'Mario & Luigi: Brothership' hands

As we wait for any news at all about Nintendo Switch 2, the first Switch will not go out quietly.

Nintendo made that clear with a banger Nintendo Directin June that opened with a genuinely lovely surprise: a new Mario & LuigiRPG. Mario & Luigi: Brothershipis the first game in the beloved series of brotherly turn-based RPGs in nearly a decade, following 2015’s Paper Jamfor 3DS. 

Perhaps more notably, it’s the first one to be made since series developer AlphaDream sadly shut down in 2019. Nintendo saidsome original developers from the older games are working on Brothership, though. 

Anyway, I got to play about 90 minutes of it at a preview event — and it seems like it could be yet another late-in-life banger for the O.G. Switch, with possibly some of the best visuals achieved on the console to go along with satisfying combat.

Mario & Luigi: Brothership could be yet another awesome 2024 RPG

Connecting islands looks a little something like this. Credit: Nintendo

If you’ve been following along with games this year, you’ve probably noticed that RPGs are back. Not that they ever left, really, but it’s been an astoundingly packed year for the genre, between FFVII Rebirth, Like a Dragon: Infinite Wealth, and the brand new heater Metaphor: ReFantazio. 

However, none of those games will prepare you for Brothershiplike this summer’s remake of Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door. That is also a turn-based RPG starring the iconic Italian plumber where you precisely time button presses during attacks to do extra damage. If you missed the earlier Mario & Luigigames, but played that, you’ll feel somewhat at home with Brothership.

The gimmick here, of course, is that Mario and Luigi are working together the entire time as a duo. That is your party. Everything you can do stems from the brotherly relationship between Mario and Luigi, from partner attacks in combat to goofy special abilities you use in the overworld to solve puzzles.

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If the game’s title and marketing didn’t make that clear, this is a nautical adventure. Mario and Luigi are in a place where a bunch of islands have lost magical connection with the local giant magical tree, leaving the brothers with no other choice but to sail around the ocean in an island that is shaped like a boat, connecting each island back to the tree, one by one.

You do have to plan out your sailing routes, but I didn't get a great sense for how involved this is. Credit: Nintendo

My demo started at Twistee Island, where everybody loves to dance. I had to help a guy get some hair product so he could do a special dance to rejuvenate a big, dying plant called the Twisten Sprout. I haven’t stopped thinking about “Twisten Sprout” since the demo, to be clear. 

The sojourn through Twistee Island took maybe half an hour, which included time spent getting used to the mechanics. As with previous Mario & Luigigames, you can make the brothers jump or attack with hammers independently of each other in the overworld using dedicated buttons for each brother. Combat also works this way; if you want to nail an attack or dodge an enemy with Luigi, you need to press Luigi’s button, or else it will fail.

One of the big new mechanics Nintendo showed us is, hilariously, called “Luigi Logic.” You can activate Luigi Logic in certain scenarios with a button press, at which point Luigi will perform some context-sensitive action to help you out. These can range from breaking boxes that might have items in them to holding down switches to solve puzzles.

Combat in Brothership could be great

Combat looks fantastic. Credit: Nintendo

All of that is fine and dandy, but the combat portions of the demo stood out to me the most. As I said earlier, this works like previous Mario RPGs. Timed button presses for both attacking and dodging are key here. Both brothers have jump and hammer attacks, which come in handy depending on the enemy type. Each one also has a different sequence of button presses you have to do to maximize their attack power, and these sequences differ depending on which brother initiated the attack.

Thanks to an absolutely stunning visual style that feels like a faithful 3D interpretation of the cartoony box and instruction manual art from the original Mario & Luigigames, all of the fights look and feel satisfying. Seeing Mario and Luigi do flashy hammer attacks with Saturday morning cartoon flair is a ton of fun.

But it’s what’s going on behind the scenes that could really make combat sing in Brothership. You have access to a plug system (there’s a pervasive electrical theme throughout what I saw of this game) where you can craft and insert plugs with different effects into two slots. These plugs can do all sorts of things, from making counter timing easier to modifying attacks so they make enemies dizzy or drop iron balls on baddies for additional damage. 

Got a plug? Credit: Nintendo

Where this really gets interesting, though, is when you start combining plugs. For example, by getting creative with combinations, I was able to modify my attacks so they did area-of-effect damage or caused iron balls to drop on everyenemy instead of just one. It seems like experimentation will pay off in Brothership, which is a hallmark of any decent RPG.

Between that and a simple leveling system in which you choose from a series of permanent upgrades (you can’t get them all, I was told) at set level intervals, it seems like Brothershiphas enough customization to bolster the tactile satisfaction of the combat. My demo unfortunately didn’t give me much else to talk about, but honestly, that’s fine. I’ve already played like a dozen really good RPGs this year, I might as well play another.

Mario & Luigi: Brothership launches exclusively on Nintendo Switch on Nov. 7.