Thoughts on Mario&Luigi Brothership
I found the first few hours to be really sluggish. There were a lot of interruptions for dialogue that took longer than it needed and side characters that mostly seemed ultimately unimportant. It takes upwards of three hours to fight a boss and get an overworld Bros. Move
There's no getting around the disappointment of not having Shimomura on the music but the new composer's work is far from being bad. While a lot of it sounds more similar than it actually is because the rhythm and beat is close, I've found myself humming some tracks, so it does have some success. With that said, the soundtrack does commit a major transgression in my book: the main antagonist and Bowser do not have their own battle themes.
The new presentation is lovely. The full 3D allows for a greater number of expressive animations, and enables more creative and interesting camera angles, which are used to good effect in cutscenes and combat (not as much as I would have liked during exploration unfortunately). The environments look nice, and although they tend to be pretty uninteresting conceptually, the rest of the art direction (mostly character designs and both visual and narrative theming, but more on that later) is solid and consistent. I'm glad to see the new team has correctly identified that spectacle was a strength of the later games and have followed up on it, too.
Apparent fairly early, and easily the game's biggest misstep in my opinion, is the implementation of Luigi. Put succinctly, he is too autonomous and largely feels like a party member more than a main playable character; he automatically rejoins Mario if separated, jumps over gaps and up walls on his own, never has to Hammer anything when not separated, can only be separated by a contextual action, and acts completely independently in some setpieces. He also sometimes comes up with solutions to problems that would have been the onus of the player otherwise. I do want to highlight that this is streamlining, and thus comes with positives, but streamlining can be bad, and this is bad streamlining. Controlling Luigi and paying attention to him is a meaningful inconvenience. Struggle is a fundamental part of play, and by taking control of Luigi away from the player, they have thrown the baby out with the bathwater; they have discarded the struggle alongside the inconvenience. Nothing in the game couldn't have been accomplished with one way to separate the two manually and one to swap between control of the two.
The combat system is quite possibly the best it's been in the series but I need to add two caveats to that: it's not by a huge margin as the core is mostly the same, and the bar has always been low; the system itself is fairly simplistic. This does not equate to mediocre gameplay however, as enemy patterns, organic strategic choices, equipment, as well as game feel and presentation have always carried it. The key improvement to the combat is the Battle Plugs, hot-swappable passive effects with conditional triggers. They each have a number of uses before going into cooldown (which is a number of turns). There are a number of synergies to find, and the Plugs' consistent presence introduces both short- and long-term management dynamics. It is a large improvement over the badge system of later games in the series. The mechanic does lack two things whose absence make it more tedious to engage with than it would be otherwise. The first is a way to disable it in one button press, so that you can avoid wasting unneeded uses without having to menu to remove them (which you can do in combat), and the other is some way to recharge them instantly (possibly paid, probably in the hub only).
Outside of combat the level design is the winner here, with the expected mix of platforming, occasional puzzle, and bit of exploration (I do take issue with the area maps being entirely visible from the get-go however). The tools you have in the overworld are pretty good, and while some of them are criminally underused, they show a lot of potential should they return in a later game, and some of them let you get a preemptive strike on enemies. Speaking of which, I've found that enemies are generally harder to avoid and catch for a first strike. It's a nice additional challenge but it can get frustrating at times, either because of some of the wonky hitboxes or simply because of the amount of backtracking (especially if doing side quests). The game's hub concept, while perfectible, is also pretty interesting. It is a physical place you can move around in, but it's also a cursor on an ocean map that has to physically travel to places you want to reach, complete with travel time. While it is a bit of work to interact with, I think it does accentuate the state of the world as well as the goal and theme of the game quite well, so I'm okay with it.
The story and writing is what I'm the most mixed about. I do think that, like the game in general, it is mostly on an upward trajectory, although as mentioned earlier it does start off on a pretty low note and it takes quite a while to get going, so make of that what you will. I would say it would have benefitted strongly from seriously compacting the first half to expand what ended up being the second half, as it has a lot more momentum and contains a few small story beats and interactions rarely or never seen before in the series, which is great to see even though I would have wanted some to be more consequent. The tone of the game is not quite what I expected or would really have wanted from the game either. While not devoid of humour at all, the tone leans more on the heartwarming and wholesome overall than on the wacky and funny. I think how receptive someone is to that will play a large part in how they receive the game. I was fine with it, although at times it lays it on a bit thick to the point of being sappy. Granted, this tone fits a lot better with the theme and the message of the game. Indeed, in what I think is a first for a Mario title, the game has an overarching central narrative theme that also dictated a lot of the art direction, which I think adds a lot to the game. The theme is handled with very little subtlety but it does carry a bit of nuance at times.
All in all for all its faults and its perfectible aspects, I want to say it is overall a pleasant experience. The writing might be a mixed bag, but the game jettisons a lot of the more bothersome baggage of the later parts of the series (notably 2D segments, excessive minigame usage, and gimmick battle styles) while keeping and sometimes improving on others (more unique setpieces, a slightly stronger battle system, the spectacle, the visuals). It is a worthwhile addition to the series, one in which I see a lot of potential going forward, even knowing that many of the choices will not stick around, due to their strong ties to the game’s theming, which will force the team to innovate. For the first time in years, I am optimistic about the series' future.