Mario & Luigi Fans Aren’t Happy About Brothership’s Battle Button Tweaks

Mario & Luigi: Brothership set sail on Nintendo Switch yesterday and, on the whole, people seem to be rather impressed with this new nautical adventure. That’s not to say there aren’t a few tiny annoyances, mind you, as we swiftly learned after taking a glance at our socials this morning.

Looking past the new visuals, the delightful weirdness and the cooky characters, more than a handful of people seem to be taking issue with the game’s Bro-specific button battles. Namely, how Luigi’s ‘Press B to attack’ isn’t as straightforward as it always has been.

The series normally sees Mario controlled with ‘A’ and Luigi with ‘B’. You navigate Mario’s battle menu with one button and Luigi’s with the other — simple, right? The same system is still present and correct in Brothership apart from one notable change, you now select Luigi’s attacks with ‘A’, before carrying them out with ‘B’.

No, it’s not the most dramatic change, but after years of passing through the green Bro’s menus with a tap of the ‘B’ button before performing an attack in the same manner, it can take some getting used to (and we’ve messed up more than our fair share of Luigi attacks because of it).

And, clearly, we’re not alone with our meddling muscle memory:

After nine years without an original series entry (yes, we had some remakes in that time), we suppose it kind of makes sense to switch up the formula for the new audience — most people will associate ‘A’ with accept, surely — but it’s an understandable gripe for long-time stalwarts of the franchise.

Fortunately, we were able to look past this minor complaint in our Brothership review, where we called the latest entry “easily the best Mario & Luigi RPG yet”. You can read our full thoughts below.