![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/08\/Switch_Mario_LuigiBrothership_scrn_01-1.jpg\")
<\/p>\nNovember 2024 marked the grand return of the Mario & Luigi series after almost ten whole years without a new game. As someone who\u2019s 100 percent completed the game (and spent well over 60 hours doing so), this is an incredibly polarizing RPG. On one hand, the visual style is excellent \u2013 the characters are expressive, the core gameplay of the series remains mostly intact, and the story, while nothing groundbreaking, is solid. On the other hand, Brothership is held back by its awful pacing, disappointing technical performance, and a large amount of filler content between its main story beats.<\/p>\n
Fifteen years down the line, I\u2019m not sure that Nintendo could actually fix any of Mario & Luigi: Brothership\u2019s biggest problems via a traditional remake. Many of its greatest issues are baked into its story and presentation in such a way that it would require significant retooling of plot points and gameplay. But today, we\u2019re going to go over a list of changes that would help cement Mario & Luigi: Brothership as the best entry in the series. We\u2019re not banking on these changes ever being implemented, but it\u2019s fun nonetheless. Do keep in mind that we\u2019ll be discussing spoilers, so you might want to bookmark this post and come back later if you\u2019re still trying to avoid them.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Before we get into all the negative things and how to fix them, I want to clarify that I like Mario & Luigi: Brothership. It\u2019s probably my second least favorite game in the series, but it\u2019s a title with incredible potential. Like I mentioned earlier, the art style is excellent. Characters are super expressive, and the animations fit their personalities very well. It\u2019s a faithful 3D adaptation of the traditional Mario & Luigi art style, and it helps give its characters a striking and unique look. Not to mention that the end of the game is excellent in theory \u2013 in practice, it\u2019s held back by overly long sections that feel like they never end, plus a four-hour side quest right when you think the game is over. Mario and Luigi being assimilated into a virtual reality dream world version of the Mushroom Kingdom where Bowser is friendly and everything is perfect is a surprisingly mature plot point for a Mario game, and the main antagonist, Reclusa, almost feels like an antagonist right out of the Persona series. Despite Brothership\u2019s shortcomings, its villain and final stretch wind up very memorable.<\/p>\n
The main problems with Mario & Luigi: Brothership are its length and pacing. Its story clocks in at around 40 hours if you\u2019re rushing, which is roughly the same length as Mario & Luigi: Dream Team. That being said, Dream Team has many more plot points and spaces them all out much better than Brothership. Most of Brothership\u2019s cool story points are within the last ten hours of the game, and they only last for roughly thirty minutes each. Most of the game is spent hopping from island to island and connecting them with Shipshape Island, but not much tends to happen on each island. Several of the islands, like Bulbfish Island and Merrygo Island, wind up feeling particularly repetitive and frankly rather boring. This is an issue that can\u2019t be fixed with a simple remake way down the line \u2013 Brothership\u2019s story feels like it should be twenty hours, not forty hours. Nintendo would need to cut down on filler dialogue and possibly even remove a lot of scenes, and at that point, the game would be significantly changed.<\/p>\n
Pacing is also a huge issue throughout the game. It takes much longer than normal to get hammers and especially Bros. Attacks, which are spread out over the forty-hour run time. Especially in the early game, you\u2019re left with not much to attack with other than jumps. Another problem related to pacing is the side quests \u2013 if you\u2019re thinking of playing Brothership but haven\u2019t done so yet, I would genuinely recommend skipping most of the side quests. There are just so many\u00a0of them, and nearly all of them are filler quests that add very little to Concordia\u2019s world-building. For every side quest you finish, it feels like at least three new ones pop up. If you\u2019re going for 100 percent completion, it\u2019s very easy to get burnt out and lose the motivation to keep playing. Some side quests are only available for a limited time, so if you advance the story too far they disappear for good.<\/p>\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/08\/Switch_Mario_LuigiBrothership_scrn_21.jpg\")
<\/p>\n
