Mario Strikers Battle League Review: Strike Your Way to Victory

The original Super Mario Strikers, released on Gamecube in 2005, has gotten a revamp and is back for the Nintendo Switch. The gameplay brings the entertaining parts of soccer mixed with the bets parts of any contact sport out there. Like many Mario games of late, this is very much a party game, more than a single player game.

I think you should get Mario Strikers: Battle League, but only if you have someone to play with. The lack of game modes and the repetitive gameplay makes this a challenging game to enjoy by yourself for more than a few matches. If you have a group, or a friend with a switch, it becomes a totally different game.

With only 10 characters in the game, and basically 3 game modes, Mario Strikers: Battle League feels very bare upon release. I have hope for more updates with more content like we saw with Mario Golf: Super Rush. If not, this is a very skinny game.

What is Mario Strikers: Battle League?

Mario Strikers: Battle League is about as simple as they come. It’s soccer with absolutely no penalties, and with the right crowd it turns into more of a beat-em up than a soccer game. The inclusion of items makes for an annoying, convenient way to disrupt opposing attacks. The lack of blue shells and fireballs starts our long list of things that should have been in the game. Mario Strikers takes a page from Mario Kart, and includes coloured item boxes. Unlike Mario Kart, they are real item boxes that can only be collected by the team of that colour. This seems to be one of the ways Nintendo attempts to give the losing team an advantage.

The coolest part of Mario Strikers on a gameplay level is the hyper strikes. Each one of our characters have a special move that allow them to unleash a much more powerful strike in an attempt to beat the keeper. The most annoying part is the fact that you can still get tackled while loading up a hyper strike. This cancels your shot and takes away your orb, eliminating your chances of taking another hyper strike for the time being.A hyper strike goal counts for two, and allows you to quickly get back into a game, regardless the score.

Is Mario Strikers: Battle League Worth Getting?

The game itself is awesome. It’s high paced, simple, and a ton of fun. You combine classic characters with carton violence and a sport, and I am hooked. Mario Strikers does not take a lot of time to learn, and the game modes can be a ton of fun. The ability to play with 8 players on one switch parallels Super Smash Bros, and it makes for a tense, competitive game.

I love the different attributes on our characters, but more importantly, the gear that goes along with it. The ability to adjust Bowser to be an absolute brick wall, or to make Luigi even faster than he is, adds some creativity and complicates the game for those looking for a challenge. The challenge of balancing attributes makes for a ton of potential clickbait content on the “Best Mario Strikers Lineup” and all of that jazz. Regardless, it lets you match your play style with more specific attributes once you have the coins to unlock the correct gear.

The 3 modes within Mario Strikers are both cause for praise and disappointment:

• Quick Play/ Online Games:
  • This is the mode that will get the most love if you play with others. The ability to play online with a second person on one switch is awesome. While that isn’t anything new, the small things do still matter. Like I said previously, the 8 player mode is a little bit chaotic, but it is also a pile of fun. There is too much going on, and it gets really competitive in a hurry.
  • Between online and different difficulty levels, there is a lot of ways to play Mario Strikers based on your gaming mood.

• Cup Battles:
  • This mode involves playing in a double elimination tournament to try and win the cup plus 400 coins. It’s an interesting concept, but it feels like such a drag to play. As you cannot adjust the cup difficulty up, the games end up being lopsided. It can only be so fun for so long when you are winning 10-0, and I got bored of this mode quite quickly.

• Strikers Club:
  • This is the most interesting mode, as the “competitive” side of Mario Strikers. You create a football club, and compete against others to rise through the ranks. There are rotating seasons, the off-season, and then in-season. At the time of writing, there has only been one “in-season” period, but it appears the rules for each season may change. It’s a fun mode, but you need at least a couple people in your club to be competitive as the only characters that get to wear gear are the ones on your “club roster”. Each account gets 1 spot on the roster, so a team of 1 person will result in a lot of challenging matches without much gear
  • I love that you can play this mode without anyone else being online. Sometimes it is difficult to arrange time to play online together, but this way you can grind your club to the top on your own time. The other interesting part that has yet to be totally explained is the Club Coins. I continue to accumulate them, but I can’t seem to see anywhere they can be spent just yet. This suggest we may be getting further upgrades to this mode in the coming months.

The game modes are a ton of fun, and they give us many ways to play with or without others. The biggest downfall of Mario Strikers is still the lack of content. Anyway you shake it, you are loading up the same soccer game. It becomes the same experience, over and over and over again, and I found it tough to play for an extended period of time. The different arenas are really cool, but I would love if they were interactive. Like if parts of the arena turned to lava or stuff like that. Different rules in different places to make choosing your half actually matter.

Mini games are also missing in a large way. A shootout mode or something of the sort that could add something different to this game to make is less of a one trick pony. If Nintendo found a way to create different ways to play golf, I am 100% sure they could create some different ways to play this as well.

I really, really enjoyed Mario Strikers: Battle League. It brought intensity matched with competitive gameplay, in the form that is really fun to play with others. The online modes are a lot of fun, and I am hoping they continue to grow. My only concern for Mario Strikers is how much I will play this after this review. It lacks the replay value to keep me hooked for more than like half an hour at a time, and it may gather some dust without more innovation in one or more of the modes.