Mario + Rabbids Sparks of Hope – Review
If there’s one thing the Mario series has taught us over the past 35 years, it’s that change isn’t always bad. Even more so with Mario + Rabbids: Sparks of Hope. Instead of recycling the winning strategy formula that made Mario + Rabbids Kingdom Battle such a surprise hit in 2017, developer Ubisoft opted to shake things up a bit for the sequel by doing away with the conventional grid-based format of the original. A fan of the series who fell in love with the first game might have been surprised by that choice, but after seeing how well it worked out, I can’t see the series going in any other direction.
Don’t freak out; both games retain their core elements. In the strategy game Sparks of Hope, Mario and his pals team up with Rabbid doubles to defeat foes in tactical turn-based combat. The ideas presented in the original are not completely abandoned, but rather refined and expanded upon in the sequel. The sequel maintains the same sense of novelty as the original did in 2017 thanks to softer combat, more emphasis on exploration, and a more robust approach to character development.
The revamped strategies in Mario + Rabbids: Sparks of Hope allow for the most efficient use of turns I’ve seen in the genre. Even though it doesn’t address every problem with the original, it’s a worthy sequel and one of the best games available only for the Nintendo Switch.
Super Mario Galaxy served as an inspiration for the latest Mario + Rabbids adventure, Sparks of Hope. Together, Mario and his human and Rabbid friends must stop Cursa, an evil force that seeks to unleash havoc across the galaxy by devouring Sparks, creatures that are hybrids of Rabbids and Galaxy’s Lumas. The loose, cartoonish plot isn’t crucial, but it does provide a convenient framework within which to experience five distinctive environments.
One of the most welcome changes from Kingdom Battle to Sparks of Hope is the game’s increased emphasis on exploration. In each world, you’ll find main story missions, but they’re largely optional due to the abundance of side missions and hidden content. While Galaxy may have served as the primary source of inspiration for the game’s visual style, I was more reminded of Super Mario Odyssey’s world design. When you combine that with Ubisoft’s signature “map game” style of play, you have a sequel that is even more suited to being played in short bursts of time on the go.
There’s a lot to do besides fights, even though most quests are tactical encounters. The longer battle sequences are broken up by coin-collecting challenges, fishing minigames, world riddles, and other such diversions, all of which help define the series beyond its central hook. Some of the puzzles, both traditional and environmental, that it presents are what have surprised me the most and led me down new avenues in the world. The best optional activity is accessed through hidden doors and features a mini-puzzle room reminiscent of the diorama-style charm of Captain Toad: Treasure Tracker.
The worlds themselves also improve visually while still fitting within the Switch’s technical constraints. Some of the levels in Kingdom Battle were reminiscent of the more simplistic fare of the Mushroom Kingdom, with the game simply hopping from one generic platforming setting to another. The environments here are more colourful and detailed. I can see a rock cave in the shape of a Rabbid’s head, a wooden path hacked through the snow, and a boat frozen in a lake as soon as I enter the icy Pristine Peaks. By the time I leave, I’ll have explored every inch of the place, including the secret dungeon that used to be a haunted mansion I stumbled upon.
Discoveries, whether they be well-hidden secrets or level design sight gags, can be found just about anywhere (like a Wiggler trapped in a snow globe). As a result of these alterations, the tactics game now feels more like a natural union of Ubisoft’s and Nintendo’s design philosophies, and more like a modern 3D Mario game.
While the game’s emphasis on exploration is a welcome change, the game’s excellent tactical battle adjustments are what make it shine. Ubisoft has relaxed the rules of battle slightly from the traditional turn-based grid format in favour of some real-time action ideas. Players have two actions per turn, one of which can be spent firing, the other on using a special ability or activating a Spark skill. Although two actions doesn’t seem like much, Sparks of Hope’s turn economy is fantastic, allowing players to chain together many more actions at once, making use of the excellent Donkey Kong Adventure DLC for Kingdom Battles.
