Are you ready for some Fútbol!?
Mario Strikers: Battle League is the third in the Soccer series for Mario and company that began way back in 2005 on the Gamecube. This latest entry for the Nintendo Switch has been a long time coming, but despite its flashy presentation, its shallow offering of content holds back what could have been the ultimate return to one of Nintendo’s best sports franchises.
It’s hard to believe that it's been since 2007 that Mario has laced up for a good ol’ match of Soccor, or Fútbol, depending on where you call home. Each title in the series has had its own share of characters, side kicks, stages, goaltenders, and more. While each title has been developed by Next Level Games, they have in some ways felt unique from one another.
Both Strikers and Strikers Charged had you select a core Mario character and then be joined on the field by a variety of sidekicks. Strikers: Battle League; thankfully evolves this to allow you to make up your team of the more prominent Mario characters such as Luigi, Peach, and Wario, instead of Shyguys, Toads, or Koopa Troopa’s. This allows your team to have vastly more personality and charm.
Currently, you can build a team from 10 available characters; Mario, Luigi, Bowser, Peach, Rosalina, Toad, Yoshi, Donkey Kong, Wario, and Waluigi. While matches are built around 5v5, your goaltender will always be Boom Boom, as Kritter and Robo-Kritter are nowhere to be found. It’s a shame that there isn’t more variety here in that regard, or even having core Mario characters take to goal and have varying stats to make matches more interesting.
While more characters will likely make their way via DLC down the road, hopefully being included in the Nintendo Online Expansion Pass, there is a bit of Nintendo playing it safe here as there are no interesting choices that shake up what we’ve come to expect from Nintendo. Considering the massive rosters that make up games like Super Smash Bros or even Mario Kart, it’s a shame we don’t have a bigger roster to make matches feel more varied as you’re likely to run into very similar teams online over and over again.
Where Strikers: Battle League excels is that making your team up of core characters that each have their own stats, allows matches to be very different from simply picking a captain and having cloned sidekicks fill out your roster. Combine that with collecting gear that allows you to shake up those stats, and you have a very deep and customizable team structure that can result in min-maxing your chosen characters to suit what you want from them.
Each character on the roster varies in stats such as Strength, Speed, Shooting, Passing, and Technique. While the majority of those are self-explanatory, technique determines a character’s shot accuracy and curve, and it also affects the meter for the Hyper Strike and the timing of perfect moves. The combination of certain stats and how balanced they can be per character will cause you to assemble your squad based on varying factors. Do you have someone who can shoot the ball well? How good is their passing game, and are they fast enough to outmaneuver the other team?
Each of the cast excels in either one or a few things, or like Mario, who is an all-rounder that is more or less cut down the middle. Then you have characters like Bowser who is strong but lacks in speed and technique, whereas Peach is Bowser’s opposite as she is incredibly fast but lacks in strength. It’s these differences that allow you to fill each character into a certain role, looking at them as options instead of just pros and cons.
To shake up this stat-driven system is gear that you’ll unlock as you earn the coins to do so. Simply starting the game as well as playing through the tutorials will earn you plenty of coins to outfit at least a few characters. You can play matches either offline or online to earn more or take on a few tournaments to really see the money roll in. Still, the gear is an interesting thread to pull that can have its advantages but ultimately is not as exciting as I had hoped.
Each character has the ability to choose from a few different gear sets; Muscle, Turbo, Cannon, Chain, and Trick. As you can tell from their naming schemes, they reflect a core stat, but there is a catch. Each gear piece adds +2 to its related stat but also removes 2 from a neighboring one. This causes you to weigh your options as while you may see a nice bonus towards your speed, your strength or passing stat could drop as a result of equipping it. There is also an unlockable gear set to track down which boosts a core stat by +4 but -1 from the four remaining stats.
While I am not a fan of the penalty attributed to the gear, especially in a Mario sports title, it’s the often generic designs that don’t really impress me much at all. Since you are likely looking to mix and match to balance out certain characters or make them a powerhouse of a particular field, the mixing, and matching of gear can throw off the visual team aesthetic.
Gear ranges across four categories; head, arms, body, and legs. Since gear is stat-based, you don’t really get a say in how your character looks if you are building solely off its stats. The opposite can be said if you are choosing fashion over function. Since there is going to be the need of not creating a visual abomination, this causes some gear items to be very similar to one another and there isn’t much here that feels very Nintendo or character-specific.
I get its purpose, to be something you grind away at to earn, but once you reach that plateau of where you want a character to end up at, that grind doesn’t feel worth it unless you want the stat variety of shaking things up down the road or as a collectible obsession to earn all gear. As you start a match, you’ll then need to select the gear, and considering the vastness of how you can outfit each character, it’s a shame there are no saved presets or builds that you can make, name, and then select to have a particular Mario that is solid on his passing or another that is more of a hot shot slugger.
