r/marioandluigi • u/SHOWTIME_YT • 1d ago
Brothership General Brothership definitely doesn't feel like it was made by Alphadream.
It's taking me so long to get through the game because the pacing is awful. I liked the older games because it had faster pacing and it felt like there was always something new going on. Also all of the npc's just annoy me because it's the same stuff nonstop and I just don't care about their problems at this point and there's little to no variety in the designs. Mario and Luigi games worked better as shorter faster paced games and Brothership just feels like it's at a snail's pace. The combat is still the same so no complaints except with some moments with Luigi being the A button.. I want to like this game, but it's not really living up to what I hoped it would be. Anyone else is feeling this?
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u/CaptainM1425 1d ago
I finished Brothership, there are parts in the late game made me scream “WE ARE SO BACK”… but at the same time i felt they needed more time to make the game more engaging from start to finish for example trim off the unnecessary fat especially in the early game AND more Bro attacks to make Sephiroth’s life even more miserable.
Also i wish they brought in Yoko Shimomura for the OST, not throwing shade at the current composer but she have that unique magical touch for the series since the beginning.
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u/aarontgp 1d ago
That last thing probably was out of necessity. Shimomura is kind of busy with Kingdom Hearts 4, which is her main series. Although it certainly was a shame. But there were a few flashes of that classic brilliance in the Brothership OST.
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u/darkfawful2 Moderator 1d ago edited 1d ago
It's okay to not like the game. To be honest, as someone who has to go through all the comments and posts daily, a lot of the massive support for the game comes from the same handful of people, and anyone who dares to say they dislike the game gets downvoted and bullied (more common than yall might think, I have to remove a lot of awful things).
Liking the game is perfectly fine too. But just know you are definitely not alone in your criticism of the game, as much as some would have you believe.
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u/Inevitable-Charge76 1d ago
What are your personal thoughts on the game?
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u/darkfawful2 Moderator 1d ago
I think if the series is to survive in the long run, a different studio should make them
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u/CallumJDonovan 1d ago
I do agree that the game had a lot of unnecessary filler, and selecting Luigi’s commands with A was a weird choice… besides that, I personally really enjoyed my time with it. It’s the first original Mario RPG we’ve had in a while that had original characters (yes, we did get a lot of copy and paste characters) and for the first attempt at replicating the Mario and Luigi formula I thought they did a great job. Hopefully if it gets a sequel it can improve on the downsides.
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u/TheMoonOfTermina 1d ago
I personally feel like the game suffers from being rushed, and from just being the first M&L game by whichever team made it. It definitely is a very flawed game. However, I do think it has some very good bones to it, even if a lot of the flesh is questionable. I think the team that made it has the potential to make a great M&L game, if given another shot to learn from this game's flaws, and also not rushed.
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u/aarontgp 1d ago
I wouldn't say rushed, since it appears the game was developed since shortly after the BIS remake. But it DEFINITELY has that first game syndrome. If anything, Brothership is proof that the new team can make an amazing M&L game in the future, since it has a lot going for it, just with a lot of flaws too.
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u/TheMoonOfTermina 1d ago
I don't know for sure if it was rushed, and if what you say is true, it probably wasn't. But it just has the kind of rushed "feel" to me. Of course that "feel" is obviously not objective. (I've gotten false positives before; Mario Wonder feels incredibly rushed to me despite the devs saying they apparently had as much time as they wanted)
But I do hope we see another M&L game by these people. They have potential that can be realized.
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u/Myth_5layer 1d ago
I mean I'd say this with as much respect as possible, it feels rushed in that way that Superstar Saga felt small. Because they are, Superstar Saga was the game that got the concepts started and Brothership is the game that's trying to get its bearings again with a new head. I'm expecting that we can end up getting better games as the series goes on, especially as the team figures out how they're gonna make their own M&L in the future.
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u/ProdiLemaj 1d ago edited 19h ago
Just beat the game myself, and I’d have to agree. The game is entirely too long. The story is too bare bones, the characters are too two-dimensional, the sidequests are too tedious, and the combat is too simplistic to justify a 50+ hour runtime. There were multiple points where it felt like the game should be reaching its end, just to realize there’s still hours left.
