Kinda Funny Gamescast: Video Game Podcast - Mario and Luigi: Brothership Review - Kinda Funny Gamescast

Episode Date: November 4, 2024

Thank you for the support! Run of Show - - Start - Housekeeping - Mario & Luigi: Brothership Review - Ads - Combat & Traversal - Music & Original Characters - Bosses & Luigi Logic - Final Thoughts - SuperChats Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

What's up and welcome back to the Kind of Funny Gamescast for Monday, November 4th, 2024. Of course, I am your host, Tim Geddes. I am joined today by it's Christmas in November, Joey Noel. Hello. And joining us for the very first time on Kind of Funny Content, it's IGN's Logan Plant. Yay, thanks so much for having me. Logan, I'm very, very excited to have you here.

I met you at Summer Game Fest this year. We got to have a brief but fulfilling chat. about our love for Nintendo. And you're just like, hey, man, like, I'm on NBC over at IGN, straight up crushing it. I'm adding that part, but I'm the one saying you're crushing it. And you're like, I'm reviewing more Nintendo games for them. So if you ever want to get a voice, like hit me up. And we tried making it work a couple different times, but here we are now.

It's actually happening. So I'm really excited to have you here for the Mario and Luigi Brothership Review. For a game I loved. I guess I love us so much, Tim. I mean, that's the problem. Hey, look, when we're talking about games, sometimes you win, sometimes you'll lose. we're getting a little ahead of ourselves here in terms of what we think about the game. But, you know, I'm happy to have you here.

And hopefully we can have you back for something that you might be a little bit more positive on. But, hey, these are just the cards that were dealt. We planned this before we knew. But again, getting ahead of myself here. Let's start with this. This is the kind of funny games cast. Each and every weekday, we get together to talk about the latest in video games, reviews, previews, predictions, all of that. The big topics that you want to hear about.

If you love what we do, please support us with the Kind of Funny membership on Patreon or YouTube to get all of our shows ad-free. Watch us, record them live and get a daily exclusive show. For a chance to be part of the show, submit your thoughts and opinions as YouTube super chats as we go. A little bit of housekeeping for you. Greg Miller is going to New York this week. He's going to be at the limited run games, Shopify pop-up in New York City. Greg's meeting and greeting in the Big Apple from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. Saturday. Kevin Smith, Jason Mews, and Jared Petty will also be there.

What a lineup of people. I love it. God damn. I love Jared so much. But more importantly, so will the Game Awards, 2015 trending gamer Greg Miller, RSVP for Saturday. We can't let him write his own housekeeping things anymore.

You can go to kind of funny.com slash NYC to RSVP now. So yeah, if you're in New York, definitely go, say hi to Greg, say hi to Jared, and all of them. You already got a Games Daily where Bless and Mike broke down all the news about how Dragon Age the Veilguard is not getting DLC. After this, we're doing a Dragon Age Vailgard stream, continuing Nick and Andy's, sorry, Greg and Andy's journey with Nick the Dwarf. See how that continues to go.

He's so small. Have you seen footage of this? It's so funny. It makes me laugh every time I see it. If you're a kind of funny member, of course, you can get today's Gregway. And later today, you can watch the Kind of Funny podcast be recorded live. Thank you to our Patreon producers, Delaney Twining, and Carl Jacobs. today were brought to you by phasmophobia and better help,

but we'll tell you all about that later. For now, let's get into it, the topic of the show. Mario and Luigi Brothership is almost here. Joey, you have played it. Logan, you have played it. I just, before we get into our thoughts on this game, I want to ask, Logan, what is your history with the Mario and Luigi series? I've been playing Mario and Luigi for 20 years.

My first one was Partners in Time back on DS when that came out. That was actually the first game I ever got with my DS when I got it in 2005. And then I went back and later played Superstar Saga. And I've played all of them basically on launch day since then. Dream Team. Paper Jam is the only one that I have not finished. And then Bowser's Inside Story is my favorite one. I think it's one of the best Mario RPGs only trailing like a thousand year door as my overall favorite. So I love the Mario and Luigi series. I feel like it declined a little bit in the 3DS era. Dream Team I liked still, but it was too chatty for me to handholdy and way too long, which may be themes that we talk about today.

And then paper jam just kind of completely fell apart. And I didn't get too far into that one. And I was so excited that it was coming back. Joey, what about you? What's your history with the Mario Luigi franchise? I'm on the total opposite side of I had never played one before. So this is going to be a fun discussion to have like the two different experiences coming at this game, I think. Not only have you not played a Mario Luigi game, you also haven't played Mario RPG, you haven't played any of the paper marks. And so, I think. And so not only have you not played a Mario Luigi game. games, but a couple months ago, or I guess last month,

Nintendo was like, hey, we want to send somebody to New York to go play the game, and you were like, I'll give it a shot. So you went and you actually did the preview for it, and you liked the preview enough that you were like, give me the review. Like, I actually want to, I want to give this one a shot and play it. Yeah, I had a really great time at the preview event. I had a lot of time we got like two-ish hours hands on, and I had so much fun that I was like, oh, this is for sure going on my list of like things I want to play for

the rest of the year. So when I got the opportunity to review it, I was like really excited. And I was really excited for like the first 20 hours that I played this game. So, so okay, let's start here then. So Joey, how many hours have you put into the game and have you finished it yet? So I played 55 hours of this game and I'm not done yet, which is crazy to me personally. I, we, I thought I had read somewhere that it was like 35-ish hours to completion. And so when I was at 35 hours on Friday, I was like, like, oh, I don't have that much left. And then at 2.30 last night, I was like, I'm putting this down.

I can't play anymore. Granted, there's a lot of different things. I, not always super great at battle. So I had to do a lot of these, like, boss battles a couple times. So that's a me thing. I don't think most people are going to get 55 hours necessarily out of this. And I think that's my biggest caveat. I'm not always good at games.

