Topic: Mario & Luigi: Brothership

Will everyone please stop talking!!!!!!

No, not you guys. Just this game. They never stop. 30 hrs in. Still feeling so stop and start. I like it, but I do want it to end now....but it doesn't.

@Mana_Knight How it feels to play through Pokemon Sun and Moon.

With roughly 41 hours to spare, I can now officially say that I've finished Mario & Luigi: Brothership. I'm exhausted.

I don't think there's anything else I can say on here that I haven't before. The combat is decent and the exploration is fine, but it's strengths are severely outweighed by it's flaws, in ways that don't make me confident for the series' future. Is it better than Paper Jam? In terms of creativity, sure, but Paper Jam beats it with better design, better pacing, and slightly better writing. That's a B in comparison to Brothership's C-.

Acquire's future with the series seems a bit hazy with Sony wanting to buy their parent company. But if that doesn't go through, I genuinely hope that they take any constructive criticisms to heart and make a competent follow-up that feels like a truly great return to form - one that's genuinely funny, leans more into the wild, wackier tone of other games, throws in some great character moments(with some good natured Luigi gags), has strong art direction and music(preferably with Sato and Shimomura's involvement), doesn't go over 20 hours and most importantly, feels like it's Mario AND Luigi.

Not "with".

AND.

But otherwise, if they just keep with this game's direction? Then I'll probably sit future titles out. Brothership is fine for what it is, but I'm okay with never playing it again.

@N00BiSH Honestly if Acquire continues with the series, I want the ost to be a fusion of Shimomura’s compositions and the compositions that the current composer does. I like the dungeon and overworld themes, but I feel like the battle themes and character themes really sting from not having Shimomura on board.

@VoidofLight Sakamoto's music was fine, honestly. I liked the final boss theme and some of the overworlds, but we’re obviously missing the more varied moods and leitmotifs Shimomura provided and some of the tracks tended to blend together. Nothing was inherently bad, but not a lot really stuck out to me either.

I haven't been gaming as much lately for some reason, besides a few small mobile/free to play games...bleh.

Anyways decided to get back to this game and made it Marrygo Island.
everyone keeps talking about someone in pink is in the plaza, keeps referencing pink
Me: ...I swear, if it's freakin' Birdo...
_{...yeah it was Birdo, lol}

@N00BiSH Sounds like I have around 10 hours to go then. Ech. Your thoughts are fairly similar to mine. It is good, but not M and L good, which sets a higher bar to cross. Frustrated, as I don't like more than 1 game at a time to concentrate on, and kinda want to just beat this so I can play the NSO games they have been dropping lately. If this ends up as their 1 and only association to making M and L games, I really don't think I would feel sad about it.

@N00BiSH Exactly. There’s a lot of times where the music went from being catchy to being sorta unmemorable. It’s why I think that if they can get Shimomura working with Sakamoto, we would get a pretty great OST with some unique flavors to some of the songs- at least depending on who composes what. It’s good to hear the final boss theme is good though. Can’t wait to get to the part of the game where I get to hear that.

@Mana_Knight I had to will myself to beat it as soon as possible just because I wanted to have time to play Antonblast instead.

@N00BiSH That was me with Metaphor. Wanted to play this, so I had to rush through.

@VoidofLight Would you say Metaphor is better paced than Brothership so far?

@N00BiSH Metaphor was far better paced. My only issue with the game was just that it suffered from the persona 5 issue of constantly acting like the game was about to end, when it wasn’t even close to the end.

Outside of that though, the game only really had two dungeons that felt super slow, and it was by design in order to get you to do the side content. It wasn’t as wonky as Brothership currently is, where the beginning is slow and then the last few portions of the game seem slow (still on the fourth sea at Bowser’s Castle

Now I am also getting female empowerment vibes. 1. The ultra strong mother, who one punches a boss away. 2. Connie the Wattanist. She is the plug, even if she might only be wearing a hat, it feels a little bit weird. 3. This is the really weird one. The four rascals, where the only girl is the leader.

In retrospect, IGN's review is less questionable than the more overly positive reviews of the game, like on this site for example.

@N00BiSH The more I look around the stranger the reception is for the game. No one has a consistent opinion. People like Chuggaaconroy said that the game is the best in the series since BiS, while people here aren’t as happy about how the game plays or feels. Reviewers are saying it’s either the best game in the series with small pacing issues at the start- or one of the worst with no in-between.

@VoidofLight I'm sure there plenty of people who genuinely love Brothership and what it was doing(Good on them. They see something that I don't), but I am curious if people gassing it up are only doing so because they're afraid if they don't, we won't get another game in the series again.

@N00BiSH Could be that they’re scared this is the last time we get a game in the series. Could also be that the honeymoon period is still in effect and it’ll take a while for people to start criticizing the games more and more as time goes on.

I always wonder about reviewing games where the main issue is pacing problems. If you're quickly playing a game for the main purpose of writing a review you aren't quite playing it 'normally'. That won't matter for many aspects of the game, but it could easily effect how pacing feels to a reviewer versus an average player.

@FishyS I’d like to think I’m playing the game at a normal rate, and even then I can tell the pacing is pretty bad.

@VoidofLight that's actually what I meant. It might feel worse for normal players than for most reviewers.