Mario + Rabbids Sparks of Hope Review

It’s mid-October and you know what that means? It’s time to don the red jumpsuit and overalls to go rescue a princess, but this time we are being tactical about it. Whether you are a fan of Mario (not voiced by Chris Pratt) or are a fan of Ubisoft’s Rabbids, the Mario + Rabbids crossover/collaboration games have you covered. With Nintendo’s partnership, Ubisoft has done a pretty impressive job at capturing the charm of Nintendo’s marquee character who (allegedly) is a plumber by day and hero by…also day. Let’s talk about Mario + Rabbids Sparks of Hope.

If you have read my thoughts from my time previewing the game around a month ago, you would be well aware that I actually never played the original game, despite being quite interested in trying this title out since its announcement at E3 2017 (remember when E3 was a thing?). At the time it felt like a bizarre announcement, but it seems to have paid off if its reception, both critically and commercially, is anything to go by. Regardless, my not playing the original game didn’t really have any bearing on my understanding of what was happening in this sequel, which is a point that deserves to be praised. There are, of course, references to the original game and there are returning characters, but the former exists more as a little treat for returning players without displacing newcomers like myself.

Mario + Rabbids Sparks of Hope [Sparks of Hope] sees Mario and co. travel across the galaxy in the hopes of coming to the aid of Princess Rosalina (best Princess in the Mario games by the way) who has been captured by Cursa, a mysterious villain who seeks the power found within Sparks. For those playing at home, Sparks are a Rabbid version of Lumas, the star-shaped entities which were introduced in the Super Mario Galaxy games. Outside of this, Cursa’s intentions remain unknown for a large amount of the game, and it is up to Mario and his crew to traverse the galaxy, harvesting the purified form of Cursa’s corruption on the lands known as “Darkmess” (my nickname in high school) to travel closer and closer to Cursa’s domain and confront the shady character.

Throughout the course of this adventure, the player will come across a wide variety of quirky characters and unique environments. From an autumnal forest to a winter wonderland, there is a lot of creativity packed into these small playable areas, and this is where one of Sparks of Hope’s strengths immediately lies. The art on display in these areas is just wonderful. It strikes an impeccable balance between the pseudo-realism that Ubisoft’s studios often strive for and Nintendo’s bright, eclectic stylings of modern-day Mario. While not ridiculously detailed like some first-party games from Nintendo or other titles from Ubisoft like The Division 2, the game still looks great, but I will touch on the technical side of it a little bit later.

The writing of the story is nothing special, with it mostly just being a platform to guide the player into fun gameplay experiences rather than telling a compelling tale – Nintendo’s insistence on gameplay over story remains a consistent theme even when they are not the ones explicitly developing the game. Where the writing can shine, however, is with the characters themselves. The main characters that you spend most of your time with are nothing particularly great, but the key characters in each area you travel to are often filled with charm and identity. Their personalities have been created with some particular kind of theme in mind, and the game makes sure to capitalise on these quirks to create some surprisingly entertaining humour. While not every joke sticks the landing, the humour is far more palatable and enjoyable than something like Borderlands 3. A personal favourite of mine is Woodrow from the third area, who is an overly dramatic artist, and the game almost immediately makes some funny quips in relation to that. The more subtle side of this humour is definitely made with a more mature audience in mind, which is great as it means there is something for a wide variety of people rather than it being focused solely on Nintendo’s key audience of young children.

Behaviour and animation is another area where this game is praiseworthy. Animation is something that is just so important to creating a character’s personality, and each movement for each character is styled in a particular way to highlight their personality. Rabbid Peach’s movements and actions all have her Instagram Queen sass behind them, Rabbid Mario just wants to punch things and brute force his way through life, and Princess Peach has such elegance and grace in her movement. Each character feels unique and no one can ever make the argument that there was a lack of love and care put into creating these characters’ body language.

The strongest point of this game is the combat. While the original played a lot more like your classic tactics strategy game, this bends the rules a little bit. For starters, rather than just using a cursor to point to where you would like your selected character to move to, you are given full control and are able to move as you please. There are, of course, still restrictions on how you can move, most notably how far you can move, but the game feels much more flexible with this system as opposed to the system tactics strategy fans are used to. To complement this new system there have been two new mechanics added to the core gameplay of combat encounters. For starters, we have the Team Jump mechanic, whereby you can use one member of your team to propel another member upwards, allowing them to either move further than their normal movement range or to gain a vantage point with the added verticality of this movement system. The other new mechanic is the dash attack. This is a free movement-based attack that can deal a decent amount of damage to an opponent without consuming an action point, meaning that it is basically free damage.

