Mario + Rabbids Sparks of Hope – released on Nintendo Switch on Thursday – does what you’d expect from a sequel to a well-received game by immersing you in a richer, larger world. While the first game, Mario + Rabbids Kingdom Battle, was linear, Sparks of Hope tries to be more exploratory with a sort of semi-open world. There is now a map in the game, with quests marked on it. Luckily, it’s not as littered with icons as some of Ubisoft’s other open-world games. There’s a bit of level blocking, as you’d expect – it never really bothered me, although your mileage may vary depending on the route you take. Each new Sparks of Hope planet unlocks a dozen quests that you must complete before taking on the big bad. You can roam freely and decide what you want to do first.
Ubisoft Milan and Ubisoft Paris – the team of developers returning to Mario + Rabbids Sparks of Hope – have also reconsidered their approach to the game’s turn-based arena. Unlike Kingdom Battle, where your heroes moved around in a layout Grid-based Sparks of Hope is completely free. During your turn, you can move infinitely while you consider your choices. After activating team jump, you are lifted into the air and free to move before falling to the ground. Additionally, some new enemies, like the Bob-omb, can be picked up and thrown after you’ve launched into them. Either way – team jump and dash and throw – you have seconds to decide. Mario + Rabbids Sparks of Hope is still a turn-based tactics game, but now there’s a real-time element.
Although most of them are welcome introductions, there are some unwanted ideas as well. Mario + Rabbids Sparks of Hope now has three in-game currencies: existing “coins” to purchase new items and weapons, “Starbits” which are used to upgrade Power-up Sparks characters, and planet-specific coins – there are five planets on Mario + Rabbids Sparks of Hope – to unlock one-time use items. Kingdom Battle only had coins for both weapons and items. To help run it all, Ubisoft has given Sparks of Hope an in-game store. Its merchant shows up before each level starts, giving you the option to top up everyone’s health for coins. Given what we’ve seen with other Ubisoft games, I’m afraid microtransactions and limited-time cosmetics aren’t far off.
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Following the events of Kingdom Battle, Mario and the gang are happy in the Mushroom Kingdom. The biggest calamity seems to be Rabbid Mario having his pants stolen. But, as anyone who’s seen a movie or game sequel will tell you, peace can never last. Mario + Rabbids’ new villain Sparks of Hope is a sprawling, floating entity called Cursa, who is taking over the galaxy using mind control and inflicting a black goo Darkmess that takes over everything. To further his plans, Cursa uses the energy of the Sparks – a combination of Rabbids and Lumas – which grant bonuses and special abilities to our roster of playable heroes. You can optionally assign up to two per hero, choosing from the 30 total sparks, which are unlocked as you play and complete quests.
Speaking of heroes, the gang is all available from the start: Mario, Luigi, Princess Peach, Rabbid Mario, Rabbid Luigi, and Rabbid Peach. Joining them on the journey are new heroes Edge, Bowser, and Rabbid Rosalina. More importantly, you don’t have to use Mario like you did in Kingdom Battle. In Sparks of Hope, Mario can be replaced with a different hero. I’m glad Ubisoft didn’t go for an artificial method to re-lock the character rosters. That said, their abilities have been re-locked. To save time, individual skill trees can be auto-populated with recommendations provided by Jeanie, a new AI created by Beep-O who he is now jealous of, as she seems to have better ideas. Beep-O and Jeanie are both fully voiced, which was not the case in the first game.
Mario + Rabbids Sparks of Hope also introduces new enemies and new ways to defeat them. Instantly recognizable Goombas are now part of the game, and you can even cycle through multiple Goombas to knock them out at once. With the aforementioned Bob-ombs, you can run through one to light it up, then throw it at the others. Sometimes you end up with a beneficial cascading effect – with a Bob-omb that blasts others, which in turn damages even more enemies. Of course, you can also use the variety of weapons at your disposal. With Sparks, you can turbocharge your attacks, deflect and absorb damage, or add fire, frost, and a myriad of elemental effects. Unique items can help you heal, deal area damage, or even reset cooldowns when you’re in need.
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Rabbid Peach throws a Bob-omb in Mario + Rabbids Sparks of Hope
Photo credit: Ubisoft/Nintendo
What is cooldown? Similar to Kingdom Battle, Mario + Rabbids Sparks of Hope puts a multi-turn timer on using Sparks and special abilities to prevent them from being OP. And of course, as was the case before, the game also limits the number of actions you can perform per turn. You can choose two out of four options: Weapons, Sparks, Items, and Abilities. The increased complexity impacts your Kingdom Battle strategies, forcing you to find new ways to succeed in the new Mario + Rabbids game. On top of that, you need to consider other factors, such as enemies moving around after you shoot them, and randomly appearing portals spawning new baddies for you to deal with. You box destroy these portals to avoid fighting new enemies, but this adds another factor to consider in your approach.
