Sometimes very good things in the same category are absolutely nothing alike – grape jelly and mustard, for instance. But just as barbecue sauce is a wonderful sum of disparate components, the bizarre pairing of Mario and Rabbids by Nintendo and Ubisoft worked well in 2017’s Kingdom Battle.
I got a chance to find out where that union is headed, with a hands-on preview of the upcoming sequel: Mario + Rabbids Sparks of Hope, which releases on Nintendo Switch on October 20.
As a veteran of tactical RPGs I had some reservations about a simpler strategy game, worrying it would leave me too little meat to dig into. But after a few hours with Sparks of Hope, I had a good sense of what it was putting down, and found that I quite literally didn’t want to put it down myself.
Dr. Mario's puzzle cupboard
Strategy games are most akin to a cabinet full of puzzles – where each time you play you dig further into the cabinet to find more complex jigsaws. In a bad strategy game, the puzzles feel like something you’d find in the kids’ play corner at the dentist’s office, or in a pile at a thrift store – individually good, but totally unrelated to each other.
In a good strategy game, by contrast, the puzzles presented by encounters are diverse, challenging, and interconnected. A particular enemy you defeated in the past may teach you the skills you need for a later one. A technique you’ve come to rely on might be turned on its head by a new environment.
This pattern is reflected in one form or another across the entire strategy genre. Each game has its own cabinet full of puzzles and its own style, from the devilishly difficult, minimalist approach of Into the Breach to the open-ended character customization of Disgaea. Sparks of Hope seems to take pointers from a number of games, but feels most like a frenzied and streamlined XCOM – a strategy cabinet worth pilfering from.
In the two worlds I got to explore, I saw a lot of promise in its gameplay as Mario and friends uncovered amusing enemies and battlefield features. Returning travel pipes, which whisked me across the landscape at no cost, kept me interested and adapting – as did the cover that could be destroyed.
To catch stars
The core value of Kingdom Battle was approachability, making for a strategy game you can pick up and play quickly and easily. But with Sparks of Hope, the series has taken tentative steps out on a tightrope – now trying to balance some additional depth and options with that ease of play.
The first major additions are some new mechanics in the form of the Sparks – Mario Galaxy-style Luma that have been crossed with Rabbids and scattered across a given world for you to collect. More than a mere collectible, each Spark has both a passive and active ability, and characters can equip two of them at the same time.
Some of the Sparks I played with felt pretty mundane, simply providing me immunity from the effect of a particular element and giving me a related buff. While these felt important to my strategy, allowing me to inoculate my chosen avatars against whatever shenanigans the current battle held, they also weren’t all that exciting.
The series has taken tentative steps out on a tightrope – now trying to balance some additional depth and options with that ease of play
A few Sparks I got to use broke this mold, however, and were the ones I enjoyed the most. The Ooze-status Spark deals damage in an area around you; another grants an area-of-effect damage reduction buff on use. This additional lever of customization for each character is important, since their skill trees limit them to a fairly short list of specialties. You can improve on or modify their roles by equipping different Sparks.
The other big change for Sparks of Hope is the move from the grid-based system of Kingdom Battle to free roaming. You can run around within your movement radius to your heart's content, and only have to stop once you’ve spent your turn’s attack. While I was once annoyed to accidentally walk into an enemy’s overwatch range – an attack I wasn’t aware I’d be triggering – everything else about free movement felt great.
It felt natural to run my characters around to set up my area-of-effect powers, or so they could bounce off each other's heads for extra movement – finally affording me the jump I so desperately craved when exploring the world outside of battles.
Sparks of Hope suits the mobility of the Nintendo Switch, and the foundation is there for an excellent sequel. My main concern – it wearing out its welcome as innovations and challenges begin to repeat – doesn’t seem very likely to come true. When my turn with the new Mario + Rabbids was finally over, I didn’t want to walk away.
