Mario & Luigi: Brothership

"Brothership" redirects here. Not to be confused with Brotherhood.

Mario & Luigi: Brothership
Icon artwork
Developer(s)	Acquire
Publisher(s)	Nintendo
Director(s)	Haruyuki Ohashi
Producer(s)	Masahiro Kumono Takuma Endo Akira Otani Shinya Saito
Designer(s)	Shunsuke Kobayashi Nobuo Nakazawa Jun Iwasaki Akiko Sugimoto
Programmer(s)	Takafumi Ogihara Fumio Yusa Tadahisa Tanaka
Artist(s)	Hitomi Furuta Toshio Koike Yoshiko Takahashi Kota Iida Ryuuhei Inoue Konomi Aihara Masaya Yamazaki Eiki Koynagai Rina Mori
Composer(s)	Hideki Sakamoto Takauya Seo
Series	Mario & Luigi
Engine	Unreal Engine 4
Platform(s)	Nintendo Switch
Release	November 7, 2024
Genre(s)	Role-playing
Mode(s)	Single-player

Mario & Luigi: Brothership is a role-playing video game developed by Acquire and published by Nintendo for the Nintendo Switch. It is the sixth main installment in the Mario & Luigi series, following Mario & Luigi: Paper Jam (2015). Following the appearance of a mysterious portal, Mario and Luigi, alongside other residents of the Mushroom Kingdom, find themselves transported to the world of Concordia, where they find themselves working to reunite the land after a dark force seeks to separate and isolate its inhabitants in solitude. In the game, players control the brothers to explore Concordia, solve puzzles and complete quests, whle engaging enemies they encounter in turn-based combat.

The game was first announced in a Nintendo Direct on June 18, 2024, revealing a change of developer for the series following the closure of AlphaDream in 2019 due to bankruptcy. The preview revealed that Acquire had focused on creating a fully 3D game, designed for home console, with a greater emphasis on exploration and quests, and modifications to the battle system to focus on teamwork actions with attacks. Brothership's signature element is world navigation, in which players use a moving "island ship" to explore the various lands of Concordia, which initially restrict where the players can go until the island is reconnected, opening up new areas to explore.

Brothership was released on November 7, 2024. It received generally positive reviews, with praise for its faithful art style, combat and humor, and criticism for its bloated pacing and performance issues.

Gameplay

See also: Mario & Luigi § Gameplay

Brothership is a role-playing game that follows a similar format of previous games in the Mario & Luigi series. Players simultaneously controls Mario and Luigi, as they explore the world of Concordia by visiting the islands of the shattered land in order to reconnect them to each other, whilst battling against a new group of enemies causing havoc, along the way encountering old friends and foes in the process. Each of the brothers have their own buttons assigned to them for use with exploring the overworld and battling enemies. Exploration includes talking to non-player characters (NPCs), completing quests and solving puzzles, some of which are required to be solved in order to progress.

In exploration, Brothership features a central hub called Shipshape Island which acts like a ship. Through this island, players can explore Concordia's seas, moving between currents in order to find and explore islands and other points of interest via a cannon that can be used to launch Mario and Luigi towards them. On islands, the main focus is to find and reconnect it to Shipshape Island via a giant plug in the island's lighthouse. Once accomplished, new areas on the island open up, with a fast-travel pipe system allowing players to move between the hub and all islands, as well as around each island. Brothership feature a unique game mechanic called "Luigi Logic", which allows Luigi to act automously - either to interact with or collect items, or move him where he can be used to help with solving some of the game's puzzles - or to come up with the series' signature overworld moves that can help Mario and Luigi with exploration. Alongside the main story, the player can also explore small islets for extra rewards, and undertake sidequests.

Combat in Brothership follows a similar pattern of the Mario & Luigi series, in that battles begin when the characters make contact with enemies; when they do, they can select different actions to attack, use items to hel damage, or flee from battle if the fight is too tough. Button pressing by the player must be timed when making attacks, or when dodging/counterattacking any attacking enemies. Unlike other games in the series, Mario and Luigi now assist each other when they make basic attacks, which can further increase the damage they do, whilst in boss battles, Luigi can devise unique attacks with Luigi Logic for use against bosses. Progressing the game opens up special attack moves, called Bros. Attacks, which feature a mixture of new and returning moves - the latter improved upon since their first appearance - as well as "Battle Plugs": special upgrades which confer a bonus in battle, including making counterattacks easier, recovering HP, and enhancing attack power. Players can use up to five Battle Plugs for battles and can switch them around during their turn, but each plug has a set charge that drains out when used and must be recharged once drained.

Setting

The game takes place on the sea of the world of Concordia and its islands, which Mario and Luigi traverse on Shipshape Island, a structure that is described as "part ship, part island". The brothers are transported from the Mushroom Kingdom to Concordia via a giant portal.

Development

After series creator AlphaDream filed for bankruptcy in 2019, Nintendo filed a new trademark for Mario & Luigi in January 2020. In June 2024, following the reveal of the game in a Nintendo Direct, Nintendo noted that "some of the original developers" from the franchise, referring to AlphaDream, are involved in the development of Brothership, but did not reveal what studio was producing the game. The primary developer was later revealed to be Acquire from the game's intellectual property notices; they had previously worked on Octopath Traveler, which Nintendo initially published outside of Japan. The game released on the Nintendo Switch on November 7, 2024.

Reception

Reception

Aggregate score

Aggregator	Score
Metacritic	79/100

Review scores

Publication	Score
Destructoid	6/10
Eurogamer	4/5
GameSpot	6/10
GamesRadar+	4/5
IGN	5/10
Nintendo Life	9/10
PCMag	4/5
Shacknews	9/10
The Guardian	4/5

Mario & Luigi: Brothership has received "generally favorable" reviews from critics, according to the review aggregation website Metacritic.

PJ O'Reilly of Nintendo Life and Ozzie Mejia of Shacknews praised the game's combat system, story, and art style. Writing for the Daily Mirror, Aaron Potter lauded the aesthetics, stating that the game "looks absolutely gorgeous" and was "the best the RPG series has ever looked". PCMag's Will Greenwald gave the game an Editor's Choice award, describing it as "colorful, charming, mechanically engaging". Giovanni Colantonio of Digital Trends and Logan Plant of IGN gave more mixed reviews, criticizing the pacing. Reviewers generally criticized the game's performance issues.

External links

• Official website