Mario Strikers: Battle League Reviews
Mario Strikers Battle League isn't a bad game, but a game that lacks any sort of drive or ambition to stand out from the pack of other Mario Sport titles. The roster is minuscule, the arenas do nothing, the controls are needlessly complicated and it was difficult to stay focused on the ball and your players.
Unfortunately Nintendo failed to bring the gamers a worthy successor to the series.
Review in Greek | Read full review
Underwhelming content offerings and bizarrely imbalanced CPU players make single player a no-go. And without the variance or roster of its peers, multiplayer can’t carry all that weight.
Though occasionally likable and basically inoffensive, Mario Strikers: Battle League struggles to build on its ideas and ends up feeling pretty undercooked as an experience.
Next Level Games has created a solid foundation for a title, but that’s all it is: a foundation. It’s a barren representation of what could be.
With a very good control system and ways to guide new players, this new Mario Strikers knows how to integrate everyone. At the same time, there's a disappointing lack o content compared to the other games, and its single player experience feels too limited and quick to explore. The online multiplayer is an absolute joy and the main selling point, even if it's missing functionalities we've seen in other games, but solo players will feel like their experience is too short.
Review in Portuguese | Read full review
Ultimately, Mario Strikers: Battle League reminded me a bit of last year's Mario Golf: Super Rush. Both games offer a fun core gameplay experience but are ultimately very thin in terms of content which hinders their replayability. If you don't have a dedicated group who wants to play Battle League on the regular, the game could end up collecting dust on the shelf. Next Level Games has promised additional roster updates and other content releases after release, so hopefully the game grows into a more robust experience after a few months.
"Mario's banana kick misses the goal."
Review in Finnish | Read full review
At its core Battle League is a brilliant arcade-style football game, offering fantastic multiplayer fun. However, the lack of single-player modes, the exploitable AI and the small launch roster mean solo players may find it lacking.
Mario Strikers: Battle League is a fun and chaotic experience let down by a lack of content and personality.
Battle League Football is a game I'm happy to see, even if it isn't necessarily the game I wanted. A far more technical game that I don't feel I have the time to master, it sits in a weird spot of not necessarily being bad in its gameplay execution, but falling short on the content required to keep people coming back. I do feel in time that this game has the potential to become great, but we again see a Mario sports game held back by being released half-baked.
Mario Strikers: Battle League delivers the deepest Mario sports experience yet, with surprisingly nuanced soccer gameplay. There's just not much to do once you've mastered those skills.
Mario Strikers: Battle League Football is a delightfully chaotic and entertaining football game where violent tackles are as important as neat passes. Unfortunately, the lack of content like a wet blanket overlies the fun, so football-hungry friends or enough pep to forgive the limited online mode is a must.
Review in Swedish | Read full review
Ultimately, Mario Strikers: Battle League feels like Liverpool’s trophy cabinet this year. An FA Cup and a League Cup are nothing to sniff at, but it feels below par. With no cup final goals and two victories on penalties, they didn’t even underachieve with style. Battle League is very similar. It’s Mario Strikers again, and the football itself is pretty good, but the stuff of legends? Not even close.
Nintendo's boisterous take on our national sport is thrilling and hilarious, but doesn't offer enough options to play with
Mario Strikers: Battle League's core gameplay is a blast, especially with friends, but the game suffers from a severe lack of content.
Mario Strikers: Battle League is a game that's carried mostly by its local multiplayer and gameplay. There was so much missed potential for this game to shine brighter than its predecessors. From the lack of single-player modes, content, and limitations to its online, it's very tough to justify buying the game in its current state.
Mario Strikers: Battle League’s core gameplay is fun, but it’s just not enough to justify the incredibly slim package offered. There’s little to do for online players and even less for those looking for a fun offline single-player game, with it for Mario sports games in general. Nintendo fans were hoping for a hat trick here for the third entry in the Mario Strikers series, but were instead left with an own goal.
Battle League features a HUGE gap in content that Nintendo is promising to patch in with post-launch updates, but that really doesn’t help anyone who decided to buy the game at launch. Online play is just as you would expect from the Switch, replaying cups just isn’t enjoyable, and quickplay just kind of exists. If I wanted to turn on a game to play for 5 minutes, plus the time the game is paused for each goal (something that doesn’t happen in football), I would be much more likely to turn on something even like Super Mario 64 or Super Mario Sunshine, where you can knock out early levels that quickly. Yet another disappointing Mario sports outing on the Switch.
Mario Strikers: Charged had almost perfected the formula well over a decade ago and, in comparison, Battle League feels like a watered-down version. It has much simpler gameplay, fewer characters and stadiums, much less single-player content, and a fraction of the attitude of Charged.