If you ask me, the best sports video game of all time is Super Mario Strikers on the GameCube. Now I know what you’re thinking… Temco Bowl is an absolute classic. NBA Jam is unstoppable. Mightn’t it be presumptuous to pick Mario Soccer over Mario Tennis or Mario Golf? I hear you, those are valid points. However, the OG Mario Strikers remains my pick.

So when Nintendo announced a new Mario Strikers, again developed by Next Level Games, I went crazy with hype. The game was an obligatory preorder for me, I had to have it Day 1. So now that Mario Strikers: Battle League has been out for over a year, how is it?

Well, it’s pretty good… Battle League is gorgeous, fun to play, and certainly worth your time. Although I don’t think it has outdone the GameCube original, it is definitely a solid game. That said, I just didn’t find myself getting into this one as deeply as I’d hoped.

Visually, this game is about as good as it gets for Mario & friends. Character animations are really topnotch across the board, with goal celebrations in particular nailing the individual style of each player perfectly. The artists at Next Level Games must have been having a good time here, because the final product is just bursting at the seams with personality.

The controls and techniques of Battle League feel, unfortunately, a little bit too complicated. It’s not even that it gets super technical necessarily, but things do quickly get chaotic as all hell. And I’m not sure I understand why they went with the button layout they did. This game simply doesn’t manage to achieve the same pick-up-and-play accessibility of the original Mario Strikers.

A new technique called the “Team Tackle” which has been added is rather emblematic of my main gripe about this game. Unlike a normal tackle—where your player slides into an opposing player, either to steal the ball or just violently lay them out—the Team Tackle has you ramming into one of your own teammates instead. Your initial tackle sends your teammate’s body flying like a missile to (hopefully) collide with the opposition. While such a crazy move sounds like wacky fun, it’s actually super difficult to make use of in a real match, and is far more likely to be performed by complete accident. Instead of adding to your defensive options, the Team Tackle just makes this game harder to play.

And maybe this is just my problem, but I’ve found that the game does a really poor job of switching players for me. Like when the other team is on the counterattack and I’m trying to switch to the player in the best position to defend, the game will often switch me to a player in the middle of the field instead of the player positioned between the ball and my goal.

On the plus side, the way Super Strikes—or uh, I mean “Hyper Strikes”—are handled is probably the best implementation of the super move we’ve seen to date. A Strike Orb will randomly appear on the field and can be collected by any player. Whoever picks up the Strike Orb gains the ability for their team to launch a Super Hyper Strike for a limited amount of time. This is great because it allows any player on your team to perform the super move, not just the captain like in previous games. And the fact that the orb must be collected first means that the attempted 2-goal shot will not be a surprise to anyone. (Remember how the “Mega Strike” in Mario Strikers Charged allowed you to potentially score six goals and the other team had to use Wiimote cursor controls to try and block the multiple shots? Man, that was truly awful.)

It must be said that Battle League does not have enough playable characters—certainly not at the time of launch, but even now the roster is lacking. Each team needs to select four field players, and at launch the game only had 10 characters in the total roster. That means you’re going to see a lot of the same faces playing on both sides of the ball.

Look at this superstar! Next Level, please give us Koopa Troopa in Battle League.

At least in the case of Yoshi, Toad, and Shy Guy, multiples of the same character can be on your squad—but this is only allowed with those three. Not so for Birdo surprisingly; you can only have a single Birdo this time. It’d be nice if they’d give us a few other duplicative characters to use, like Hammer Bros or my all-time favorite, Koopa Troopa. While it’s nice that the developers have added more characters over time, we’ve been sitting at 16 characters for a while now and I’m worried that’s all we’re gonna get. We really want—nay, we need—to get Koopa Troopa in there.

Speaking of characters, the goalkeepers aren’t Kremlins from Donkey Kong Country anymore, instead they are now Boom Boom, originally from Super Mario Bros. 3. Good change if you ask me, but of course I love Boom Boom, so I’m all for it. Honestly, I always thought it was kind of weird for DKC enemies to play goalkeeper in a Mario sports game, especially when you don’t see them represented anywhere else. But after all these years, it’s certainly understandable for fans being resistant to a goalkeeper change. Especially when the automatic goalkeeping doesn’t feel nearly as strong as it used to….

