Mario & Luigi Brothership charms its way through familial familiarity

As the long-lived Switch heads towards the end of its life, Nintendo is playing out its veteran hardware with a symphony of familiar but not-quite-blockbuster takes on its biggest franchises. We’ve seen a retro-feeling Zelda that’s not another open-world epic, and a final flurry of Mario spin-offs that will stretch into next year: another Mario vs Donkey Kong, one more Mario Party, and a port of Luigi’s Mansion 2. The most interesting of Nintendo’s last forays into the Mushroom Kingdom this generation, however, is the long-awaited return of its traditionally handheld-only Mario & Luigi series, whose previous all-new entry arrived nine years ago back on 3DS.

Mario & Luigi BrothershipPublisher: NintendoDeveloper: NintendoAvailability: 7th NovemberPlatforms: Nintendo Switch

Fans of the Mario & Luigi games, which offer gentle RPG mechanics and platforming, humour and turn-based battles, will likely feel at home again here in this latest chapter that does not attempt to reinvent the wheel. (It’s worth noting that Nintendo has said the game boasts some development staff from former entries in the series, despite long-term developer Alpha Dream sadly closing its doors back in 2015. Exactly who and how many have returned remains a mystery, however, due to Nintendo’s continued secrecy around development credits prior to launch.)

As you’d expect, the Mario brothers are once again paired together in an adventure that always seeks to play up their partnership, with puzzles and gameplay designed around the concept of having two relatively-equal protagonists. Mario is technically still the star, as you control him for the vast majority of overworld exploration (while Luigi tags along automatically behind, running when Mario runs, jumping when Mario jumps). That said, the lankier brother still manages to get his time to shine. Separate buttons control each brother’s hammer attack, used to clear obstacles and find power-ups. Specific to Luigi are moments and certain locations where he’ll activate a new ability – Luigi Logic – with (fittingly) a press of the L button. It’s at these moments you can detach him from Mario and send him off to smash crates and hoover up collectibles, or alternatively to perform some kind of specific gameplay in slightly-cerebral puzzles that require the two brothers to operate independently.

One of these puzzles involved navigating a circular maze, the two brothers separating from each other so Luigi can activate controls to rotate the maze’s sections while Mario stands atop a lookout tower, the physical distance between the pair prompting the game’s camera to zoom out so you get a birds-eye view of the solution. It’s a neat way of communicating to the player that, within the game’s fiction, Mario and Luigi are working together, dividing duties and – I like to think – calling back and forth as they shift the maze to and fro.