Why? Mostly because of a fundamental shift in the mechanics of motion. Players are no longer required to stay within a predetermined grid area when moving around the battlefield; instead, they are free to do so whenever they like, even between skill uses and during the turns of opposing heroes. Players can do a lot on a turn without spending a point by using free actions like jumping off a teammate’s head or charging into an enemy. Now I can switch between my three characters mid-action to carry out elaborate sequences, allowing me to explore many more narrative avenues.
By running forward as Peach and then switching to Rabbid Rosalina and jumping off of her, I can cover more ground in the battlefield in a single turn. To get to an enemy-accessible spring pad, I switch to Rabbid Peach, who can leapfrog off of both of them, and then switch back to Rabbid Rosalina to springboard even further. From that vantage point, Rosalina can make a dash at an opponent, inflicting boredom on them and rendering them speechless for a turn. My other party members have shifted their attention to another nearby foe, where they are using their dashes and attacks to eliminate them. For the remaining action, I can poison my foes with a toxic shockwave spark and use Rosalina’s special ability to silence them all. Turns, even with the best laid plans, feel like a puzzle game where you need to maximise the effect of your actions to win.
There are many important ways in which Sparks of Hope manages to maintain the experience’s novelty from fight to fight. One distinguishing feature is that each of its nine personalities is unique. While Bowser now has the ability to call forth an army of mecha-koopas to explode on enemies and inflict fire damage, Mario still only has access to two mid-range guns that can fire at two separate targets. Combinations of characters can yield completely new methods of attack. In the past, whenever I had a mission that simply required me to get somewhere, I would send out Luigi, Edge, and Rabbid Mario because they were my designated movement team. By prioritising team jumps and movement range when designing each character’s skill tree, I was able to complete these missions in as few as two turns and send Luigi safely across entire maps.
The Sparks of the title play a pivotal role in the development of the characters. By the middle of the game, players will have two Sparks equipped on each character, allowing them to take one of four possible actions. Sparks can be used in a variety of situations, from enhancing attacks with elements to deflecting damage back onto foes. Even if a character keeps using the same weapon, there is still room for creative customization thanks to this feature. I gave Luigi a Spark that multiplies his damage by ten and another that makes him invisible for a few turns, for instance. That would allow him to safely infiltrate enemy territory, where he could use his overwatch ability to eliminate threats without being detected.
The series’ best feature, however, remains unchanged: it’s an incredibly accessible tactics game. It’s a great way to introduce kids or newcomers to the genre, with difficulty settings that can be adjusted for each individual battle. But seasoned players of games like XCOM will have no trouble assembling a squad that can eliminate half the enemies on screen without taking a single hit.
Sparks of Hope is an improvement over the original game in many ways, but it retains a few of the original’s flaws. It is still challenging, for example, to estimate an adversary’s potential area of movement. The enemy’s movement area, weaknesses, and resistances that you see when you click on it disappear when it enters a pipe. When enemies on the opposite side of the screen chained their way to me and killed a teammate almost immediately, I often had to restart battles I was already one turn into.
Combat can also move at a glacial pace. Although there is a fast-forward option, it is not possible to completely bypass the opposition’s turns. Turn animations, even at a higher frame rate, can be excruciatingly slow in missions with a dozen or more enemies on screen and portals that slowly spawn out two or three more of each. Opening menus may also cause a delay because of their lengthy loading times. Instead of constantly making minor adjustments, I would rather make sweeping changes to multiple heroes and Sparks at once in the character menu.
These problems cause some annoyances, but they can’t detract from what is otherwise the strongest entry in a promising new franchise. It’s a great 30 hour adventure that’s entertaining from beginning to end. Despite the lack of DLC, the game’s worlds are packed with missions that put your ability to maintain order on the battlefield to the test (plus, several DLCs are planned, including a Rayman expansion). When facing off against a massive Goomba on a narrow island, I had to carefully plan my every step in order to keep kiting my team around it safely while preserving as much of the map’s limited cover as possible.
This isn’t just another smash for Nintendo Switch; Mario + Rabbids: Sparks of Hope cements the strategy series’ position as one of Mario’s best offshoots. Ubisoft has carefully played to Kingdom Battle’s strengths, positioning the series as one of the best tools in the publisher’s current arsenal, like a seasoned strategist plotting the perfect turn.