One of Brothership\u2019s most unexpected problems is its performance. In the early game, it\u2019s not great, but it\u2019s not too bad. Brothership targets 30 frames per second, and there are sometimes dips, especially in the overworld. This is particularly problematic for games like the Hammer Rally, which require you to hit a ball back and forth with perfect timing 100 times in a row. Most of the Hammer Rally locations are in areas with lots of NPCs visible on-screen, which means you\u2019ll often get to 90 hits, experience a random frame dip, and mess up the timing. That being said, Hammer Rally is completely optional, so this would at least be excusable \u2013 however, toward the end of the game, the main antagonist takes over and creates a red fog that hangs over every area of the game for the remainder of that save file. This fog causes an absolutely unreal amount of lag \u2013 the game may even dip below 20 frames per second at some points. And this fog stays until you beat the game, which means after a certain point in the story the performance takes a huge hit from that point on. The frame rate drop makes the game feel cheap \u2013 the graphical style is impressive, but it doesn\u2019t seem like it would be particularly intensive. Mario games normally run fairly well on Nintendo Switch, even if they\u2019re a consistent 30 frames per second rather than 60. Still, Brothership often fails to hit 30 frames per second especially in the endgame, and that\u2019s something that could be easily fixed by a remake or a Nintendo Switch 2 update. In fact, we\u2019re surprised it isn\u2019t getting a Nintendo Switch 2 update \u2013 Brothership\u2019s performance was heavily criticized.<\/p>\n
Some players are also frustrated with the way Luigi is treated in the game. In previous titles in the series, you could independently jump with Mario and Luigi, but this time around, Luigi is an AI-controlled character who sort of does his own thing in the overworld. In battles, you also control Luigi\u2019s attacks with the A button instead of the B button, but that could easily be fixed with a setting. I personally don\u2019t think these two problems are a huge deal, but I can see how some players would find them mildly annoying. Some players also complain about dry writing and too many tutorials, which definitely plays into the game being way too long and having poor pacing.<\/p>\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/08\/Switch_Mario_LuigiBrothership_scrn_13-1.png\")
<\/p>\n
Mario & Luigi: Brothership is a game with a lot of potential, but it\u2019s significantly held back because it overstays its welcome and bombards the player with filler content. I personally don\u2019t know anybody else who\u2019s beaten the game, and it\u2019s a shame \u2013 all of Brothership\u2019s coolest moments are heavy spoilers, and they all happen at the very end. I find them to be some of the most memorable moments in the Mario & Luigi series as a whole \u2013 in fact, I would even say Brothership\u2019s final boss is the second best in the series (second to Bowser\u2019s Inside Story). Not all of Brothership\u2019s problems could be fixed by a remake, but if Nintendo ever decides to do a Switch 2 Edition, a big performance boost and perhaps a setting to control Luigi\u2019s attack inputs would go a long way.<\/p>\n
There\u2019s a bit of good news here, though: Brothership sold well, and Acquire will almost certainly make another Mario & Luigi game a few years down the line. Nintendo is fairly receptive to feedback within their games, so there\u2019s a very real chance that the next title will have much better pacing and performance.<\/p>\n
If you\u2019ve played Brothership, what did you think of the game? Did you manage to beat it, or did its long runtime cause you to lose interest eventually? Let us know in the comments down below.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Related<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"November 2024 marked the grand return of the Mario & Luigi series after almost ten whole years without…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":154675,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[50596,47066,90308,158,1399,67,132,68],"class_list":{"0":"post-154674","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-technology","8":"tag-acquire","9":"tag-highlight","10":"tag-mario-luigi-brothership","11":"tag-technology","12":"tag-top","13":"tag-united-states","14":"tag-unitedstates","15":"tag-us"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115047574092855551","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/154674","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=154674"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/154674\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/154675"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=154674"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=154674"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=154674"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}