of color, wit, and invention that I’m so glad I was there for. In other words, Mario and Luigi are already money in the bank. Throw in some island hopping and I’m still happy.
Nintendo provided a copy of Mario & Luigi: Brothers for review.