That's fine. But to jump in with that, though, Joey, that's something really bizarre about Brothership is that it has an easy mode. But to get to that easy mode, you have to lose a fight twice. And then it says, okay, do you want to try this fight again in easy mode? And there's no way to just keep easy mode on permanently. When you, the next boss that you hit a wall against, you have to lose against it twice to turn it down to easy again. It's a crazy way to set up difficulty. It's wild. And if you really want, because at the point that I got yesterday, I was like, I just want to fly. through this. So then to get to the cakewalk mode, you have to lose twice. First on regular, then on easy, and then you get to the cakewalk where you can kind of like fly through it a little bit more. But because you take so little damage in easy mode, the play through to like get to even trying to die to get to the easier one, because I was like, I just want to speed through this. I don't want to do it. It took so long, like impossibly long. I also did a ton of the side quest

and stuff like that. And the way that I play games usually is I will do like a cleanup round of like, it's what I'm thinking specifically with Astrobot of like, I'm done with this world, I'm going to go get all the stuff that I miss and then I'll move on to the next one. That's how I approached my time with Brothership on each of these islands. And not knowing that later in the game, it does make you go backwards and revisit places now that I have like revisited

potentially multiple times already. So I think that there's definitely a more efficient way to play this game than what I was playing. But it's hard to know. Obviously, pre-release, pre-guides, all of that kind of stuff. I'm usually a guide girl because I'm not one to like battle through stuff. But I did it for this one. I was very proud of myself.

Yeah, I'm proud of you too, Joe. We're stepping up for this. Are you not yet beat it? No. Planning on going the distance and finishing this thing? I don't think I want to spend any more time with this game. Wow. Wow.

Okay. Okay. Logan, how long have you played the game? And you did beat it, correct? Yes, I rolled credits at 34 hours. And kind of, I guess, my caveat there is I was so over the side content after about 15 hours that I'm mostly mainlined the second half of the game. I think if you continue to do the side quests, and there are many time-limited side quests that go away after certain story chapters. And they warn you, hey, if a side quest has a red icon, you can't do it anymore after you progress the main story.

So I just kind of put those aside because I had to burn through this thing to write my review and get it up today. 34 hours. I think if I'd continued playing at the pace, I played through the first two-thirds, probably 40 to 45, but I'm in the same boat as Joey. I was not enjoying the third act, so I didn't have drive to do the side quests. And the side quests, Tim, are basically just, oh, go talk to this person on this island you've already been to, watch a generic cutscene, earn your reward. They're not really worth doing. Gotcha, gotcha. Yeah. So this is Martin Luigi Brothership, releasing November 7th, published by Nintendo, but developed by Acquire.

This is an interesting thing. As we've been talking about the last year or so, Nintendo doesn't really advertise who develops their games. They just kind of pretend it's all just a blanket Nintendo. And there's no splash screens in the beginning to let you know all this stuff. So you need to get to the credits for that information to get out there. Acquired, not a name that I was familiar with. So I did a little digging on this.

It's a Japanese game developer, mainly known for their Tenchu and the way of the Samurai series. But in 2011, the company was acquired by Gung Ho Online Entertainment, and it co-developed Octopath Traveler 1 and 2. So that's kind of their pedigree, which I guess does make some sense of jumping from RPGs like Octopath to this series. But Logan, do you have any familiarity with that? Yeah, I played Octopath Traveler 1.

I didn't quite finish it. That's a really beefy game. But I really like the battle system in that game. I really like a lot of what they did in that one. But yeah, this is an interesting one, right? Because Alpha Dream is gone. They made the entire series through paper. jam and then they went bankrupt and just disappeared.

And apparently there's some of the original talent at Acquire working on this game. But yeah, you can definitely tell the studio shift playing Brothership if you played all of the Mario and Luigi's. Yeah, definitely want to dive deeper into what exactly you mean by that. But before we get too far, Joey, I know that you haven't officially beat it yet, so you're not going to officially put a final score on it. But based on your experience, your 55-hour experience of this, what would you give Mario and Luigi Brotherhip on the kind of funny scale. On the kind of funny scale, I'm giving it a six. I think it is

okay. It's so funny to look at our review scale because at different points of this game, I had wildly different scores. Within the first 20 hours, I would have scored it probably an eight, five, and then it's just kind of slowly gone down from there. To me, this is the game that doesn't end. It feels like every time you're making some progress, it's like, oh, this is a big boss battle. It immediately gets undercut being like, oh, just kidding. It's not that big boss battle that you thought it was. And actually, you're going to have to go back and do a bunch of stuff over again. Two of my least favorite game mechanics kind of all time are in this game, which is, hey, you know that thing that you did a long time ago, through some McGuffin that really doesn't make a ton of sense.

you have to go back and do both of those things again. And you're like, okay, this game is like not lacking in things for you to do. So it seems like a little bit of a waste to go back. And then it has the other least favorite thing, which we talk about a lot in Marvel shows, which is like, ooh, you beat that boss, but the boss is now back. And it has different colored powers, which really doesn't mean anything other than they have way more health. And you have to do way more damage. And it's just like it doesn't feel like your.

It just feels like, oh, I just have to do this again and nothing's really changed. You're not really like incorporating a ton of like new moves or mechanics or anything like that. I'm just like, this wasn't like super fun the first time I did it, when I'm having to do it a second time. They do try and change things up with like the battle plugs that you get and you can craft, which like add modifiers to your battle style, which anywhere from like giving you auto excellent to spike balls drop to like all sorts of different stuff. stuff. Those to me ended up by the end of my time being a little bit annoying because the

number of turns that you can use them is pretty much limited to like 10 or 15, I think is where it caps out. But you're doing, you're going through them so quickly and you acquire so many that you can have active at one time that I would much rather have wanted to craft ones that last for longer's amounts of turns. So it doesn't feel like almost every other turn you're swapping out another battle plug because they all get used in different amounts in different ways and stuff like that. And I'm just like, I feel like I'm wasting a lot of time in the menus and it doesn't necessarily feel productive in a good use of my time. So you, you say that you early on, first 20 hours were leaning towards like an 8.5.