*“Boom Boom is the goal keeper. He moves automatically and cannot be controlled by the player. Don't worry; he knows what he's doing.”* … Does he though?

Fun Fact: The goalkeeper substitution of Boom Boom replacing the Kremlins first happened with Mario Sports Superstars for the 3DS. That game featured full-field 11v11 football with Mario characters and no items. You selected two Mario mainstays (one captain and one assistant captain), a squad of identical sidekick characters (such as Koopa Troopas or Shy Guys), and then your choice of keeper was limited to either Boom Boom or Pom Pom (both from Super Mario 3D Land).

One feature I was pretty skeptical of going in was the Gear System…and I’m still not sure I’m fully onboard with it.

All playable characters have their unique base stats in the categories of Strength, Speed, Shooting, Passing, and Technique which determine how they’ll play on the pitch. For example, Waluigi’s high Strength & Speed stats make him an ideal defender, and Rosilna’s high stats in Shooting & Technique make her a monster striker. But maybe you’d prefer for a different character—let’s say Luigi—to be your goalscorer. In that case, you can equip specific gear to boast his shooting numbers at the expense of some other stat(s). Gear will allow you to adjust each character's stats to your liking, however the overall numbers always have to balance out, so an increase in one area will always involve a decrease in another.

Using gear to customize players is fine, and I like the idea of being able to play my favorite characters optimally in whatever position I want. However, there are two aspects of the gear system that really grind my personal sensibilities.

The first is that every piece of gear needs to be unlocked (purchased with in-game currency) per character before it can be equipped. Unlocking all 36 gear items currently available for a single character would run you 6800 coins, and there are 16 characters. Battle League is not particularly generous with doling out this currency either, so attempting to unlock everything would likely be a major grind. I imagine only dedicated completionists will try to unlock everything for everyone.

My second issue with the gear system is a purely aesthetic one. If I were to equip gear items, my characters would end up covered in stupid-looking sci-fi armor, and frankly I don’t like the look. It’d be quite cool if the game allowed you to alter a player’s stats with gear, and then opt to have them appear in a normal soccer kit without any techno bells and whistles. But alas, that’s not an option.

And gear isn’t the only thing you can unlock in this game, as you customize your created team’s stadium. (Or half of a stadium to be precise, more on that in a moment.) All the items for stadium customization also must be purchased, but instead of gold coins, it uses a different in-game currency. I’d speak more to this aspect of the game, but it’s pretty lame and I’ve already lost interest. Stadium designs are purely aesthetic anyway.

Battle League has a truly odd setup for their stadiums in general. Out in the vastness of space, a ring-shaped station generates a spherical forcefield and teleports in two halves of soccer pitch from disparate sources, fusing them together at the centerline to create one Frankenstein’ed playfield. It’s visually interesting, I guess, but wholly unnecessary, and honestly kind of stupid. To me, the half-field mashup is much less interesting than simply having different venues across the Mario Universe at which teams can face-off…you know, like normal stadiums.

Another gripe I have with this game is that it’s ostensibly a soccer game that doesn’t like soccer. I get the impression that Nintendo and/or Next Level Games strongly doubt the appeal of soccer on its own merits. Battle League even refers to the game being played as “Strike…a sport like soccer”, and not soccer. It’s as though these characters aren’t allowed to engage in the world’s most popular sport without some rule adjustments and heavy technological augmentation, which is just super weird.

Because, you see, my friends and I actually love soccer. We just want Mario and company to play some especially rough matches of indoor-style footie. We don’t need this to be Rollerball…uh, I mean “Strike”.

Still, at the end of the day, Mario Strikers: Battle League is a chaotic good time. It’s a solid Strikers entry, which remains my personal favorite sports series. The controls and customization systems do complicate matters somewhat, hurting the game’s pick-up-and-play appeal. Having to grind for gear also kind of sucks. And as of posting date we still don’t have a playable Koopa Troopa, which is a big disappointment for me personally.

However, even taking these caveats into consideration, there’s still plenty of fun to be had with Battle League. All that to say… See you on the pitch, Space Cowboy!