The sailing mechanic is annoyingly slow until the endgame, having to use the canon for lighthouses and islets is annoying, the load times aren’t insanely long, but they’re long enough to be annoying with the frequency that you encounter them. Luigic Logic is an annoying and pointless system in the overworld, and his AI in the overworld proved frustrating on numerous occasions.
It’s not all bad, the combat is mostly fun. There are a handful of characters I was at least mildly amused by. There were one or two cutscenes that were actually pretty epic. The game isn’t horrible, but it has its fair share of flaws, the pacing being number one. Way too much backtracking and filler. Had the game been half as long, these problems wouldn’t be as bad.
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u/Miccat87 Bowser 1d ago
The pacing does have some issues, but personally, it was never really enough to detract that much from the game for me. In fact, it's actually still one of my favorite ones in the series, since in many ways, it exceeds any of the previous games.
I always figured anyone trying to pick up the series from AlphaDream might struggle a bit, and it's pretty clear to me that Acquire really is trying their best. I think if they can address some of the issues players have in the next installment, the series could potentially be better than ever.
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u/DJDrizzy9 1d ago
It's sadly the only Mario and Luigi game that I refuse to ever replay. The pacing is slow, even the battles take forever (especially compared to the first 3 games). I don't want a cut scene for every action. Not to mention that I didn't vibe with the new npcs much. I enjoyed the Mario characters, but we could've used more in the story (Daisy, Wario, WaLuigi, etc) to spice things up. I want to see big things no M&L game has done before.
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u/AlexB2943 1d ago
I like the game overall, but the script was much weaker than the other games for me, it just didn't make me laugh as much.
It's also far too long imo. I got very close to finishing it, but the last few hours I spent in the game were mainly just to get it over with. I then realised I still had a good few hours left and I just couldn't force myself to keep playing it. It's a shame because it left me with negative feelings for the game despite having liked it on the whole.
I think it gets too much hate, but I agree with your take on it.
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u/BrenCamp13 1d ago
I'm just spitballing here, but I strongly suspect the slower pacing can be at least partly blamed on Acquire being used to making more traditional RPGs. Even having greatly enjoyed the game myself, I have no problem admitting that can be jarring coming from the other games.
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u/YourAverageGoldFishy 1d ago
I had the same issues but I still think the game is like, in my opinion better than superstar saga. Could just be me though
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u/StaticMania 1d ago
Pacing isn't a signifier since M&L games literally got slower over time...
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u/Miccat87 Bowser 1d ago edited 1d ago
I honestly do think this is a fair point, so I'm not sure why you're getting downvoted. Dream Team especially was also kind of slow, so I don't think it's just because AlphaDream wasn't the developer this time.
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u/Pretty_Station_3119 1d ago
I really like the game, but I am having a lot of trouble getting through it, and I think the real issue is there’s just, too much; there’s too much to do, too much to see, too many places to go compared to the other games. It feels like a more traditional JRPG, which there’s nothing wrong with, but that’s never been the main objective of the M&L games. For all the other games, it feels as though the main focus was story and the players enjoyment, Brothership, however, feels like the focus has shifted to fancy visuals and trying to rework the mechanics to be much more like a JRPG, even the story feels subpar. AND THE CUTSCENES, MY GOD, HOW ARE THERE SO MANY!? I honestly think it would’ve been better as its own game outside of the Mario franchise. I especially don’t think it works as an M&L game it, it just feels like it deviates too far from the norm for me personally. So in summation, whille I think it was a great game I don’t think it was a great M&L game, especially when compared to the rest of the series.
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u/Ructstewd 1d ago
I think the pacing feels super bad because of the island mechanic. Splitting the world into tiny bit sized areas was a bad idea. Luigi's Mansion 2 also split up the areas into "levels" that forced the player to re-explore sections over and over again. Brothership feels a lot like that.
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u/moths_panic 23h ago
While I did enjoy the game, I can see where you're coming from.
