It's pretty crazy that we've gone from the RPG side of the Mario franchise seeming dead to getting not one, not two, but three separate releases in a year. Admittedly, two of those (Super Mario RPG and The Thousand Year Door) were remakes, but they were high-quality remakes that showed off why Mario and RPG go together like peanut butter and chocolate. The third, Mario & Luigi: Brothership, is a revival of the thought-to-be-dead Mario & Luigi franchise. It's a welcome revival of what was a distinct RPG franchise, but the only truly new game in the bunch is perhaps the weakest.

Mario & Luigi: Brothership opens up with the brothers (and a good chunk of Mushroom Kingdom) being dragged into a mysterious portal. They awaken on a floating island in the middle of an endless ocean. This island is all that remains of the land of Concordia, a series of electric-themed lands that were separated when the magic tree that bound them together suddenly lost its power. The outlet-styled people of the kingdom beg Mario and Luigi for help to find the magic lighthouse, reconnect the lands, and revive the tree. It may be Mario and Luigi's only way home, so the duo sets out to save the world again.

The Mario & Luigi franchise lives and dies on the charm and style of its characters. Superstar Saga was carried by its enjoyable supporting cast, and Bowser's Inside Story would be nothing without Bowser. Brothership is the third Mario RPG released this year, and when going up against the endless charm of Super Mario RPG and Paper Mario: The Thousand Year Door, the plot and environments fall flat. There are moments of genuine charm and humor, but they're fewer between than in the two classics of the franchise. It's a significant improvement over Paper Jam and even Dream Team,though, so it's a mixed bag.

It's a shame because the core gameplay is a lot of fun. The basic concept is that you're on a floating ship-shaped island called the Shipshape. This ship functionally represents the "center" of the divided land of Concordia and automatically sails through various sea currents across the land. You quickly learn to manipulate the currents, which is necessary because most of the gameplay takes place on the various scattered islands. Once you approach an island, you can fire yourself to it using a cannon, with each island representing a bite-sized adventure. Your goal is to find a lighthouse on the island, so you can reconnect it with the Shipshape and gradually rebuild the land.

To Brothership's credit, it does a good job of creating different environments to explore, but they are a tad too generic for my taste. There are jungles, deserts, and ice lands — standard Mario fare — but the game tries to spice up things in various ways. One of the first islands requires you to venture through a bug-infested jungle to find a scared hair wax saleswoman, so you can make a dejected dancer recover his love of boogying to make a tree grow. It's an absurd concept, but it adds some much-needed charm to what would otherwise be a dull trek. Unfortunately, not every island is so interesting, and there are more than a couple that feel like filler.

Thankfully, that isn't overly common, due in no small part to the game's dedication to fun little minigames. Both Mario and Luigi get various powers that let them explore more areas — and encourages you to return to earlier areas to collect items that weren't available in the first go-round. In addition, there's a new Luigi Logic feature where occasionally, the greener of the two brothers gets an absurd idea and you execute it in a minigame to get past various obstacles. It's a really charming feature, and I found it to be a delight every time Luigi got a particularly clever idea. Sometimes, however, it amounts to Luigi going off on his own to collect items, so Mario doesn't have to.

Brothership retains the classic Mario & Luigi combat mechanics, and the turn-based combat system is the star of the show. When Mario and Luigi are attacking, there are the now-standard timed button presses to do more damage. In this game they are combo attacks between brothers and require alternating presses, so if one brother is down, you're also losing damage. This can be further amplified with Bros Attacks, the game's version of special moves, where you play minigames to inflict damage.

Defense is a more involved affair. Enemies will come at the bros, and you need to time button presses to dodge or counter their attacks. Every enemy attacks in different ways and can target each brother. You'll need to figure out if an enemy is going to divebomb Luigi or Mario based on their attack cry or look for a subtle hint in the enemy's animations. Get hit, and you take a ton of damage. Dodge, and you not only avoid it, but you can also deal damage to the enemy if you hit them during the animation. You can do an Emergency Defend, which sacrifices your dodge in place of a reduced damage, but this isn't worth relying on because the damage numbers are pretty high.

The combat is genuinely its highest point and lives up to the franchise standard. It's constantly fun, inventive and interesting, and it does a fantastic job of carrying the game. The boss battles are a huge highlight, and every time I encountered one, I was smiling the entire time. If you min-max, it can get a tad too easy. Bros Attacks are very powerful, and replenishing your MP is cheap, so if you just open up with a strong Bros Attack in every fight, you'll often defeat enemies before you can see their fun animations. Thankfully, the boss battles avoid this problem.

There's one small but significant annoyance that is oddly tough to get past. In previous Mario & Luigi titles, the game tended to associate Mario with A and Luigi with B. Every action using one character would be their corresponding button. Brothership, however, binds Mario to A, and Luigi is a mix of different buttons ranging from L to B to A. This feels distracting and inconsistent, and it genuinely has a negative impact on the overall feel of the game. In combat, you select menu choices using A for both brothers, which works fine for Mario but feels awkward for Luigi, who then executes his timed attacks with B. It doesn't ruin the game, and you can adjust to it, but it only drives home that the older version felt much more natural and better executed. This makes Luigi feel like an accessory to Mario rather than his own character, and the poor plumber already gets enough of that in other games.

Mario & Luigi: Brothership is the latest in the line of big Nintendo releases that feel oddly unoptimized on the console. It is stuttery and jerky, which is noticeable even if it didn't really detract from the gameplay. It feels almost like it was made to be played exclusively in handheld mode. It's a shame because the graphics are bright and colorful, and the animations are incredibly charming. The two brothers are fantastically animated, and I'd love to see them in this style again. The music is acceptable but a noticeable downgrade from the fantastic Yoko Shimamura soundtracks in the previous games in the series; it's probably one of the weaker Mario RPG soundtracks to date.

Mario & Luigi: Brothership falls into that odd zone of being fine but not exceptional. I think it's comfortably the third best Mario & Luigi game, but it's a distant third and a far cry from the franchise's heights. I had a lot of fun, and I don't regret playing it, but it lacks that certain special something that made the first and third games in the franchise really shine. It's still a fun RPG adventure with some fantastic combat, but it's the weakest of all the Mario RPGs released this year.

Score: 7.5/10