Like what are the things that you liked about it that would have given it that score? It had a lot of movement and a lot of pacing. It felt like you were learning things that you were actively using in battle. And it felt like you were making a good amount of progress on the map, though. will talk about fast traveling and the way that you navigate things later. That's a little pin for later. By the time I got probably 25 hours in, that's where you start to see some of those repetitive things being like, oh, you have to go back, you have to go back, you have to go back. And for some of my time where I had already gone back, it did feel just like repetitive.

And I was like, I just feel like I'm doing the same things and seeing the same people over and over again. And I'd like to figure out what the rest of this game looks like. I also think that the story is like pretty thin and definitely doesn't I think if the story was a little bit more robust and it carried you further through um some of these repetitive gameplay moments I would be more motivated because I'm like oh I want to keep going I want to keep going but it felt like being a horse with like a carrot dangling in front where like every time you think you're going they just pull it straight back and you're like okay well at what point is this my fault now for continuing to get on this um kind of merry ground yeah So, okay, Logan, what about you? What score did you give this on the IGN scale? Yeah, on the IGN scale, I give this a 5 out of 10, which means mediocre. It doesn't mean bad, as I think a lot of people take a 5 out of 10 to mean. And I actually real quick, wanted to pull from our review guide, which is public.

You can go and look at this site just to read off what a 5 means at IGN, because it perfectly sums up how I feel about this game. This is the kind of bland, unremarkable game. We've mostly forgotten about a day after we finish playing. A mediocre game isn't something you should spend your time or money on if you consider either to be precious, but they'll pass the time if you have nothing better to do. Yeah, this game's just bland. It's boring.

It doesn't really do anything that interesting. And to Joey, what you were saying, you said that you felt like you were getting new stuff throughout the first 20 hours. As me, who's played the entire series, that stuff I feel like I should have had earlier. They were spoon-feeding me these powers and abilities that are very standard Mario and Luigi Fair, and it just didn't feel like they were taking any big swings. And I agree with you on the story. It is so generic and it is so chatty. I feel like this game has taken the worst habits of Mario and Luigi and carried them forward

and dropped everything I liked about it. Because like I mentioned, the developer shift, you can feel that in the overworld gameplay. It no longer feels like Mario and Luigi. It feels like Mario with Luigi following somewhat close behind. You're not really jumping as Luigi any. You can hit B to jump with Luigi, but it actually muddles things up and he can get lost and the two can get separated. And if they get too far apart, the game stops and they have to reunite in the middle. And it's like a 10 second slowdown and be like, oh no, Mario, Luigi.

And then they run back to the middle and meet up. Like, you're no longer platforming as both characters. And then there are these puzzles where Mario jumps on the red platforms and Luigi jumps on the green ones. And in an old game, you would hit A to jump as Mario, B to jump as Luigi, platform is both of them. but now you do Mario's platforming, and then Luigi's just an NPC that does it himself. And that happens constantly. There's all these moments where you just hit L

and send Luigi to do something that in any older Mario and Luigi game, you would have had control over yourself. So it just feels watered down, and it's almost worse than just like an NPC ally, like Paper Mario, like Admiral Bobberies following you behind, and he doesn't really do much. You can pick him up and throw him to make him explode,

but he's kind of just there. is an active hindrance now rather than being a second playable protagonist and I just found that so frustrating. One of the things I've always loved the most about the Mario and Luigi series is the comedy and the character

and the character that they gave Mario but mainly Luigi and also the world that you're in. I feel like this series is like the prime example of making the most of the Mario world that we don't get to see in the platformers. Does this game do any of that, Logan?

I didn't like the comedy at all this time, and usually I do. I usually tend to like the Paper Mario brand of comedy a little bit more. It's kind of more surreal and fourth wall breaking and jokes that I feel like adults get that maybe would go over kids' heads that are just really funny, almost social commentary sometimes, right? Thousand Your Doors hilarious, Orgami King is hilarious. In Brothership, the comedy is mostly the joke is if the joke isn't funny. There's all these characters that tell these really unfunny, ad jokes and puns.

And then it sits there and there's this wind blowing animation as Mario and Luigi just sit there and stare in silence. And that's a punchline. They return to 15, 20 times across the game. And then there are a couple other recurring bits that are supposed to be funny, like Snoutlet, who's the not a pig sidekick that we see in all the trailers. He tells almost everyone he meets, I'm not a pig. And then he's always making these pig puns about like bacon and things like that.

But then he says, but I'm definitely not a pig. And it's not funny the first time. It's way less funny the 30th time. Like, it's just exhausting to click through this dialogue for me. Yeah, I am a noted dialogue skipper, which I really did not do this game. And boy, did I want to. I think the first 20 hours, I really did have, like, a really fun time with it. But I think it's just very repetitive and it kind of just grates on you.

Maybe if I had mainlined the story and not tried to do. everything and all the side quests, I would feel differently. And like, somebody in the chat was like, it sounds like she doesn't like RPGs. I like RPGs. I like turn-based RPGs, but I like I like them when I feel like I'm making progress and not feel like I'm just getting like kicked back two steps every time. persona five, like you were in love with, right? I love persona five. Metaphor, I have stopped playing, but mostly because I'm just not a fantasy person and

but the battle system, stuff like that, I think is really good. And I imagine I get back to this holiday. Like, I, I, these are I like these games. And I want, I think the saddest thing is I want to like this game more than I do. Like, I want to be able to go back and finish it, but I feel like just a little bit burned on all the time that I've put in and how it's handled it, that I'm like, I don't really care on a story level. And I haven't found the, I found the battles to be a little bit more annoying than satisfying.

