We were surprised to learn that Ubisoft had teamed up with Nintendo to work on Mario + Rabbids Sparks of Hope, bringing beloved Mario characters together with the Rabbids universe in a new title.

The collaboration between the two companies isn't the first of its kind, as Mario + Rabbids Sparks of Hope follows the success of the 2017 installment, Kingdom Battle. So, has this new title been a success? Welcome to the game review…

Sparks of Hope manages to move beyond the past, shifting from a linear system to one with open-air, RPG-like gameplay while still maintaining Nintendo's beloved vibrant, colorful gameplay style.

The story's events are set across four regions divided across the map, each with its own unique missions and puzzles. The player will be accompanied by a small robot named Beep-0, who will guide them on missions and learn various skills that will aid them throughout their journey.

Normally you will play with your childhood friend "Mario", but there are characters from the world of Rabbids who will constantly accompany you and you will have to protect them when entering battles, and they will also protect you in many places, which means that the roles will be interchangeable.

The game's tasks are quite varied, keeping the player from getting bored. For example, there are tasks that end with the defeat of all enemies, and others that end when the objective is completed. There are also auxiliary tasks for characters and animals, such as delivering a frog to a safe place, and others.

The most striking feature of the game within the fight is that the player does not lose only by the death of the character he is playing with, but by the death of all the characters that accompany him in the battle, and this is a wonderful feature that gives the player more time to rethink and perhaps try to turn things in his favor.

There are eight characters in Mario + Rabbids Sparks of Hope: our hero is Mario, Luigi, Princess Peach, and finally, the fan favorite, Yoshi. There are also four more from the Rabbids world disguised as Mario characters.

Each character has their own unique abilities, skill trees, and weapons. It's worth noting that the player will only control three of the eight characters: the first as the main character, Mario, and a Rabbids character, and the third is the player's choice.

Battles are turn-based, and each character can make up to three different choices. For example, they can move to a new location, where each character has a specific distance to travel; they can also use a weapon and have two attack options that are different for each player; or they can use a special effect, with each character having different abilities that vary in function.

If the player moves into a hidden location, the enemy's accuracy changes based on the effectiveness of the cover, a fact that is credited to the creative development team in designing the AI. Characters also have movement abilities, allowing them to dash toward an enemy to deal damage or be propelled by another character to travel further.

Some weapons have special effects; for example, the player can shoot a ball of honey at the enemy to temporarily stop them from moving, or fire a flaming bullet to burn the opponent and send them in a random direction that makes them panic, and by the way the special effects vary as well, such as a healing effect that restores some health to other characters, or a hypnotic effect that draws enemies to the character who used it and keeps them away from other characters.

As we mentioned, the game is a purely tactical and strategic system, as we were surprised by Nintendo Union and Ubisoft's efforts to create a fun fighting mechanic that is the first of its kind in any Nintendo game. The game retains the core fighting system of the previous installment, Kingdom Battle, with the addition of many completely new features, which we'll explain below.

The game combines in its combat system between board games and other games that allow the player to move within a certain range only, outside of battle you have the freedom to move while inside it there are only certain areas to move and this aroused my frustration a little, but it is not a big negative because the players of the device are aware of this type of games.

By completing chapters in the game, characters receive coins and skill balls, which can also be found by exploring the underworld. Greater rewards are earned by completing battles within a certain number of turns with all characters intact. Skill balls in each character's skill tree can be used to give them new abilities or increase stats like health or movement distance. Coins can also be used to purchase new weapons and items.

The characters are now more interactive than before, as the Rabbids can finally talk and not “not in the literal sense” 😅 but the dialogues and scripts were much better than the previous part.

The graphics maintained the usual brilliance of the previous part, but the design of the world and regions and giving each region its own details was one of the best things that the development team took into consideration, a title that achieved all measures and factors until I thought it was really competitive for adults in the gaming industry.

Additionally, the voice acting for the characters from both the Mario world and the Rabbids world has maintained the professionalism of all the characters' original parts, with beautiful background music that matches the big before the small.

Positives

Negatives