We were surprised when we learned 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 is not the first of its kind, as Mario + Rabbids Sparks of Hope follows the success of the part that was released in 2017, and was called Kingdom Battle, so has this new title been successful? 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 events are located in four regions divided on the map, each region has its own missions and puzzles that are different from the others. The player will be accompanied by a small robot called Beep-0 who will guide him on missions and learn different skills that will help him during his journey within the game.

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 8 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 skill, their own skill tree and different weapons between them. It is worth mentioning that the player will control only 3 characters out of 8, first as the main character with Mario and a character from the Rabbids, 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 spot where they are hidden from the enemy, the enemy's accuracy changes based on the effectiveness of the cover, and here credit goes to the creative development team in designing the AI. Characters also have movement abilities, where they can dash towards an enemy to deal damage or be boosted by another character to travel further.

Some weapons have special effects; for example, the player can shoot a honey ball 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 said, the game is a purely tactical and strategic type of system, as we were surprised by the output of Nintendo Union and Ubisoft once again in creating an entertaining fighting mechanic that is the first of its kind in any Nintendo game. The game has maintained the basic fighting system of the previous installment, Kingdom Battle, with the addition of many other completely new features that we will 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 are awarded coins and skill balls, which can also be found by exploring the underworld, with greater rewards for finishing 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 such as 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.

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

Positives

Negatives