GameZoid__ Mario & Luigi: Brothership Review

This was such a hype game for me, I was really excited for this game ever since the June Direct. I never expected this game to return so when I see it gets announced, I screamed so much. Finally after 5 months of waiting since the initial reveal, we finally have our hands on Mario & Luigi: Brothership. This game does a lot of things right, first of all they absolutely did the series justice. With the jump to a Home Console and a Fully 3D Art-Style, I was worried that it wouldn't give the charm the Handheld versions gave. The Sprite Work on the GBA + DS were so charming and the jump to the 3D Environments while still keeping that sprite work also had it's own charm. I'm happy to say, this game is charming! Because of it being on a actual console and the ability to make everything 3D, it works wonders! The colours just pop, the black outlines on all the characters and objects give it that DS feel to it while keeping it's own 3D style. I think they really nailed the art direction and I applaud the people who managed to make it work. This does sadly come with a negative in that this kills the performance. Early on in the game, it's fine, you get a stable 30fps. But as Shipshape Island gathers more people and more things show up, the more the frames dip into the 20-25 range. I can say from my experience playing, it was only on Shipshape Island that my frames dropped, but I can't confirm if this IS the only part that has frame drops. I can confirm that the Ball Hammer Minigame that features on Twistee Island does also drop your frames when trying to achieve the 100 Hit Challenge. I'm also happy to say that they fixed the annoying tutorials! Aside from the unskippable tutorial on Battle Plugs, every tutorial was just a Pop-Up Box that told you what to do then let you play. No more Toadsworth Begging you to listen to what he has to say! The Battles are such a blast to play, they really added so much charm to everything and battles really just go above and beyond. Paper Jam probably had the best Battle System, it was the most refined and I think Alphadream Nailed that battle system. I can say with confidence that it has improved. Not only have the animations been turned up to give the Bros much more personality, but they're all around just fun to do. Only in the last area of the game, was I tired of the battles but this was only because I had no need to battle them, at this stage I was level 48 and was not needing to get anymore XP. Sometimes they can drag on and feel slow but overall, it's the best battle system we have gotten in the series. Piggybacking off the Battles. Bosses are back and I think they're also the best this series has to offer. They're all fairly interactive with what you can hit them with and what they attack you with! The Main Gimmick in this game is Luigi Logic, 6 of the 16 bosses (10 if you count the Glohm bosses, which are just Refights) have Luigi Logic in the battles. The ones that do, use it very well. A very creative system, love that Luigi is the smart brother, adds something to Luigi other then the "Scared cowardly" Brother he is known as. My only complaint with boss fights is that there weren't that many. There were only 12 Original Bosses, with 4 of them being Refights. It might sound like a lot but with the length of this game, 12 is nothing. The bosses that didn't feature Luigi Logic kind of felt meh in comparison to a Mechanic that worked really well with the other bosses. For some reason as well, you literally cannot refight any of the bosses aside from 4 of them which were apart of side quests, kind of sucks that they removed a pretty cool feature from this game. Man, the pacing of this game was not great. 52 hours is how long it took me to beat this game, the longest in the series. Although it's long for a better reason then Dream Team, which was a slog with Tutorials and Pacing, it was still quite a slog to get through at times. The start of the game is very slow, once you beat the first boss which took around 4 hours for me to get too, that's when you unlock your first set of Bros Attacks (Being Red & Green Shell) it then takes another 3 hours before you can use them on your second boss. At times, it felt long just because they wanted a long game. At the end of the game when you defeat Zokket, Reclusa who is the main bad guy, blocks access to the Final Area and you then have to do a Fetch Quest to gather bonds to break his barrier down. This just felt like padding, it just wasn't needed and was annoying that I had to do more. Don't get me wrong, I love a long game but when the length is because they wanted so much even if it isn't that fun, then I'm not a fan. It felt like what Dream Team did, made a game long for the sake of being long which didn't work, Paper Jam fixed this issue with it's pacing but it's clear they wanted a long game. The Music! Oh the Music in this game is amazing. Yoko Shimomura is the GOAT of this series, she cannot be beaten and she hasn't. The Music in this game isn't better but it is still good. The Main Battle Theme is so upbeat and Catchy, the boss battle theme is straight fire and Twistee Island. That theme is just amazing! The Characters just oozed charm to me. I thought Connie and Snoutlet were fantastic helpers! the IDLE Crew were funny. Peach and Starlow having a part in the IDLE Crew was cool! The Extension Corps were cool Henchmen for Zokket and Zokkets design is amazing! Reclusa design heavily gave me Photoshop Flowey Vibes from Undertale and that is a Massive Positive. A Crazy, Creepy Vibes sort of Villain who was just an Evil person! Alphadream made these games special and nothing can beat the Charm of the games they made, they created something just amazing but I think Acquire did an absolutely amazing job and I am very happy with the product. It had it's flaws, it had it's problems. It wasn't perfect. Heck even my favourite game, Dream Team had many problems but still, Mario & Luigi: Brothership is a Fantastic Game, one of my favourite Switch Titles and I was satisfied with what I was given. 4/5 / 8/10 Game. Highly Recommend giving this a shot and I'm excited to see what the future of this game holds!