Mario Strikers: Battle League landed on the Nintendo Switch on June 10, 2022. Next Level Games built the third entry in the Mario Strikers series and Nintendo published it. The pitch: five-on-five soccer where the rules barely exist. Tackling, items and an electric fence do the rest.
Trailer, via Nintendo of America.
No Out of Bounds, Just the Electric Fence
Battle League keeps the shape of soccer without the manners. Players move a team of five across the field, pass, shoot and try to finish with more goals than the other side. Everything else is negotiable. Aggressive tackles and attacks are allowed outright, and the game answers a dirty hit by handing the victim items instead of a whistle.
Those items work like the ones in Mario Kart or Mario Tennis. Banana peels sit on the field and trip whoever touches them. Shells knock characters over for a moment. There is no out of bounds anywhere. An electric fence rings the pitch, and a hard check can send an opponent into it for a stun.
Hyper Strikes and the Two-Point Shot
A glowing orb appears on the field during play. Collect it and you can charge a Hyper Strike, a special shot worth two points if the charge finishes without interruption.
The rest of the game stays close to the sport. You pick a major Mario character like Mario or Princess Peach, then fill out the team with three others. Every character carries different strengths and weaknesses.
Customize your characters with gear that can augment their stats and appearance.
Equipment adds another layer. Gear changes stats for speed, strength and pass accuracy, and it changes how a character looks while it does so.
Eight Players, One Joy-Con Each
Local multiplayer supports up to eight players, each holding a single Joy-Con. That allows a four-versus-four match, with the computer covering goalkeeping. Online play is available too, including a Club Mode built for groups.
The single-player side is thinner. The criticism aimed at Battle League at launch centered on two things: a small character roster and limited solo content. Both complaints hold up.
What Battle League Gets Right
The gameplay mechanics work. The multiplayer works. The presentation works. Critics who reviewed the game praised all three, and the praise is earned. IGDB’s critic aggregate, drawn from seven outlets, puts the game at 6.9 out of 10. That is a mixed score from a small sample, and it lines up with what the reviews themselves say: the play is good, the package around it is thin.
The mechanics that carry the game:
- Five-on-five matches with aggressive tackling allowed outright.
- Items that punish the tackler by arming the player who got hit.
- An electric fence in place of out of bounds.
- Hyper Strikes, the two-point shot charged from a glowing orb.
- Gear that changes speed, strength and pass accuracy.
The Verdict on Battle League
Battle League is a party game wearing a sport’s clothing. The electric fence, the items, the Hyper Strikes — none of it is trying to be realistic, and the game is better for admitting that.
The limit is content, not craft. A small roster at launch and limited single-player material are the two complaints critics settled on, and they are the right ones to settle on. The mechanics are not the problem. What surrounds them is.
That split is the useful thing to take from the 6.9. A reviewer scoring Battle League is scoring two different games at once — one that works the moment four people pick up Joy-Cons, and one that runs out of things to offer a player alone. The aggregate cannot separate them, which is why the number reads as lukewarm rather than damning. Anyone deciding on Battle League should decide which of those two games they are buying.
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