If that ever gets too much for you, Mario + Rabbids Sparks of Hope has a lower difficulty option, just like it did with Kingdom Battle. Here, it’s called “Casual”. You can even choose to make Mario and the gang invulnerable, if you’re only here for the story. (This option isn’t enabled even if you choose Relaxed. You’ll need to dive into Options > Gameplay. There, navigate down and enable invulnerability.) But whereas the first game only had two choices, Sparks of Hope has Three. For players who want a challenge, Ubisoft has included “Demanding” – in which enemies are tougher and deal more damage, and the hero’s health is not restored after battle. The default difficulty setting is called “Medium”, and that’s how I played Sparks of Hope.
Outside of turn-based combat levels, Mario + Rabbids Sparks of Hope offers light environmental puzzle work in the open world. A part is taken from Kingdom Battle. You move objects to unlock a flow. You reorient statues to answer a puzzle. You chase after coins in time-based challenges. The Sparks of Hope open world has nooks and crannies that you will come across as you explore. (This may lead you to an extra portion of rooms, or you may encounter an enemy who initiates a battle.) Although a new area may look bare from the outside, it’s only once you start to move around – and try to check off each quest – that you realize you’ve spent hours there since you walked through that first door.
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Rabbid Rosalina, Luigi, and Rabbid Peach explore one of five planets in Mario + Rabbids Sparks of Hope
Photo credit: Ubisoft/Nintendo
And if you decide to buy the Gold Edition/Season Pass of the game – that’s a premium of $30 (around Rs. 2,500) over the base game – you’ll be treated to even more content down the line. . Ubisoft is promising three story-driven downloadable content (DLC) expansions for Mario + Rabbids Sparks of Hope, including one featuring Rayman, a Ubisoft character with his own franchise that spawned Rabbids in the first place. According to the Nintendo Store, two are expected in 2023 and the last in 2024.
But I’m sad that I can’t play any of this – either Sparks of Hope or any of the three expansions – with my friends and family. While Kingdom Battle’s co-op and PvP multiplayer was complementary and had its own downsides, that’s completely gone from Mario + Rabbids Sparks of Hope. The game’s producer Xavier Manzanares says they cut it due to balance issues caused by combat additions, which would have led to “a game that will never ship.” It’s still an unforgivable decision in my books.
For those planning on playing on the big screen by passing Joy-Cons around, be aware that the graphics quality of Mario + Rabbids Sparks of Hope isn’t all that impressive. My experience on a 55-inch TV wasn’t great, and the game is clearly designed to be played on the Switch’s own screen at arm’s length. (Nintendo handheld internals have been limiting graphics almost since launch.) That said, I enjoyed surround sound with my TV hooked up to a 5.1 speaker setup.
Ultimately, the new Mario + Rabbids game is a solid sequel to the more than five-year-old Battle for the Kingdom, though Ubisoft’s attempts to give it an open-world twist have yielded mixed results. Do I appreciate the increased ambition? Yes. Am I put off by the controversial and wary Ubisoft-y pitfall additions I’ve seen elsewhere? A yes to that too. But that’s the price we pay for the world we live in. When it was first conceptualized, despite the brand’s obvious synergy of characters coming together, Kingdom Battle felt like an innocent little experiment. Now, with success on their backs, they’re hungry for more, and Ubisoft and Nintendo are seeing dollars in their eyes. Mario + Rabbids feels like a franchise now – and it shows.
Advantages:
- A richer and wider world
- Easy to learn, hard to master
- Freeform arena layout
- Three difficulty choices
- Six hero choices from the start
- Mario can be removed from the list
The inconvenients:
- Concept of an in-game store
- One-time use items
- Mix of real-time and turn-based gameplay
- Three in-game currencies
- No cooperative multiplayer or PvP
Score (out of 10): 8
Mario + Rabbids Sparks of Hope releases Thursday, October 20 on Nintendo Switch. It occupies 5.8 GB of storage space after downloading.
Officially priced at Rs. 3,999 in India from Games The Shop, Game Loot, and Mcube Games, you can get Mario + Rabbids Sparks of Hope for Rs. 3,599 at e2z store.
Mario + Rabbids Sparks of Hope costs $59.99 (roughly Rs. 4,930) from the Nintendo Store online.
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