So between those two things, that doesn't give me a ton of motivation to go back to it. Logan, I have a question for you as a more long-term Mario RPG fan. So something that I've been feeling in the last year is getting Super Mario RPG remake, getting Thousand-Year Dore remake, both of those, I would say, are debatably the one and two Mario RPGs of all of them. And on the day, you ask me, I can switch which is one and which is two, but they are the one and two. But because of playing those so recently, I'm a little burned out, a little fatigued on the Mario and Luigi Paper Mario, Mario RPG universe. Do you think that that might have affected your enjoyment of this game at all?

I really don't think so, no, because I even kept, I played Superstar Saga again this year just to kind of get back in the Mario and Luigi vibe, right? I really wanted to be ready for this one when it came in, and I didn't feel burned out because Super Mario RPG is not that long, 15 hours or so. That was a really quick, breezy thing to play through. Thousand-year door, I know like the back of my hand. I reviewed it. I gave it a nine.

I adore that game, and it felt like a treat to go back and play this. So, no, I was ready. I felt like I was actually primed more than ever for a new one, because those were both remakes. Those were both games I had played before. So the first new Mario RPG with actual RPG mechanics in years, I was so ready for it. And no, if this thing had just been better, I would have been in love with it. I also wanted to like it more than I did. And this is getting a little more into the businessy side of Nintendo things.

I'm really bummed that this game was. will probably sell better than 1,000-year door. A thousand-year door came out in May. It didn't get a holiday season. It's a remake. And this is the new November title for Nintendo. They're pushing this holiday season. And you've got to play a thousand-year-door.

That's my biggest message with Brothership is, go play the other two. They're great. This one's not. Yeah. And this being the first new Mario and Luigi in a very long time. And I think a lot of us were surprised when it was even announced that they were doing another one this late in the Switch's life cycle.

do you think that this is a bad sign for the franchise to come? Do you think that this is just a misstep or do you think that we're going to get another one at some point that maybe you can course correct a bit? Yeah, it's interesting, right?

Because this is Acquire's first time making a Mario and Luigi game. It's one of their first times kind of one of the biggest projects they've ever tackled, right? Making a game for Nintendo is a big deal. Not a lot of studios really get to do that. So I could see them making a sequel that maybe goes back to some of the things

I love about this series and shed some of the things I don't, but really this game is in line with the decline I was talking about. Dream Team, I liked a little bit less. Paper Jam, I liked a lot less. This one, I like more than Paper Jam, but it suffers from the same things. And it's just, if Nintendo is really thinking right now,

they release these three games, they're looking at sales numbers, they're looking at reception. Where are we taking Mario RPGs? I hope the answer is like a thousand-year-door follow-up, a new RPG Paper Mario from intelligent systems, because I trust that team way more than I trust this one. So we'll see what they do.

We'll see how this game sells and kind of how the numbers fall. But I just really hope that we don't go another nine years without an original Mario RPG. Yeah. I want to keep talking. But other people like this more than we do, right? Yeah, we seem to be outliers. I don't know about outliers, but there are also positive reviews out there.

So, hey, maybe this is for you as well. But we're going to keep talking about Martin Luigi Brothership right after a word from our sponsors. This episode's brought to you by Phasmophobia. The genre defining horror game is finally out now on consoles. Yes, that's right. The phenomenon that is Phasmophobia has finally entered console early access on PS5, PSVR 2, and Xbox series X-Ns, with full cross-place support across all platforms from day one. Join the already almost 20 million players on Steam, including our very own Snowbike Mike, and get ready for some spine, chilling ghost hunting with up to three friends. Experience the horror as you investigate immersive, haunted locations and gather evidence to help you succeed.

With several different ghost types and unique traits, no ghost hunt is ever the same. Making sure you work as a team and utilize your equipment is the key to making it out alive. It's time, ghost hunters. Phasmophobia is out now on PS5, PSVR2, and Xbox Series X&S. Gather your friends and prepare for the terrifying ghost hunts that await. This episode is brought to you by BetterHelp. I want to take a moment and say thank you to Barrett. Barrett always goes above and beyond to keep all of our shenanigans going.

This month is all about gratitude and in addition to Barrett there's another person we don't get to thank enough. It's sometimes hard to remind ourselves that we're trying our best to make sense of everything and in this crazy world that isn't easy. Therapy helps you find your strengths so you can ditch the extreme resolutions and make changes that really stick. You can get out of your negative thought cycles and find some mental and emotional peace and it can give you the tools to find more balance in your life.

Some of my best friends use BetterHelp and love how helpful it can be for learning positive coping skills and how to set boundaries. It empowers you to be the best version of yourself and it isn't just for those who've experienced major trauma. Just fill out a brief questionnaire to get matched with a licensed therapist

and switch therapist anytime for no additional charge. Let gratitude flow with BetterHelp. Visit BetterHelp.com slash Kind of Funny today to get 10% off your first month. That's BetterHelp. H-E-L-P.com slash kind of funny. And now that we're back, I want to talk about some more of the gameplay elements

of Marvin Luigi Brothership. Combat, let's start there. Joey, what was your experience with the combat? I think it's fine. You are pretty limited in what kind of moves you can do. You have a hammer and you have a jump. And then you can also do the bros moves, which are like the kind of supers that incorporate both brothers.

It gets pretty old using the hammer and the jump kind of over and over again. I think a lot of that is just the amount of time I've put into it. I think if I had played a smaller amount, I wouldn't be as down on it. The bros moves, I think, are fine. There was only like a couple for each that I really liked. So it does get annoying at parts when they force you to use some of the other ones to go kind of outside of the ones that you've used for the majority of the game. But I was not particularly moved by them.

