Last month, Nintendo’s Switch soccer game came out with a small number of teams.
The first big update for Mario Strikers: Battle League will add Daisy, a character that fans have been asking for since before the game came out. Yeah, yeah, the update adds some other things as well, but come on! Daisy!! Finally!!!
Daisy has been a regular in Mario sports games for a long time, like in the Strikers series, which is Nintendo’s version of soccer. So when fans heard that Daisy might not be in Mario Strikers: Battle League about a month before the game came out, they were very upset.
Read more: Super Mario Daisy fans are ready to riot against Nintendo
It turned out that Daisy’s absence was a sign of a bigger problem with Mario Strikers: Battle League. It came out last month for Switch, and its fast-paced, punchy take on soccer games got a lot of praise. But it got a red card from everyone because when it came out, there were only 10 playable characters. Battle League came out with five different soccer fields, but they’re all…pretty much the same. The only difference between them is the background of the stadium.
the star, since she is good at both technique and passing stats. One Twitter user summed up how fans felt in a few words:
New updates are arriving to #MarioStrikers: Battle League!
Have a look at the latest trailer to see what you can expect when the first free update releases on 7/21 at 6pm PT. pic.twitter.com/Mdi82gLPsU
— Nintendo of America (@NintendoAmerica) July 19, 2022
Shy Guy, a fan favorite with even stats across the board, will also be added, bringing the total number of characters to 12. In 2007’s Mario Strikers Charged for Wii, there were 12 captains and 8 helpers, for a total of 20 characters.
It will also add the sandy Desert Ruin as a new stadium and a set of gear based on medieval knights. When you play Battle League, you can earn in-game currency. You can use that currency to buy gear for each playable character that boosts their stats. The new gear set makes any character who wears it stronger and better at shooting. Wario needs it.
One has to wonder how Mario Strikers: Battle League would have been received if Nintendo had waited an extra month to release it so that all this stuff could have been playable from the start. The biggest knock against the game was, once again, that it didn’t have much to do. NPD, a company that tracks sales, says that Battle League was the best-selling Switch game last month, so this probably didn’t hurt sales too much. However, there isn’t enough information to say how much time those players are actually spending in the game.
Personally, I’ve already quit because there wasn’t enough to keep the matches from getting boring. But adding two new characters and a new set of gear could make things more interesting. Even though it’s not quite there yet, this week’s update will finally bring Battle League up to speed with a standard Strikers game.
Nintendo says there will be two more updates for Battle League before the end of the year.
