Topic: Mario & Luigi: Brothership

@PikminMarioKirby I agree. They were a great comedic foil to the more put together Kamek and having their dynamic return would be great.

@N00BiSH I’d love to see the trio in 3D. Hopefully they’ll be in this game, but if not I hope they make it to future entries.

It seems official that this game is 1-player. This was pretty obvious (it’s a series about single-player RPG) but now there is confirmation (I think it was on one of Nintendo’s websites, don’t remember the region).

@PikminMarioKirby The Elite Trio were a highlight in Dream Team, like Private Goomp accidentally revealing how to beat them in their boss battle and the three being so incompetent before and after the final boss.

Actually, the more I remember, the more fond I am about Dream Team. It had its issues, but the art style, cutscenes, and especially the music were terrific, so Brothership giving me Dream Team vibes is a good thing to me!

@Croctopus I never understood the animosity towards Dream Team; it may have gone overboard with tutorials and went on a bit too long, but it was still a pretty great game. Up there with SS and BIS in my opinion.

I haven’t played too many Mario & Luigi games. I beat Bowser’s Inside Story on 3DS and I really enjoyed it. A bit confusing for me at some points but I figured things out (which often made puzzles/challenges more satisfying once solved), it’s a really good game in my opinion. Maybe I’ll play through it again at somepoint.

What are people’s favorite Mario & Luigi?

Bowser's Inside Story is far and away my favorite, but Dream Team is a close second. In terms of pure moment to moment gameplay and overall aesthetics, I think it's the best of the series and is only really held back by weaker pacing and not being quite as sharply-written as BiS.

Superstar Saga is also an absolute must-play, and between NSO and the 3DS remake, it's still fairly accessible. It's a great vertical slice of why people like the Mario & Luigi games so much.

@PikminMarioKirby
Superstar Saga is by far and away my favorite, to the point that no other Mario & Luigi has really grabbed me like the original. I'd say my next two would be the underrated ones like Dream Team and Partners in Time. Bowser's Inside Story is great, don't get me wrong (I was too harsh just calling it OK before), but it's not been one I've wanted to replay much.

I've still enjoyed the Mario & Luigi series, but I've usually preferred Paper Mario.

Bowser's Inside Story, by a mile. It's not just my favorite Mario RPG, but it's my favorite game of all time. It showed me a more story-driven side to Mario, made me more tolerant to a genre I don't care for, it doubles as a great little metacommentary on Bowser and reestablishes why he's still THE Mario villain--honestly, if I had the time and energy, I could write a small book on why I love this game.

@StarryCiel Yeah Bowser’s Inside Story is great! The story is very well made. Both the Bowser moments and the Mario/Luigi moments are both great.

@Croctopus I started Superstar Saga on NSO, but I got stuck on a boss, and now I no longer have the expansion pack.

I also prefer Paper Mario (at least the first 2 entries), but Mario & Luigi is still really awesome and is probably more consistently great than the Paper Mario series. I haven’t played most M&L games but they seem to always keep the core mechanics the same. I’m very excited to play the new entry!

@N00BiSH Bowser’s Inside Story is very good. They did well with the balancing of the Mario/Luigi gameplay with the Bowser gameplay. The story is very good as well! I’m not a huge fan of the RPG genre in general but the Mario ones are really awesome.

I think I prefer Paper Mario overall because it has more of an emotional aspect to its writing. Mario & Luigi has some of the sharpest comedic writing in the franchise and it's great at examining the major characters like Bowser in BiS or Luigi in Dream Team, but I rarely get as invested in its original characters as I would in someone like Vivian, Bobby, or Tippi.

The gameplay, on the other hand, I think I actually prefer in Mario & Luigi. I love how attacking and defending is purely skill-based, the overworld platforming puzzles that have you chaining together Bros Moves to traverse each area, the gargantuan damage numbers you can deal by the end of the game, and the often breakneck pacing that pushes you from location to location. The soundtracks by Yoko Shimomura are also consistently phenomenal across the board and I really hope she returns for Brothership.

@StarryCiel Yeah both Paper Mario and Mario & Luigi have their strengths. I think the story/writing of the first 3 Paper Mario games is insanely good, but Sticker Star/Color Splash’s writing can be funny but ultimately isn’t nearly as good as the first 3 entries when it comes to story. Mario & Luigi as a series is more consistently good with it’s story, as it wasn’t really taken away from the series.