The strengths of these movement systems, however, come with the way that you can experiment and synergise incredibly well. For instance, you can use Princess Peach to add a damage-negating shield to a team member just by bouncing on their head, provided that skill is unlocked, something I will touch on in just a moment. Additionally, if you were to put your team members into their signature ability, which is basically overwatch from most other tactics strategy games (not to be confused with the shambles of a free-to-play game that Blizzard just launched), and then have another team member do a dash attack on an opponent in range, the dash attack would force vertical movement on the target and trigger the overwatch attacks from your other team members. These new systems are incredibly important if you wish to succeed at some of the harder challenges in the game without any concessions.

Skill trees are often tough to get right in games, as you want to make them important to a game’s experience, but also encourage the player to experiment without feeling like a total dud if they mismatch some skills/abilities. Sparks of Hope succeeds at this with flying colours, with small skill trees so as to not feel overbearing for each character, but the skills are fully refundable. Each time you level up your team (as your team all levels together, which is a great system in and of itself) you will receive a currency known as Skill Prisms for each character. These are used to purchase skill points in each character’s skill trees but are a non-committal affair. Don’t like how one skill engages with your play style? Just refund it and put the Skill Prisms somewhere else! There is a hidden skill tree on each character which requires a rare, separate item to unlock which is non-refundable, but these are not quite as important to your character’s performance as the basic skills are, and the skills found within these hidden trees are also refundable – it’s just unlocking the hidden skill trees that requires commitment.

Difficulty is a discussion that has been going around for a long time, and there are very different takes regarding the topic. The original game was regarded as being surprisingly challenging and did not pull its punches, and this game is no different. I was taken aback in my preview by how much the AI was able to make smart decisions in order to counter my movements and actions, ensuring that I was nervous about my ability to actually prevail over the boss on display at the time (I did because I’m a god gamer but that’s a discussion for another day). This has remained a consistent design point throughout the entire game, but the game also offers a variety of difficulty options to help tailor an experience for everyone. You can just leave things on average if you want a challenging but great experience, you can dial it to eleven and bash your head against a wall for hours, or you can fine-tune specific things like AI awareness, enemy damage and the like. The options afforded to the player here are fantastic. There is even an option for what is effectively God Mode, which is particularly great for the younger audience members that may be interested in this game. Ubisoft has hit a great balance here of facilitating a challenging experience while also ensuring the game is widely accessible and approachable.

On to the technical side of the game, this is the part where the game really stumbles a bit. Sparks of Hope is using the Snowdrop Engine which saw its debut with The Division 2, and it’s an engine that has proven to be quite scalable and performant, at least with its first use with the 2019 shared-world shooter. This game still manages to look great, especially in terms of lighting, but the frames can also be a little unstable at times. Most notable in the winter-themed area, I noticed that in both docked and undocked modes the frames would drop a little bit. Not enough to entirely sour the experience, especially as this isn’t really a game that requires precise reaction as something like The Division 2, but it was still a little disheartening to see that performance is not exactly one of the game’s strong suits. Outside of this, I haven’t really had any technical issues, though I did once think that the AI was glitched as a turn once took a few minutes to end due to some moving parts in the encounter creating an involuntary movement for some opponents. I do think that the game needs to do a better job at communicating when something like this happens because it can be quite jarring just sitting there waiting for the AI to finally be able to take its turn.

The last point I will talk about is the music and sound design of the game. For a game whose target audience is children, I was not expecting the attacks and weaponry to sound so meaty. The attention that has clearly been paid to the soundscape shows, and it makes combat feel just that little bit better. What is also cool is when the game uses your given scenario to pace its music. There is a section in the game where you have to try and sneak around to avoid detection, and there is a melody that plays in time with your footsteps, so if you were to sprint the melody would go very quickly and if you were to sneak it would go very slowly. The score itself is also just very good. This was something that I had noticed in my preview session with the game, and it’s good to see that the quality is continued throughout the entire game.

Final Thoughts

Mario + Rabbids Sparks of Hope was at the top of my Tight in the Jorts list for October and for good reason. The game captures the charm and love of Nintendo’s Mario games with the mature design elements of a tactics strategy game in such an elegant manner. Nothing feels brute forced or rushed, it all instead blends together to create one of the better experiences I have had on the Switch in a while. It also offers some great levels of accessibility in the form of flexible difficulty settings while also challenging players who feel they need to be challenged. Colour me impressed with this game, I can happily recommend this game for fans of Mario and tactics strategy games alike.

Reviewed on Nintendo Switch // Review code supplied by publisher

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