It finally happened! After nearly a decade of thinking the Mario & Luigi series was dead (the original studio behind the games had even shut down a few years back), we finally have a new entry in the series!

This is Acquire’s first shot at the (formerly) handheld only series, and I think they did a pretty great job! Here you can find my overall thoughts in a (hopefully) somewhat rambling-free review.

Graphics & Audio

What is there to say here? It’s the first fully 3D game in the series, and the first targeted at a (hybrid) home console! The game looks fantastic. While the art style isn’t overly complex, that’s really to the game’s favor. It’s almost like the style of the official art for the games of old (minus the unique gradients on the brothers’ clothing), but we don’t get to see Luigi’s amazing striped socks, unfortunately.

Brothership has some fantastic animations though. From simply walking around, to attacks, to hilarious cutscenes, the brothers have never looked so amazingly, well, animated! It’s almost like watching a cartoon. Mario & Luigi are meant to have such fluid and dynamic animations!

Audio is a similar experience. Sound effects are plenty punchy and the hammer attack in particular packs a ton of punch, as you’d expect. My only real letdown here is the music. There’s definitely some bangers in there, but overall you can tell the soundtrack isn’t by the series’ traditional composer, the renowned Yoko Shimomura. However, the music is definitely servable and not terrible by any stretch of the imagination. I guess I just don’t like change sometimes!

Performance is probably the biggest letdown of the game. While I don’t fault it much considering the hardware it’s running on, there are major slowdowns and hitches here and there. While they’re not extremely severe, they can take you out of the experience in some areas where they get pretty frequent and heavy.

Controls

Controls are more of a mixed bag for me. While I initially really disliked that Luigi is more of an auto-controlled helper, it’s not a huge deal and you quickly get used to it. It also took me an embarrassingly long time to get used to selecting a move for Luigi with A and then rapidly switching to B to use said move. Traditionally, both choosing an action and using said action for Luigi had you using the B button. It’s a little different here, but, again, you quickly get used to it.

I also noticed that the game doesn’t have you split the brothers up quite as much as some older games did (namely Superstar Saga). I have yet to try Paper Jam, so I’m not certain if it’s something they started doing less of as the series went on. It seems like even Dream Team had you splitting up a little more often than what you see here. Not a big deal, just something I noticed.

Story

There’s really nothing special on display here. It’s pretty true to classic Mario & Luigi style, which is honestly a good thing! The witty writing didn’t hit as hard as older games in the series, but there were plenty of times I had a good chuckle here and there!

The game gets off to a pretty slow start. I didn’t get my first Bros. Move until three or four hours in, though it should be noted I tend to play my games slowly so I can get more out of them, especially if I like them. I did a ton of exploring and grinding before I made it that far into the game. A slow start doesn’t bother me. As a huge Zelda fan, long intros are basically engraved into my brain at this point.

The only real con I can say here is that the last quarter or so of the game becomes a real slog. To avoid spoilers, I won’t go into detail, but just prepare yourself for a few lengthy fetch quests before you go on to face the final boss. This to me was a lot worse than the slow intro. It made the game feel like it was trying to pad itself in order to artificially pad the run time. It wasn’t horrible but that alone makes me not want to explore the game again for quite some time.

There are a lot of good set pieces and the final boss in particular has some flashy moves, changes of scenery, and a really cool finale. I really enjoyed it a lot, and I like that Luigi was given a bit more time to shine again!

Closing Thoughts

What a time I had! Even though the ending feels unnaturally drawn out and the performance can be pretty ugly in some areas, I’m really glad we got this new entry! I really loved my time with it. The gameplay is tight enough (especially battling) that it had me absolutely hooked, and I even spent plenty of extra time grinding just because I had a good time! There were some weird difficulty spikes here and there, but it was overall a great experience!

I absolutely recommend purchasing the game whether you’re new to Mario & Luigi or a veteran of the series. The game is overall really tight and it’s a joy to play. The funny writing makes the experience more enjoyable, even if it’s slow to start and even slower to end.

Thanks for reading, and I look forward to what may come next!