Nintendo’s Mario & Luigi series has long been home to clever innovations, allowing players to simultaneously control Super Mario Bros. for comedic adventures that often take advantage of the material for which they were designed. Previous games have incorporated time travel, Luigi’s strange dreams, and exploring the contents of Bowser’s guts as inspiration.

Mario and Luigi: Brotherhoodthe first new Mario & Luigi game in nearly a decade, seems content to repeat past ideas from the franchise. Fraternity brings a handful of new ideas to the Mario & Luigi formula, but only a few of them make the 20-year-old franchise feel fresh.

Fraternity begins with Mario and Luigi passing through a portal that transports them from the Mushroom Kingdom to a new destination known as Concordia. Their arrival is good news for the people of Concordia, who recently saw their sacred Uni-Tree destroyed and their vast continent divided into a series of floating islands. The bad guys are to blame. With the help of Mario and Luigi and a seaworthy ship/landmass known as Shipshape Island, the Concordians hope to piece their home together.

Help Mario and Luigi in their Fraternity The journey is a long list of NPCs, almost all of which are themed around electrical outlets. There is the pig-like Snoutlet, who serves as a guide and interpreter throughout the story; Connie, a courageous Wattanist who takes care of a burgeoning new growth of the Uni-Tree on Shipshape; and Arc, an expert navigator of the high seas from Concordia.

As the story progresses and Mario and Luigi piece together more scattered pieces of Concordia, Shipshape fills out with dozens of additional characters: vendors, crafters, and quest-givers. These people are full of work and side missions for Mario and Luigi, and you’ll always have a pile of extra things to do. Fraternitythe story.

Reuniting the Concordia Islands requires traveling across different seas and searching for new locations. Mario and Luigi launch a cannon toward each island, searching for a lighthouse with a plug that will restore the flow of the Uni-Tree’s natural resource, Connectar. Each island features a sequence of puzzles, obstacles, and eccentric characters in need of help that separate the brothers from its lighthouse. There are also new and familiar enemies, some of which are indigenous to Concordia and others of which have been sucked in from the Mushroom Kingdom.

Mario and Luigi fight these monsters in turn-based battles that build on the Mario & Luigi combat formula. Mario and Luigi take turns and are controlled with brother-specific buttons, either by stomping on the bad guys’ heads or hitting them with a flurry of hammer blows. Each attack requires a careful series of timed button presses that hold FraternityThe combat is engaging. Brothers can also team up for complex brother attacks, which involve a long series of quick interventions to perform. They are engaging, sometimes vexing, and eventually wear out. Battles take a long time, thanks to Bros.’ long, rubbery animations. Attacks, but the game introduces new moves and gadgets over time to help spice things up.

Fortunately, many battles can be avoided. Running away from a fight is always an option (and always successful). You’ll simply run out of XP and coins that power up Mario and Luigi, so taking part in as many battles as possible almost seems necessary.

Bros.’ input-intensive fights and flashy attacks. will be very familiar to long-time Mario & Luigi fans. To mix things up, Fraternity introduces a new system called Battle Plugs, items that give Mario and Luigi additional offensive and defensive powers in battle. Battle Plugs add special effects to the brothers’ attacks, unleashing explosive shockwaves or a storm of spiked bullets at enemies. They can even automate certain movements, with certain combinations unlocking other effects in combat. Selecting the right Battle Plugs for each combat situation helps maintain an engaging combat feel. You are forced to experiment with multiple socket loads, as they lose juice over time and need to be recharged.

As Mario and Luigi progress and acquire new types of equipment, like power suits and special gloves, you’ll have the ability to customize them to suit your playstyle. During my playthrough, I asked Mario to be my favorite jump attacker – he was Jumpman, after all – and Luigi will focus on hammer skills. Even though neither plays drastically differently, it was fun trying to max out each brother to fit my fantasy of how their personalities impact how they play.

Across the islands of Concordia, Mario and Luigi must complete tasks and solve puzzles for different characters. These moments often require players to use another new feature in Fraternity: Luigi Logic. At certain points in the game, Luigi will have a brilliant idea on how to get around obstacles or move around the environment in a new way. Luigi Logic is how players learn to transform Mario and Luigi into new forms; they are transformed from a tango duo into a spinning UFO; another turns them into a rolling ball, so they can navigate pipe puzzles, much like Samus Aran morph-balling through the Metroid games. Luigi Logic also gives Luigi mundane tasks; he’ll smash boxes and collect coins so Mario can stay focused on the task at hand.

Luigi Logic eventually fights his way into battles. The game’s biggest boss fights often involve Luigi noticing a unique feature of a boss fight arena and then executing a Bros attack. unique in the situation. This helps break up some of the game’s more laborious battles, which can start to feel repetitive pretty quickly.

Repetitiveness is Mario and Luigi: BrotherhoodThis is the greatest sin. Whether it’s the game’s turn-based combat, which always seems to be just one a little bit too long, many fetch quests that require excessive travel, or a bit of superfluous dialogue, I found myself bothered by FraternityIt’s the lack of brevity. Every time the fast-forward prompt appeared at the bottom right of the screen, I pressed it furiously.

It doesn’t help that the story of Mario and Luigi: Brotherhood is not particularly convincing. A group of villains known as the Zokket and Extension Corps – a very good name, mind you – are responsible for almost every bad thing that has happened to Concordia, and you spend most of your time there. FraternityIt’s an inflated story that’s chasing them. There are a handful of side stories involving the NPCs you’re friends with and some familiar Mushroom Kingdom allies, but none of them are particularly interesting. But more serious is the humor of Fraternity. Mario and Luigi’s RPG spin-offs are often delightfully absurd and joke-filled, but FraternityAttempts at humor often prove ineffective. Strangely, the game seems to acknowledge its reliance on bad puns and dad jokes; there are several moments of dead silence to punctuate a joke and characters groaning at the game’s gaffes.

Mario and Luigi’s action and upgrade are the best parts of Fraternity. There is a very long list of Bros. attacks, unlockable items and equipment, Battle Plugs, and craftable items to use in battle. There’s even a fishing mini-game, reaffirming the Mario and Luigi RPG bona fides.

It’s been a long wait for a new Mario & Luigi game, so Fraternity is welcome to at least bring the franchise back. But Nintendo’s new game takes fewer, and much less interesting, risks to reinvent the Mario & Luigi-branded action-RPG gameplay compared to its predecessors. Instead, Mario and Luigi: Brotherhoodwith its approximately 25-hour story and endless list of things to check off, seems to have learned an unfortunate lesson from other RPGs, favoring bloat over reinvention.

Mario and Luigi: Brotherhood will be released on November 7 for Nintendo Switch. The game was tested on Switch using a preliminary download code provided by Nintendo. Vox Media has affiliate partnerships. These do not influence editorial content, although Vox Media may earn commissions for products purchased through affiliate links. You can find additional information about Polygon’s ethics policy here.