Once you have your team kitted out for a match, you’ll then select a team color that comes with a preset name. While I do like a lot of the color choices, it’s a shame that you cannot have a set team name that you can have regardless of the color. Hell, you could even make it so team names could be unlocked with coins, giving you more to work towards. It’s also bizarre that the four-leaf clover team is yellow instead of green, but that’s just me being picky.
Once you’ve chosen your team color, you’ll pick your stadium side. You can choose between the Lava Castle, Spooky Mansion, Jungle Retreat, Mushroom Hill, and the Royal Castle. The opponent will do the same and this results in a stadium that is a combination of each team’s selection. It’s a very fun visual component to the game, even if I miss the field designs from previous games. Each side of the stadium is decorated vastly differently from one another and each has its own set of fans. The stadium walls are also electrified, so slamming a character into the electrical field can put them out of play for a few seconds.
Despite being a family-friendly sports title, Mario Strikers doesn’t hold back on its brutality. Mario and company can drop kick and tackle their opposition, simply laying them out for a few dizzy seconds as they get back up. There are no rules, no penalty cards, or anything to keep the chaos in check, and honestly, it really allows matches to flow consistently without a constant series of starts and stops.
Everything on the field is illustrated with superb animations that are everywhere. Score a goal and you’ll see that character celebrate, or the opposition dwelling on their loss. The character models here are likely the best we’ve seen of the Nintendo faithful and causes Mario Strikers: Battle League to be a visual showcase for what it aims to achieve. This also is present in the flashy Hyper moves that each character has, painting them in an almost scratchy series of colors and thick black lines that make these intense moments really pop.
Mario Strikers: Battle League is a game that is the perfect example of easy to play but difficult to master. There are so many little touches on how to pass to your teammates from lobbing the ball or timing it just right to see that pass electrified with a burst of speed. The same can be said of shooting as hitting the button just right and then aiming it can result in a shot that blazes past Boom Boom for a well-earned goal. It’s mastering these techniques where Mario Strikers: Battle League can excel for some advanced tier gameplay and break free of how shallow it could come across in trailers or at a cursory glance.
Amongst all the tackle systems or dodging an incoming barrage, you can pull off a Hyper Strike that is built up when collecting electrified orbs that are randomly set down on the field. For a few brief seconds, you can charge up a shot and then perform a quick QTE that will determine the power behind the shot. Each character has their own power shot, from Peach causing the goaltender to be rather smitten with her, and subsequently throwing the ball into his own net, there is also having Yoshi firing off a massive egg that rampages towards the goal. If you make the shot, the goalkeeper can mash down a button to build up a resistance to the shot, but fail, and let in that shot, and it’s worth two points. These shots are filled with personality and are honestly, visual showpieces of both design and character.
Alongside those flashy orbs, are items that can aid you rather well. These are everything from green turtles shells, mushrooms, bananas, or bob-ombs that can be tossed out to stop your opposition or in the case of the mushroom, to speed you ahead. Some item blocks are team color specific, whereas some are meant for both sides to scramble towards.
While Mario Strikers: Battle League plays remarkably well with a deep and enriching passing and shooting system, as well as those fun-as-hell Hyper moves, that addictive gameplay is limited to a small selection of modes that simply doesn’t give you much to do other than basic matches both offline and online. There is a double-elimination tournament system where you need to win three matches to take home the trophy and some coins, but that is it. There is no Mario-Tennis-like story mode or character-specific drills or anything to fill out what you’re able to do here. The tournaments do have some challenge with matches being focused on passing or shooting, but overall, they don’t fill the gameplay gap that is so evidently present here.
Apart from gameplay or modes is the Strikers Club, where you can create your own club to recruit friends and take on other clubs from around the world. These work towards a week-long season, where you’ll earn points to teach the top of the division.
While there is the ability to play with eight players on a single console, with AI filling out any gaps. only two players at a time can compete with others online from the same system, making its online features somewhat limited, especially if you have four friends wanting to team up and take the action online. I do hope this is something that is addressed in a future patch or some sort of quality of life update.
Mario Strikers: Battle League is an uneven experience when it comes to its visuals, gameplay, and presentation, against its barren landscape of modes and features. In a sense, this feels like a very dry offering of a game that doesn’t feel finished enough to be fleshed out with modes and activities to take advantage of its stellar and constantly fun gameplay. There is a tremendous game here apart from that, so it will certainly be interesting to see how long its content can keep players interested. Unless Nintendo adds in more characters and things to do, it’s a very barren experience that should have offered more.
Developer - Next Level Games. Publisher - Nintendo. Released - June 10th, 2022. Available On - Nintendo Switch. Rated - (E 10+) Cartoon Violence, Comic Mischief. Platform Reviewed - Nintendo Switch OLED. Review Access - Mario Strikers: Battle League was purchased by the reviewer.