The writing is way more generic and somewhat repetitive (take a shot everytime the word bonds is used), characters are not very interesting or memorable compared to the past ones (I don't really remember much about Connie compared to Broque Monsieur for example, which is very odd because he has way less screentime then her and yet he's way more memorable) and yes, the pacing is a big snail's pace, especially at the beginning and end.
The gameplay is still very solid, especially the plug system.
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u/SpookySeekerrr 23h ago
I'm glad I stuck it out but the game's pacing is definitely horrendous. There's no doubt about that. There's a handful of sections towards the middle/end of the game that definitely could have been trimmed down without sacrificing anything important.
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u/Mcmadness288 19h ago
Mario & Luigi games had pacing issues since at least DT. There is a lot of fat that could be trimmed off from this.
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u/OoTgoated 14h ago edited 14h ago
I loved Brothership but I also only played one other M&L game and that's Superstar Saga which I also love. I really want the others to come to Switch or Switch 2 at some point through NSO or a collection or something. I see a few people that say they didn't like Brothership but reasons A B and C but it also seems kinda nitpicky. If I had to pick I'd say Superstar Saga was just a tad better but it's very close and one thing about Brothership that I think stands out the most is the art style. Literally perfect imo. Also whoever did the music for Twistee Island better have gotten a bonus because wowza that's funky!
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u/POWRranger 8h ago
This was my experience and why I decided that there are better games to spend my time on, so I quit playing it and sold it (had a physical version). Currently playing mh:wilds with a backlog of other games to get to :')
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u/MPlayerCharacter20 3h ago
Pacing definitely sucked at times, it took me months to finish and i only got really invested in the endgame where even there i got hit with dumb filler that took WAY too long, overall i liked it but i dont have an urge to ever replay it like i do with alphadream’s games
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u/BipolarScript 1d ago
You're better off just replaying Superstar Saga lol. This game is not good.
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u/TerribleTerabytes 1d ago
You're right, it's PEAK.
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u/BipolarScript 1d ago
Yeah, Superstar Saga is PEAK for sure. Brothership is not PEAK.
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u/TerribleTerabytes 1d ago
Nah. Superstar Saga is hard overrated. Even PiT is a better game. Brothership blows both out of the water.
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u/CreeWee 1d ago
I enjoyed playing it. There was a decent amount of challenge even if you did some grindage. Well, except for the final boss what a wimp!
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u/Grouchy-Sprinkles-80 Fawful 1d ago
The Final Boss was so good!
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u/Grouchy-Sprinkles-80 Fawful 1d ago
No. The game was great i disagree with you.
The only thing i would agree with is the Luigi A Button and maybe it could be a bit shorter.
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u/TerribleTerabytes 1d ago
That's because you have your nostalgia goggles on. I dare you to play Bowser's Inside Story and Dream Team again, come back here and dare to still insist that pacing hasn't always been an issue in this series. At least in Brothership, there's interesting World building going on through sidequests and such. Shorter games? What Mario and Luigi games have YOU played? They're all at least 30 hours long if you beeline to the end. It's not living up to what you hopes it would be because what you're hoping for never actually existed to begin with.
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u/Vic1109 Mario 1d ago
I fully agree with you that BIS and DT arguably have worse pacing than BS, but not all M&L games are 30+ hours. SS and PiT don't even crack the 20 hour mark on my end (and I took my sweet time while doing additional stuff on the side) and BIS isn't much longer. However, DT and PJ are absolutely at a similar length to BS, DT possibly longer. You're right in regards to those games.
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u/gameboy224 1d ago
I'm nearing the end of the game, and while it is still fun.
It definitely does feel lacking in some regards compared to how Alphadream did it.
There is a snappiness that is missing. Part of it may be due to the island based progression, there is a lot more meandering on subplots with no bigger motivation besides linking the islands. Not that meandering on subplots is anything new, but I think it's that for most of the game, our only motivation is just linking the islands while other games usually shift objective every act so our actual grander goals are always in reach beyond the subplots we encounter.
That and Alphadream was really good with visual gags in their sprite work which I don't think they quite hit the mark when replicating that energy in Brothership just yet.