Early reviews forMario Strikers: Battle Leaguehave been a bit of a mixed bag, and it’s easy to see why. Though the core gameplay loop that’s on offer can certainly be a lot of fun in short bursts, the overall experience can become tiresome pretty quickly due to a distinct lack of variety. On top of this, there are a few glaring flaws and omissions that even the series' biggest fans will find it very hard to ignore.
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Given the fifteen-year wait for a newMario Strikersgame and Next Level Games' experience working with the franchise, fans could certainly be forgiven for expecting more. In its current state,Mario Strikers: Battle Leagueis arguably worse than both of its predecessors, though, with a few simple fixes, the developer could still turn things around.
The Ability to Save Teams
Those hoping to complete all of the game’s tournaments and unlock Galactic Mode are going to need to find a team composition that suits their style of play. Whether this means prioritizing strength so as to remain solid at the back or focusing on speed and always being the first toitem dropsand Strike Orbs, it really can make a massive difference. Sadly, the process of selecting these teams can be more than a little time-consuming.
Not only will players have to manually select all four characters for their team, but they’ll also need to choose whether or not to enable gear for each one individually, which, for some unknown reason, is set to “off” by default. Granted, all of this only takes a minute or two, but having to do it for each and every tournament and quick match can quickly begin to feel laborious. Being able to save a few different teams and then quickly cycle between them at the character select screen would be a great and simple way of tackling this problem.
More Characters
Given how manygreatMariocharactersthere have been over the years, the fact thatMario Strikers: Battle Leagueonly has ten different characters available at launch is absolutely criminal. Admittedly, this is par for the course in otherMario Sportsgames, but it’s a lot more noticeable inBattle Leaguedue to soccer being a team sport. Every single match features eight outfield players, which really highlights the lack of variety that’s on offer in the game.
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Within just a few short matches, players will already have come up against the entire roster, which can quickly make the experience feel stale. This isn’t helped by the fact that many of the teams that they’ll come up against will feature several versions of either Toad or Yoshi; further highlighting the roster’s limitations. Nintendo has already confirmed thatseveral DLC characters will be added toBattle Leaguesomewhere further down the line, but, if they don’t hurry, it’s hard to see too many players sticking around for their arrival.
More Match Types
EA takes an awful lot of flack for the repetitive nature of its long-runningFIFAseries, but, to its credit, the publisher at least tries to keep things feeling fresh. ModernFIFAgames typically feature a wide variety of game modes, with things likeVolta football, House Rules matches, and training mini-games providing plenty of options for those who want to take a break from standard matches. Sadly, the same cannot be said ofMario Strikers: Battle League.
At launch, players only have the option of participating in either a Quick Battle match or a Battle Cup, and the latter is effectively just a series of the former. Players can turn off items and Hyper Strikes in quick matches and the different team compositions they’ll come up against in cups can change the dynamics of each match just a little, but nowhere near enough to keep the game from feeling repetitive after only a handful of matches. Needless to say, a wider variety of match types would certainly help to rectify this problem.
Better Rewards
Aside from a short cut-scene showing their team’s captain holding the trophy aloft anda few hundred gold coinsbeing added to their total, players really don’t get a lot for winning a cup. There’s no reward for playing well in a match either, meaning that it makes no real difference whether a player wins 10-0 or 1-0. As a result, players are effectively just grinding to unlock a higher difficulty setting and a handful of generic pieces of gear for each character.
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In an ideal world, players would have been able to unlock new characters and stages, but that’s not to say that other rewards couldn’t have worked too. Awarding coins for match performance and including a wider variety of gear would have been a simple solution, as not only would this have given players a reason to push themselves more in matches, but it would also have provided them with a means to better customize both the appearances and the strengths and weaknesses of their team.
Interactive Stadiums
There are five different stadiums available inMario Strikers: Battle League, though, aside from the color and design of the outer barrier, it really doesn’t matter which one players choose. All of the action takes place in the foreground anyway, which is where the player’s eyes are constantly going to be looking. As a result, having players select a stadium at the beginning of each match or tournament feels like a complete waste of their time, though it really doesn’t have to be that way.
Rocket Leagueis a great example of how a soccer-themed game can make use of vastly different arenas. Stadiums with different shapes and sizes would have helped to make each one feel unique and allowed the developers to better incorporate some of the many iconicMariobackdrops. For bonus points, they could have also included interactive elements like the ones found in some ofthe courses inMario Golf: Super Rush.
Item Switching
Many of the aforementioned ideas would undoubtedly have taken time and effort for the development team to implement. As such, it’s easy to see why they never made it into the game. The inability to toggle between items makes no sense whatsoever, however, as it’s a very basic feature that would have required almost no extra effort to implement. The game’s default control scheme doesn’t use the D-Pad at all either, so it’s not like the developer ran out of programmable buttons.
For those unaware,Mario Strikers: Battle Leagueallows players tohold two items at any given time, but forces them to use these items in the order in which they were collected. This can at times be infuriating, as players may want to save an item for a certain situation or dump one that they don’t want so that they’re able to collect a new one that they might. That the game makes it very difficult for players to collect new items while they are winning a match further compounds this problem.