During the trailer, we saw a glimpse of Princess Peach, Dorrie, and a few of the electric characters. They seemed to all be on some sort of team, because they were all wearing an orange bandanna. I wonder how they became a team, and how Peach is even in this world in the first place.

This is what I was talking about in the above post. This looks awesome! It’s a unique design to Peach compared to the other games with Peach on Switch.

The new celshaded artstyle looks very colorful and nice. And its great to see new enemies, bosses and characters. No Paper jam situation from the looks of it (Paper jam only had "traditional" characters and enemies). I hope they won't go overboard with the mini-games though, since Paper jam probably had to many mini-games.

I've only played three M&L titles as of this writing, all on the DS or 3DS. I intend to play through the rest in chronological order. I know there's little continuity between entries, but this feels like a series best played this way IMO.

• Superstar Saga + Bowser's Minions - I LOVE the main game. The writing, the BeanBean Kingdom setting, the Beanish, Cackletta, Fawful (It's crazy how much I love this guy), Peach literally spouting unintentional mouth diarrhea at the beginning of the game since her voice is stolen, that trademark Beanish grin....It's a Mario adventure mostly set in a different kingdom. Conversely, I think I made it 2/3 through the Bowser's Minions portion before shelving it and watching what happens online. The plot was meh, I could only take the limited RTS gameplay in smaller sessions, and it became very grindy and unbalanced after awhile.
• Partners In Time (DS) - Probably one of the darkest Mario RPGs I've played to date, only beaten by Super Paper Mario so far. The Shroobs are creepy as heck, and the Mushroom Kingdom's inhabitants are put through A LOT of disturbing things. The Bros. + the babies bring some fun dynamics and different takes on puzzles to the series. Seeing characters and how they looked/behaved in the past is interesting, with Toadsworth being my favorite. I like the more pixel-like visuals of this era compared to the 3DS entries and remakes, but that's my nostalgia for the art style talking. The only thing I didn't really care for were some of the battle mechanics with sort of controlling four characters. Plus I ran into one of the early soft lock glitches present in the North American version.
• Bowser's Inside Story + Bowser Jr.'s Journey (3DS) - This post is long enough already, so here are my recent impressions from the Games You Recently Beat? thread (Edit: Which is also...long. ). The Tl:Dr is BIS is decent, but I didn't like it as much as SS. Bowser Jr.'s Journey was actually a fun side romp, one that fixed a lot of the issues I had with Bowser's Minions.

I really liked the the subverison of the mushroom kingdom that was the bean bean kingdom in the first one, and I enjoyed Partners in Time, but the later Mario & Luigi games deviated from the Mario universe a little too much for me, much in the same way the later Paper Mario games stayed too close to it.

For me Mario RPG, the first 2 Paper Marios, and the first 2 Mario & Luigi games really hit that sweet spot between familiarity and strangeness; you don't want too much completely new stuff, you want to see things you know and love subverted a little bit.

But I will keep an eye on Brothership and see how it is.
I think this would be a great game to have a demo for,
I wonder how many Switch owners have played a Mario & Luigi game.

I honestly thought that all the Mario and Luigi games aside from Paper Jam fit in with the Mario universe pretty well. Nothing seemed too far-fetched imo. In Brothership, it looks like the Bro moves are a bit more realistic like they were in the original game. It's also important to note that Mario and Luigi are going to a new dimension or world now. At least judging by the stuff we were shown in the trailers anyways.

I'd say, if anything, the Mario & Luigi games veered closer to the Mario universe over time. Superstar Saga and Dream Team were the only entries until Brothership that had Mario & Luigi travel to another location, the other three all took place in the Mushroom Kingdom and primarily centered around the usual Mario cast, with only a few unique NPCs like the Shroobs in PiT or the Brocks in BiS. Personally, I'm glad we've been getting a lot of Mario games that take place outside of the Mushroom Kingdom lately so Brothership is looking right up my alley so far.

@StarryCiel I'm glad too. Does a lot for the world building of Mario as a whole. I feel like people forget that the familiar stuff we're used to is just because we've been stuck in the Mushroom Kingdom for so long. That there's a whole other world out there and the "Non-Mario" characters are just as canon or normal as the normal Mario characters.