Logan, what about you? Yeah, the combat is actually the one bright spot for me for most of the game. I think it suffers from the same thing we talked about earlier that it goes on 10 hours too long and I was sick of it by the time I finally finished the game because it's not adding anything really new in its final third. But up until that point, I actually really really... really, really liked this version of Mario and Luigi combat. I think where it's always excelled is actually the counterattacks,

not even necessarily the attacks. But in Mario and Luigi, more so than in Paper Mario, you can deal a lot of damage back to an enemy when it's attacking you. And each enemy has a different tell, so you know exactly when to counterattack by either jumping or using the hammer. And there's just really, really cool uses of that mechanic in Brothership. I think one of my favorites is that there's this enemy called the Snaptor that flies in and picks up one of the brothers,

and then they go off screen. And then as they're flying back in, you have to listen. And if Luigi screams, it means he's going to bowl Luigi at Mario like a bowling ball and try to hit him. And if Luigi doesn't scream, it means the snafter is going to swoop down and Mario can jump over and bounce off the snafter. And it's all these patterns that you won't know the first time you encounter an enemy, but then you'll kind of file it away and know when I run into the snapter, I need to be listening for this. I need to be reacting this way. And that's really, really, really cool stuff. And then basic jumps, hammers.

and the bros attacks are cool. They're super flashy. They're super cinematic. And it's the one place in Brothership that you can tell, wow, this is a home console game. This is a game on Switch, not on DS or 3DS anymore because, yeah, they're really vibrant, bright, and super cinematic. So I like to combat a lot. And then Joey talked about the battle plugs for a little bit. That is a brand new mechanic in Brothership where it's basically as if Paper Mario lets you swap out which badges you had equipped at the start of every single turn.

So you're constantly changing your load out at the start of every turn. If you have a flying enemy, you can equip an anti-flying attack, which is a guaranteed critical hit if you jump on a flying enemy. There's a kabum attack, which does the shockwave of damage to every enemy nearby your main target. And the best thing about them is that they chain together in really cool ways. So if you equip the kabum attack and the iron ball attack, then when that shockwave of damage goes out, it also drops an iron ball on every enemy impacted by that shockwave of damage. And it's the one place for Brothership doesn't beat you over the head with exactly what it wants you to do. It's the place where the tutorial card for those combos doesn't pop up until you've tried it for the first time. So it's cool.

It's experimental. And I really liked it. But I also agree with Joey that in the final third of the game, these things only start recharging when they hit zero. There's no way to recharge them when they have one or two left, like in a menu screen. So it's like if you had to let your phone die before you could plug it into. charge it. It doesn't make any sense. So you get into these encounters where you're just juggling all these different plugs like, oh, which one goes where. I only have two uses left here. And there's, there's a couple boss battles where they give you a full refill. So, okay, you're back up to full

strength now. But in the final third of the game, it mostly felt like I'm just using the ones that I have left. I'm not really strategizing anymore because I don't really have a choice too. So again, if this game ended at 25 hours, that'd be great. Yeah. Did you end up using a lot of the battle plugs that you craft in the back half of the game? Yeah, I did. In some of the later boss battles, there's some really powerful battle plugs that you get later on. And so, yeah, I was mixing and matching mostly because you have to fight a lot in this game. So, yeah. But one weird thing, I want to talk about the battle plugs. And it's just another instance of the overworld gameplay being pretty miserable is to craft new battle plugs.

You need to collect these sparkly bulbs that appear in the overworld. And they're designated by these sparkly spots on the ground or on walls. And you walk up to them as Mario and you pluck the sparkle out of the wall and then it explodes into five to six different pieces. And then you have to chase them around and grab them to add them to your inventory. It's not fun the first time. And again, it's way less fun the 30th time. Why is it like this?

I just kept asking myself throughout this game, why is it like this? And that's one example of it. Yeah, that didn't bother me as much because you can have Luigi just auto run around and pick them up. for you. But then it's, you're kind of tethered to Luigi of like you can only go so much

further and do other things while he's running around to get stuff. And then also if those bulbs go too far out of his purview, you have to like run closer to the bulb, tap L again to get him to pick it up and it's just like a little bit. So unnecessary.

annoying. You brought up the visuals. This being the first console, Mario and Luigi RPG that we've ever had, it being on the switch. how'd you feel about the visuals? How'd you feel about the performance, Logan? It performed really bad for me.

It really, really struggles specifically when it's docked because Joey and I were texting about it when we were playing it and she said, I'm not really having problems, but I'm playing mostly in handheld. I played it mostly in dock because I had to capture footage for my video review, and I wish I could have played this thing in handheld because, yeah, as the first home console, Mario and Luigi, it's a bummer.

There's a segment in my review, which you can watch over at IGN, where I talk about the performance, and I just show examples of these stutters. And it looks like I handpicked them to show, here's the three times it stuttered. No, it's constant. It feels like you're constantly expecting the next stutter

in the midst of a stutter or recovering from the last one. No. Just always. And it feels like it's when there's lava or water or wind or sand on screen that the game just can't handle it. And you're exploring islands that are all surrounded by the ocean. So it's just always kind of processing this water texture, and it's always struggling. And yeah, it was really frustrating me.

And another example of, why is it like this? It's just not a good jump to the home console format for them. Big in the chat, just circling back says, I wonder how, like, crucial to the game those battle plugs are because they reference something from another game that now I can't see. And I don't know what it is. If you don't use these battle plugs while you're playing the game, you are going to be playing this game forever. Every encounter is going to take you significantly longer than if you do use them.

Just the way that they all chain together and the way that they multiply damage and stuff like that, I would be scared to find out how long it would take you to beat. And I don't even think some of those bosses are beatable without some of those abilities. What do you think about the performance, but then also just the look of it, the art style? I like the art style. I know that a lot of people haven't. I think it's huge. Yeah.

I think I am the outlier there. I don't think Andy really liked it either, but maybe I was like. But yeah, I played exclusively handheld and I didn't really have any issues or any stuttering or anything. So that's crazy because, yeah, I was like, oh, this is, we were aligned with some of the things that we couldn't figure out. And that was one where I feel like we were separate. I was like, oh, we had two different experiences playing that. What about you, Logan? What do you think about the art style for this?

