Mario Strikers: Battle League Review

"Striking Gear"

Campaign

July 8, 2022 at 7:08pm
By Jason Stettner

Strikers has returned after quite a period of time, bringing with it the excitement of the pitch once more. If you’re not familiar with this series of the Mario sports franchises it provides a take on soccer/football. In actuality it’s more like futsal where you’re competingin tighter play areas.

The game itself is somewhat limited in terms of modes and content which was disappointing. While at its core everything is rather exciting and fun, I mostly wish there was more to it. You have the exhibition option to play locally with the AI or others and then also the online multiplayer to compete with others too.

There’s a club area where twenty strikers can connect with one another, sort of a league I suppose. Finally there’s a cup area, which is curated collections of little tournaments. Not anything too wild, and there’s a handful of them present. That’s essentially it for the package.

Gameplay

It’s fairly straight forward in terms of how you play. If you’re familiar with soccer/football in real life or the other sporting games it’s about the same here. You move up and down the field trying to score on the opposing goal. The field is however very tight so it’s somewhat hard to coordinate passing and others are practically right on you.

I would have appreciated just a tad more breathing room as it makes the creativity of passing very hard to perform. It felt somewhat claustrophobic at times. The fields are fine, though again limited in number. There are five options that I saw, with each match being a cross from two selections. The backdrops are well done visually, full of fans and they’re generally vibrant. The visual aesthetic was quite pleasing overall, which is expected from a first party Nintendo offering.

When it comes to performance you’re getting 1080p 60fps docked and 720p 60fps undocked with the cutscenes running at 30fps. No real complaints there, looks relatively sharp which was a pleasant surprise, yet at the same time expected as it’s a fairly straight forward gameplay setup. Going back to play, the big twist here is of course power-ups and other smaller little score boosting hyper strikes.

Just some elements that mix up how the matches are going. You get an alright roster of ten characters, the primary ones. The neat part of the character customization is that you do get a decent range of coloring options and gear choices too. The gear is bought with in-game currency coins that you earn. The gear will provide benefits alongside some negatives to each player. You’ll need to play around with this to find what works best for you.

The Conclusion

Mario Strikers: Battle League provides some fun, fast paced action within arenas that can be a tad too claustrophobic at times and in general is a bit lacking in content. The base here is actually quite good, it can be a blast. I just wish there was more to it. Whether that was in regards to the light roster, limited stadium options or just the minimal amount of modes.

It’s a great foundation to build from though, assuming this is more of a long term project it could become very exciting over time. For now, I felt fairly disappointed that there wasn’t more to this. I’m certainly a fan of the Strikers series, have been for a long time and just expected more from a modern entry.

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Mario Strikers: Battle League Review on Nintendo Switch
Review Code Provided by Nintendo

Rating Overall: 6.8