Dave Payerle writes: Way back in the olden days of dialup, multiplayer gaming actually required the multiple players to be in the same place. Games like Mario Kart, Goldeneye and Super Monkey Ball are memorable first and foremost because they were loads of fun to play with a group of people. Brawl takes one of the popular party game styles (Bomberman), and dresses it up with dark characters and settings. Unfortunately, the visual aesthetic gets more attention than anything else, and Brawl fails the fun test.
If you're interested in a horror Bomber-man with awful movement and uninspired arenas then this might be for you but if you are looking to scratch the bomber-man itch, I'd say go for the switch's Super Bomber-man R.
WTMG's Leo Faria: "If you remove the unnecessarily edgy and (im)mature setting, there's very little that differs Brawl from any other Bomberman game released over the last decades."
Chalgyr's Game Room writes:
Bomberman has seen its up and downs over the years, but the overall formula is still a popular one with a lot of players. Brawl seeks to capitalize on a lot of the same gameplay elements while adding a horror aesthetic. All in all, it is a competently made game, but not one that does enough to make it a more compelling play than the games that clearly inspired it.
It's better than Basement Crawl...but not by much