I'm torn on it. I like how Mario and Luigi look. I think that it's a really faithful rendition of kind of that concept art for Superstar saga, the box art for this entire series. I really like how they translated. And I like how a lot of the enemies look too, but the outlet residents of Concordia that look like power outlets, this game's all about plugs and outlets and connections and electricity and all that stuff.

I just don't like how they look. They're just really simple, rudimentary, like, I don't know, Nick Jr. in kind of a bad way, not saying like stuff for kids is bad, but it just, it didn't work for me in a Mario sense. And I'm thrilled to have original characters back in a Mario and Luigi game because Paper Jam just, it was Toots. That was the era of Mario RPGs where everything was a toad. So I'm happy for that, but I just didn't like these designs very much and just felt like they clashed. Like when I see Mario and Luigi standing next to all these power outlets, it just did not look right to me. So with the titular brother ship, do you feel like,

what is that? Let's just start there. What is the brothership, Joey? I think it's a portmanteau brothers and friendship, right? Isn't there a ship? There is a ship, but it's not called the Brothership, right? It's the ship important. There we go. What? And it is the hub world where you do all of the

navigation on the sea for. The game is called Brothership and you're on the ship, but it's not called the Brothership. No, it is. This game fucking sucks. They're coming in like a commenter. I love it.

But, but, okay, so is the ship important, though? Yeah. Do you like the ship? No, I don't like the ship. I do not like the navigation of the ocean. It's, it's really frustrating. I mean, the setup kind of is like Wind Waker. You're sailing to these different islands,

and you're going to discover all these islets and the next main island to go to. But in practice, navigation's done entirely within a menu. You just open up a map menu. You click on the next linear current that you want to sail to, and then you actually have to physically wait as your boat sails there. And you get an ability pretty early on that lets your boat speed up so you can get there faster. But kind of the attention is, oh, go.

It is rough before you get that, though, too. Yeah, it's slow. They want you to go do side quests while you're sailing there, but there's never really that much time to go to an entirely different island, do a side quest while you're sailing, and monitoring it in the background's kind of annoying. They put this enormous mini map of the ocean map when you're sailing and you're exploring another island. but then there's no mini map of the island you're on. And so you're just almost the quarter of the strings taken up by this ocean navigation

that is ultimately meaningless. And it's just cool idea. It didn't work. I was looking because I did a screen recording. There was a few. It must have been when I first started it, I needed to get from like one current to another. And I was listening to Janet and Isaiah's podcast. And I just hit screen record to see how long I was watching before I got to where I

needed to go. And I think it was like five and a half minutes, which is a really long time to just sit there and wait for you to sail to the next thing. The other thing that I found annoying about the home ship is the warp pipe that you come out of when you travel back to the island to going to the like periscope thing that launches you out to go to a next one. The canon. Thank you. The canon is like the entire length of the island practically. So you're constantly kind of running from this pipe over there, and especially for some of the islands where there's a lot of traversal and travel, I feel like I just kept constantly, like, had to run across this entire ship island when it kind of just been right next to us. It's like, oh, shoot, we're here.

I got to get over there and then you don't get to the gate in time and you have to sail around the circle again. And yeah, it's not a fun mechanic. Yeah, it is crazy that they leave the, like, sailing seas mini map up the whole time, but they don't give you a, mini map of the island that you're on. So you're constantly toggling plus on and off to see like, oh, am I even going in the right direction of the objective?

One of my favorite things about the Mario and Luigi games has always been the soundtrack. Yoko Shimamura of Kingdom Hearts fame among many other things. Final Fantasy 15 she did most of, if not all, of the previous Mario Luigi games. I do not think she did this.

How did you feel about the music, Logan? I could only tell you one theme right now, and it's the ship theme is the only one that comes to mind because you spend a ton of time on it. So it's pretty forgettable. It's not bad. I enjoyed the soundtrack as it's playing, but I wouldn't say, oh, it's a huge highlight because the Bowser's Inside Story soundtrack, that thing is amazing. There's a bunch of tracks from that and Smash Brothers and things. It's a classic, and this is fine.

It's inoffensive, but not a big pro. Yeah. I think it's fine. I think I, I think by the time I got 25 hours and I started to play it on. Gotcha. Gotcha. Yeah. So again, going back to the, the new characters that you were talking about, Logan, like this, not being just the same old toads that we've seen a million times. You seem to not be too high on, on the, the new characters, but are there any highlights without spoiling anything? Like, are there characters that you're like, well, at least there was them? No, there's not a single character that I'm like, well, they were cool.

There's not a single one that really stuck with me. And that sounds like I'm being overly harsh. That's legitimately how I feel about this cast. And it's not how I feel about the other Mario and Luigi games. There's original characters I really like. I guess the characters I'll say I really liked in Brothership are, I think Bowser is always awesome in the Mario RPGs because he plays a very different role than just the big bad that's kidnapping Peach.

He always has a bit of a different story to him. You get to see more of his dynamics with his army and with Bowser Jr. and his minions. and I really like how Brothership does that. So if there's a highlight to be found in the cast, it's just the Mushroom Kingdom characters that we all know already. So they're really cool. But in terms of original characters, no, they're all pretty tropey and basic and generic.

And the overarching story that you're following them through is, it's cool for a Mario game, I guess. Like Mario doesn't usually talk about the themes and stuff this game does. But if you play anything else that's not a Mario game, you've seen this stuff before. So, yeah, nothing too special. I want to give a shout out. There's three characters that are on the home ship.

There are these three gossipy little aunties, and I fucking love them. And they're my favorite characters in this entire game. I always want to see what they're talking about. I want to know what tea that they have. And those are the only ones that I, like, made a point of talking to every time I went back. That's hilarious. What about the bosses? Is there any, because I feel like that's also a highlight of the Mario RPG series is kind of like fun, creative, setpiece-ish bosses.

