Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons Review

Reading Time: 4 minutes

Game Details

Title: Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons
Developer: Turn Me Up Games (Port)
Publisher: 505 Games
Website: https://505games.com/games/brothers/
Genre: Adventure, Puzzle
Platform: Nintendo Switch
Audience: PEGI 16
Release Date: 28.05.2019 
Price: £9.99 – Rapid Reviews UK was very kindly provided with a review code for this title.

What the Developers Say

Two brothers. One epic adventure.
Play the award-winning adventure with an all-new two-player mode for Nintendo Switch!

Guide two brothers on an epic fairytale journey from visionary Swedish film director Josef Fares. Control both brothers at once as you experience co-op play in single-player – or team up with a friend through the heartfelt story.

Solve puzzles, explore stunning locations, and face off against harrowing bosses. This is one journey you will never forget.
Includes bonus content: go behind-the-scenes with a director’s commentary and concept art gallery

Introduction

I’m a big fan of games with strong narratives. When Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons came out back in 2013, I was excited to play it, but for one reason or another, I never got around to it. When I bought the game years later, I, for some reason, couldn’t get into it at all.

Fast-forward to yesterday, where I got sent the code for the game to review and finished the game in a single sitting – only breaking to eat dinner with my wife. I had a great time with Brothers, aside from a few small issues that I’ll go into below.

Audio & Visual

Let’s get this out of the way up front – Brothers looks like an old game. It wasn’t graphically incredible on release, and some of it has aged very poorly here. Any scenes with water look especially terrible, to the point where I could probably point to PS2 games that did this better (Final Fantasy X has amazing water).

A couple of times the graphics did pull me out of the game a little, which is a real shame and was the only annoyance I had with the game.

Sounds wise is a whole different story. The soundtrack is excellent, reminding me a lot of 2018’s God of War. The choice to have the characters not speak English and not translate works for the game, and I think it is in the game director Josef Fares’ favour as his writing in A Way Out was not exactly Hollywood standard.

Any time the graphics pulled me out of the game, the music pulled me right back in, and it really ebbed and flowed with the plot very well. I would also note that while the graphics are dated, the direction and cinematography are some of the best I’ve seen — definitely the best from what I remember of that era of games.

Gameplay & Replayability

Brothers has a fairly unique control scheme; the left analogue stick controls the older brother with ZL being his action button and the right the little brother with ZR being his. You can play the game solo controlling both brothers as it was on release, or you can split the Joy-Con and play with a second person. I played the entire experience in single player and tried the multiplayer with my wife. She liked what she played, and I think we will do a full two-player playthrough soon.

The game is a relatively straightforward adventure with collaborative puzzle-solving. The puzzles themselves are usually obvious but ingenious and make you feel smart for solving them.

In terms of replayability, it is around three hours in total, and I do think I would happily replay it. I had been spoiled on the ending before playing but still very much enjoyed my time with the game.

Conclusion

Brothers is a fantastic game that I would recommend to almost anyone, with the caveat that technically the graphics are not great. Artistically they are excellent, but the age of the game does show. I think if I had played the game in 2013, this would have been a contender for my game of the year list, but in 2019 it’s still a memorable and enjoyable experience.

Rapid Reviews UK Rating

You can purchase Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons from the Nintendo eShop here: https://www.nintendo.co.uk/Games/Nintendo-Switch-download-software/Brothers-A-Tale-of-Two-Sons-1562794.html