It’s been almost 10 years since two very iconic plumber brothers were accidentally sucked into a new world for a brand-new adventure together, so it’s about time that Mario & Luigi: Brothership threw a fat wrench into their idyllic lives romping around the Mushroom Kingdom. In this RPG, it’s not Princess Peach who needs saving; it’s an entire archipelago that’s been cut off from its source of power, and it’s up to the bros to reconnect the flow of energy and commerce among the vast network of islands in the land of Concordia.
In a little more than an hour, I got to play through the main missions on two particular early-game islands, Twistee and Merrygo. While it definitely felt like these were building the groundwork for bigger challenges and more intricate gameplay to come, the slice of island-hopping upon the brothers’ mammoth seafaring vessel, the ship-slash-island Shipshape Island, that I did experience hinted at the larger potential of what’s to come.
It might go without saying, but for starters, I thought Brothership was totally charming. Ignoring the fact that water and electricity is a dangerous matchup, Brothership’s staunch loyalty to its voltaic motif was clearly extremely carefully considered, from the more obvious socket-faced NPCs and the bros’ cute navigator Snoutlet to the tinier flourishes that I caught when I looked more closely, like the jumper-cable design of an enemy Snaptor bird. The attention to detail extends all the way down to Mario and Luigi’s downright hammy reaction animations, like making huge “no” gestures during conversations, doing hype dances for each other when they level up, and beefing their landings after being shot out of Shipshape’s cannon. Those were honestly some of my favorite small moments that highlight Brothership’s giddy sense of humor that feels cozy yet refreshing, especially when it’s enjoyed from a TV screen instead of a handheld console. (Apologies to the Switch Liters.)
Even the premise itself feels like an exercise in kindness and community-building. The goal of reconnecting isolated bubbles to rebuild a society that thrives when more plug-faced people are in it feels relevantly sentimental in 2024. On a more practical level, that simply means more of Brothership becomes available as more islands are linked. Additional socket-people take up residence on Shipshape and other islands, opening up the main storyline, side quests, and the capabilities of the ship. I really only got a glimpse of this on Twistee and Merrygo – I helped reunite a young poetess with her mother, escorted a shopkeeper through a bug-ridden field, made friends with a local groovemaster in need of hair wax, and cut a mutually beneficial deal with an engineer to find Peach lost in a maze – but as a sucker for silly personality-driven adventures, it had me very eager to dig in.
One of the nice things about sailing to destinations aboard Shipshape is the ability to set a course while being able to run little errands as the boat traverses the Concordian sea. (If you choose the option to Fast Travel, Toad will work really, really hard.) Even if it’s functionally not all that different from a cut-to-black location transition, it does at least give the illusion that I’m being productive en route to whatever area of the sea I would want to visit next, which gives a seamless sense of exploration.
I should clarify that Brothership isn’t running purely on vibes. Like any RPG worth its salt, Mario and Luigi are regularly leveling up their stats and acquiring new weapon and equipment upgrades to take on bigger and badder enemies. Returning players will definitely notice some familiar elements of the turn-based combat system, especially in the shell-based Bros. Attacks. New ones will have an easy enough time picking it up, even if learning battle patterns and nailing the guys’ coordinated attack button presses might take some trial and error.
A brand-new addition to the battle system is something called Battle Plugs, which is acquired sometime before Merrygo Island. These are basically craftable advantages, augmentations, and buffs that are usually triggered when certain conditions are met, like netting additional damage upon landing ‘Excellent’ hits or auto-healing when health is running low. Though I only reached a level where I had two slots to work with, Mario and Luigi will eventually get up to five to play around with in the hopes of discovering named combinations, which are surefire strategies in battle. Even with just two slots, picking among the plugs became a little time consuming, but this struck me as a feature that would naturally become a breeze in the course of developing a repertoire against enemies’ strengths and weaknesses during a regular playthrough.
I would have really loved to have gotten more hands-on time with the evolution of Luigi being struck by ingenuity – in Brothership, it’s called Luigi Logic. I only saw a few meaningful iterations of this, one of which turned the brothers into a UFO-shaped object to get them across a wide gap after some ballroom dance spins. The rest were simpler, mostly sending Luigi off to smash boxes or collect items that I didn’t feel like doing, which was nice. But given the kind of wild stuff Luigi dreamed up in Dream Team, I can only imagine what kinds of epiphanies he’ll have this time around.
Of course, there’s a chance that Brothership fizzles out as the story chugs along, or that using Battle Plugs becomes rote. But, given that so many other facets of the gameplay immediately struck me as so well thought-out, I’m holding out hope that the franchise has learned plenty of lessons over the course of five games and two remakes to create something that feels fresh and whole.
