Mario Strikers: Battle League beginner’s guide, tips, and tricks

Image: Next Level Games/Nintendo

Mario Strikers: Battle League brings the classic soccer (or football, if you will) game to Nintendo Switch, but the game is much different than its past iterations. Outside of not including Daisy, there’s different mechanics and controls that may leave even the most expert Mario soccer players confused. Our Mario Strikers: Battle League beginner’s guide provides helpful tips to take down your enemies and shoot tons of goals.

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Yes, actually play through the tutorial

This tip seems silly, but if you’re a Mario Strikers veteran, you might feel compelled to skip the tutorial and jump straight into the action. Well, don’t. The controls are entirely different from past games and the general gameplay feels quite different. Though the basis of the game is the same, you should still learn all the new controls from the tutorial prompts that appear.

Keep passing the ball

The longer one character has the ball, the higher chance that they’re about to get decked by the other team. This is a no-brainer in most sports games, but make sure that ball keeps getting passed around rather than staying with one character.

Don’t get greedy with your Hyper Strikes

Though you may want to see that cool animation every time you score, remember to shoot normal goals, too. Charging up a Hyper Strike leaves you vulnerable to a slide tackle, and there are plenty of easy, quick goals to be made.

Image: Next Level Games, Nintendo EPD/Nintendo via Polygon

Remember to aim your shots

When you press the A button to shoot a goal, you can actually aim where the ball goes by using the left analog stick. If the enemy goalie is chilling on the bottom, fire it up to sneak the ball past him or vice versa.

Your fingers should stay on the L trigger and Y button

The controls are different depending on if you have the ball or not, but the Y button either lobs passes (if you have the ball) or tackles (if you don’t have the ball). Both these actions are extremely important for scoring or for getting the ball back.

The L trigger button allows you to swap which character you’re controlling, which is important, as the game will not automatically switch who you are unless you get the ball.

Create a balanced team

As tempting as a team of four Yoshi may be, you should have a variety of characters on your roster. Peach may be very fast, but Rosalina is better at scoring and Bowser has more power behind his punches. You’ll want to have a variety of experts on your team, rather than clones of one character.

Turn on “visual-assist mode” in the settings for clearer characters

“Visual-assist mode” is a toggle in the settings that will put larger numbers and colored shapes over the characters on the field, making them easier to tell apart. This is great for handheld mode, since identifying the chaos on the small Switch screen can be hard.

Image: Next Level Games, Nintendo EPD/Nintendo via Polygon

 

Source: Polygon