Logan, did you find any? that you liked in this? Yeah, the bosses are another strong suit, I would say, of brother ship. There's some really, really good ones. And there's a mechanic that we haven't touched on overall in the entire game, and we should talk about the negative side of it maybe after this. And it's called Luigi Logic. And that is where Luigi gets some crazy idea, and then he does something.

And it's awesome in the boss battles, like a really early boss battle. He sees a fountain in the background of the battle. And he goes, and he's like pulling, he's like basically using the fountains, like a slingshot to launch this boulder onto the boss. And then there's a quick time event where you as Mario have to hit the boulder back at the boss. And then the boss is weakened. It's stunned. And your next few attacks do critical hit damage.

So that's really cool stuff that makes the boss fights feel kind of more grand than the normal encounters, which are really cool. And then the bosses themselves are pretty awesome the whole way through. They have really powerful attacks. There's a few that I did lose to and had to retry because I just, I was careless. I didn't heal. And I thought I could do it. And I didn't. I died and had to redo it.

So they're a strong suit and the boss music is also pretty good. Cool. Joy, what do you think about the bosses? Yeah, they're fun. I think I get, I think for me, it got, the bosses got overshadowed by oftentimes what happens immediately after you beat a boss where it seems like they kind of undermine what you just did being like, oh, you thought you did the thing, but turns out you have to do it again or you have to go do it in this different way.

And I'm just like, well, now I can't even like enjoy that I beat this thing because now I'm immediately on to the next thing, which is games in general, but I feel like they do it in a way that's like doesn't feel like you're making a lot of progress or that like you've accomplished much. How did you feel about the Luigi logic outside of the bosses? Outside of the bosses, it really doesn't have any huge bearing on the game other than like it essentially sends Luigi on fetch quests to like break boxes and get coins and get items and stuff for you. It doesn't really do anything outside of the bosses. other than that.

There's these moments where the story kind of just stops and the gameplay stops and it plays a Luigi logic cutscene and then he just does something for you and you move on. There's this point. I think it's like,

yeah, it's way too long. There's all cutscenes in this game are too long. There's this point early on in the game where there's a ledge that you can't reach. So Luigi has a Luigi logic idea and then you watch him walk over and he just swims through the air up to the ledge and grabs the ledge.

And I'm like, okay. So that whole thing was just set up for that joke. But then why can't Luigi just swim through the air at all times in this game to get up to love as he can't reach? It never happens ever again. And you're like, no. Okay. Why did that happen? Yeah, it doesn't make any sense.

And then there's other times where, yeah, it's just, he just figures something out like, oh, Luigi Logic. And then he goes up there and he hits the switch and it's done. And it's basically kind of just like a bandaid for the game to solve a puzzle for you. And it's just ridiculous with a 20 second cutscene attached. to it that you just have to sit through. Yeah, I guess the other way that they use it is to anchor Luigi to a button or a switch or something of some point

so that he stays there and has it triggered as you as Mario are running around and doing other stuff, but I don't necessarily feel like that's particularly engaging either. No. Is there anything else, Logan, that you'd want to talk about from the game?

Any aspect, gameplay, story, or otherwise? Yeah, yeah, I think I got two things. And it all goes back, to how I just think this game just woefully mishandled Luigi. And I think that if you've played them all, you might be disappointed in just how Luigi controls in this thing. It's like this, I talked about the platforming

puzzle earlier. There's another one where there's numbers on the ground. It's like one through 20, and half of them are red, half of them are green, and you have to step on all of them in order. And so you step on the red one, and then there's a green two and a green four, and Luigi won't wait to

step on the four until Mario's stepped on the three. He goes for it. So he's actively working against you in this puzzle. Like he's just on this on rails track, pressing all these numbers. And it just doesn't make sense. And sure, it's fine gameplay. You're just trying to beat Luigi to your number so you don't mess up the sequence.

Like, oh, I got to get hit six because Luigi's sprinting at full speed to seven for some reason. And it's just another way that I just feel like it just misunderstands. Like, you're not working with Luigi in this game. He works against you and is a hindrance. And that is annoying. And then this is a combat thing. Does it feel by design, though, like him running?

Like, does it feel like a gameplay element that you need to beat him to the number or does it just feel like a mistake? There are some things where there's like establishing you're in a competition and this is not one of them. So it feels incompetent. You're right. No, there are points where a bunch of coins show up and it says, okay, compete with Luigi to see who can gather the most coins. It's like, well, you get all the coins no matter how many you get as Mario. So why don't they just sit here and let Luigi get all of them? There's no, it's just like who gives the thumbs up after for whoever gets more. coins between you and the computer Luigi. It's like, why is that there? It just, it feels like it's not

designed to be a Mario and Luigi game. It's just, it's stuck in the middle of the old style and trying something new. And I'm all for trying new things. I think that's great if you want to try to take this series in a new direction, but they didn't. They didn't have ideas to take it into a new direction. They made puzzles for the old style, but then half of them are just done for you, so it doesn't make sense. And then the other thing that I think will bother long time Mario and Luigi fans is in combat, Mario and Luigi have these blocks that appear above their head, right?

You jump to hit the jump block, you jump to hit the hammer block to select your attacks. That's always how it's worked. And in every Mario and Luigi game in the past, you hit A to select Mario's attacks and A to execute Mario's attacks, and you would hit B to select Luigi's attacks,

and B to execute Luigi's attacks. Now you hit A to select Luigi's attacks, but you still use B to execute them. Oh. Yeah, I, I know. See, it's a big deal. It doesn't sound like it. Like, oh my God. Yeah. I mean, me having played the old ones, like, I would hate that. It took me legitimately hours to rewire my brain to start pressing A to select Luigi's attacks and then B to do them. And it's just, again, it's a little

thing that's like, man, they don't get this series at all. They don't get it. That is such a cool little decision that really made, wow, this is Mario's button. This is Luigi's button. But now I would hit B to pick the jump attack and I go, why is it like this? And then I would hit A and just, just be annoyed. And then you have to move your finger back to B to jump. And it sounds ridiculous, but it is a big deal. And yeah, Tim,

you could back me up on that. Yeah, man, that's the muscle memory, but also something that made those games, you made the Mario and Luigi games stand out from the paper Mario games or Mario RPG that all have similar battle systems. But like, it was the,

you are controlling both Mario and Luigi at the same time that I feel gave this, the combat, the identity that the franchise had. Even not having the history with the franchise, I felt myself doing that. constantly. Really? I was wondering about that.

