MARIO STRIKERS: BATTLE LEAGUE is Great Fun in a Disappointing Game
Earlier this month, Nintendo released Mario Strikers: Battle League. The game was developed by Next Level Games and published by Nintendo for the Nintendo Switch. In the game, you can play as Mario, Luigi, Peach, Bowser, Yoshi, Rosalina, Donkey Kong, Toad, Wario, and Waluigi in 4v4 (plus a goalie on each side) soccer matches. Nintendo was kind enough to supply me with a digital copy of the game to review, but all of the thoughts that follow are my own.
I remember playing the original Mario Strikers game on the Gamecube with my friends and I loved it. Then, Battle League was announced, and I was pumped. I was just shy of counting down the days to its release. Then, I got to load up the game and I started having a blast. I went through the tutorials and was impressed with how much depth the gameplay has. Sure, it seems repetitive, but to get really good at playing takes a lot of practice. Knowing when to dodge, remembering you can boost, learning how to aim your shot, and more are skills that will take a lot of work to master. My 5-year-old daughter has even had fun even though she doesn’t quite grasp a fair number of the skills needed. This is the mark of a homerun, right?
Well, that’s the thing. It’s not a homerun. As much as I’ve enjoyed playing the game, the gameplay has some depth, but the actual game feels very shallow. The visuals look good (Donkey Kong in particular impressed me). The audio is fine. The fun little victory dances the characters make after scoring are fun to watch sometimes. But there’s not much to the game. There are only 10 characters. The game modes include Quick Battle, Cup Battles (there are 6 in total), and the Striker’s Club Match. I spent the most of my time in Cup Battles which are small double-elimination tournaments played against teams of CPUs that get progressively harder and the closest thing this game has to a story mode. I haven’t participated in the Striker’s Club Match mode because I don’t have a club yet and the season hasn’t started yet.
One of the standout features of Battle League is the use of gear that lets you customize the characters to best fit your playstyle. I’m torn on this system. On the one hand, I do like the customization, but on the other hand, I don’t always like the aesthetics of the gear. Speaking of gear, each piece of gear costs 100 Coins. Nintendo Life did the calculations and found that to unlock all the gear you need 32,000 Coins! That’s a lot! It doesn’t help that you can only accumulate about 1/3 of that easily through tutorials, visiting the gear page, and winning all the Cup Battles on each of the two difficulties. After that, you earn coins at a snail’s pace which is kind of disheartening. Now, this won’t be a deal to some players who just pick a couple characters to main and don’t worry about the others, but if you’re a player who likes to have everything unlocked, get ready to play this game a lot. I do want to add the caveat that playing Striker’s Club Matches during the season may provide more coins, but we honestly have no idea.
I like Battle League and it’s fun, but there are definitely areas for improvement. For starters, the number of playable characters can (and in my opinion should) be higher. We’re missing standouts including Daisy, Petey Piranha, King Boo, and more. There’s also no story mode. Both of these are both letdowns given how much fuller the other Mario sports titles on the Nintendo Switch, Mario Golf Super Rush and Mario Tennis Aces, feel by having both of these things!
In addition, Battle League is another Switch game that doesn’t use the Switch’s profile system very well. Now, I do not know if this is an impossibility with how profiles were built into the Switch or if developers refuse to utilize them well, or if it’s something else, but players should be able to utilize their profiles in local multiplayer games. For example, when I load up a game to play with my wife, she should be able to join the game using her profile and access her gear loadouts for characters. This would make the whole difficulty obtaining coins thing less of a problem.
At the end of the day, I like Mario Stirkers: Battle League, but I’m also disappointed in it. Hopefully, updates and the actual season are able to address some of my complaints. If you think GeekTyrant should start up a Striker’s Club leave a comment below and maybe we will be able to. I honestly believe this game is more of a solid 7.5, but we don’t have that graphic, so instead I’m giving it the below score.