Being like, oh, B's for Luigi. And then I'm like, why? And then I would just back out of the menu or whatever I was doing. And I was just like,

this is so annoying needlessly. Like you've taught, you've established that this is how it works even in the tutorial that like, I don't know why you wouldn't just commit to that and why A is select for everybody. Yeah. Frustrating. We got a super chat from Rami saying as a fan, it's heartbreaking.

I hope they don't give up on the series. Also, Tim, have you seen Love is Blind Habibi? Absolutely loved it. I'm not, I had to not get into Love is Blind. That is very much a Joey thing. I know. I haven't watched TB yet. Are you going to?

It's next on my list, yeah. Now that the disaster that is this current season of Love is blind is over. Now I can get into the one that everyone's like actually having fun with. So then, yeah, it being heartbreaking. Like, yeah, like, Logan, like, do you find this heartbreaking? Like, when you look at the future of the franchise, like, is this just like a sad moment? Yeah, it is heartbreaking. And I didn't want to not like this game, right?

Like the reception to my review has been very negative. And oh, this guy just hates Mario and Luigi. No, I love Mario and Luigi. I adore Bowser's Inside Story and Superstar Saga. And I like the other ones a lot. And it is a bummer. I was so hyped for that June Nintendo Direct when they announced this thing. Oh my gosh, they're doing it.

Mario and Luigi is back. And playing it, I was just like, wow, this weight wasn't worth it. And that's really, really disappointing. And I'm honestly on the fence. If this is what future Mario and Luigi games look like, I don't really want to play another one. And I hope they can get it back on track. But yeah,

this one does not give me a lot of confidence. And then CJ splits on rights in saying, do you think Nintendo keeping the names of these studios under wraps hurts their seal of quality? I don't think so. Like, not that specifically. Like, I feel like Nintendo's always kind of been weird. And like when we talk about,

the first parties and the development studios they have. I feel like over the last decade, PlayStation's have really kind of become a thing where the people on our shows and in our communities of world know naughty dog and insomniac, etc., etc. Xbox, I feel like mainly due to the acquisitions, have able to kind of gain that as well. And we're talking about the team so much

that there's kind of like an understanding. Nintendo, to this day, I think even more so now, with how they're not marketing or not showing off there, their teams at all. It's always been a little bit more ambiguous and you had to really be in the know and I feel like even myself as a huge Nintendo fan,

I'm often like, oh, the team that worked on Mario Kart or the team that worked on instead of like actually saying the name of the teams because a lot of them are very generic sounding or just like, yeah, but. So I don't know that it actually affects that stuff, but it is, I don't like it and it's a bummer. Yeah, right. We're really in the weeds as hardcore Nintendo fans where we care about who makes it. Most people who buy this game probably aren't going to know or give it a second thought. So I hate it. I've hated that trend this year of them not telling us who's making it. Like Princess Peach, we didn't know as good feel until it came out. And that's just, it's a big bummer. And it's definitely intentional. It's clearly a strategic pivot that they have made over the last year to be more buttoned up and kind of have this just banner of this is a Nintendo game. And yeah, yeah.

It's not, though. Super Mario Brothers Wonder, not the same as Mario and Luigi Brothership. Yeah, absolutely. Do you have any final thoughts, Joey, on Mario and Luigi Brothership? Not really. I wish, I was so badly wish that I wanted to go back and finish this. And maybe with some time off, I will. But for now, this is going to, I make, I think next on my list is Princess Peach Showtime, actually. Really? Yeah. Oh, interesting. I mean, it's another, another game that I would put based on how you guys are taught my brother. other ship in the same bucket of not one of Nintendo's best games. But it's also like way shorter.

Review show time at IGN. I gave it a seven. I thought it was a pleasant time. It's five hours. It's, yeah, it's a nice game. Listen, I have to do anything I can to avoid being dragged into playing the new Mario Party. So, go home and Princess Beach.

I love that game. Only because they, Logan, you might not know this, they torture me relentlessly. playing. So I have to just keep myself, Nick, Nick. Yeah, that's true, just Nick. That's the Mario Party way though. Yeah. We're playing Mario Party on Friday and I'm so excited. I can't freaking wait. I'm the opposite of you, Joey. I'm like, give it to me. Torture me with this. I love it. Logan, any final thoughts on Brotherhip? Yeah, my final thoughts are play Thousand Year Door. Play the Thousand Year Door remake. If you were planning on getting this and you haven't got that, that game rules. It still holds up. It runs great. It looks amazing. It looks amazing.

amazing. The story's awesome. It's better in every way. Amen. There we go. Well, Logan, thank you so much for joining us. Where could people find you? Yeah, you can find me on Twitter and Blue Sky at Logan J. Plant. I'm also on IGN's Nintendo Voice Chat, which goes up on audio services and on YouTube every Friday morning. There we go. And then, sorry, did you say where people can find you on Twitter? Yeah. Yes, I did. Sorry, by that. There we go. Yeah, so go follow Logan. again, thank you for joining us. You are doing great work over there over at IGN, and I really appreciate it.

And hopefully we can get you back to talk about a game that you love at some point over here on Nintendo Land. But let us know in the comments below. If you're still planning on getting Mario and Luigi Brother ship, if you played a thousand year door and what you think about that, because I agree with Logan, it is utterly fantastic. But until next time, I love you all.

Goodbye.