#my powers may be mediocre but i will use them for evil nevertheless.

[nightowlfury]

bison your bianca stratford is showing

[killscreencinema]

Mario + Rabbids Sparks of Hope (Switch)

When the first Mario + Rabbids game was announced, gamers everywhere rolled their eyes at the prospect of Nintendo's most iconic characters meeting up with Ubisoft's equivalent of the Minions. What could this possibly be other than an abominable attempt at cross licensing not unlike the mediocre Mario & Sonic Olympic game?

Imagine everyone's surprise when Kingdom Battle turned out to be a fantastic turned-based tactics RPG! Oh sure, it sucked that you were forced to use Rabbids characters in your team and it was weird to see Mario using a gun (albeit a sci-fi zapper that looked like a futuristic price gun), but the gameplay was solid, decently challenging despite also being "baby's first tactical game", and often times fun! So a sequel was a no brainer.

Mario + Rabbids Sparks of Hope, developed and published by Ubisoft, was released last year for the Switch and picks up a little later after the events of the first game. The Rabbids are getting settled living in the Mushroom Kingdom when suddenly everyone is attacked by a hostile intergalactic entity named Cursa, who is hunting powerful beings known as Sparks. Fearing what may result should Cursa get what they want, Mario and company blast off on a galactic adventure to save the Sparks and stop Cursa's evil designs.

While the core gameplays remains the same, there have been some changes, with the biggest one being the addition of the aforementioned Sparks. Whenever you save one, you can equip them to a character to grant them an extra ability to use in battle. Equipping the appropriate Sparks for every battle can mean the difference between victory and defeat, as most enemies are vulnerable to certain elemental attacks that Sparks can provide. Sparks can also provide certain defensive or healing boosts that can make all the difference.

Other improvements include a better overworld system that isn't as much of a pain in the ass to traverse as the first game and the elimination of gridbased movement in favor of every character having a certain range of movement. While all of this improves the quality of life for the game, don't think for a minute it makes the game easier. Sparks of Hope still has enough of a difficult edge to give the battles a satisfying challenge, especially the optional "Golden Pipe" bosses, which you can unlock on each world after collecting a certain amount of Sparks. There are also plenty of side quests, which involve battles that have different conditions for victory that aren't always necessarily defeating all of the enemies. There are some battles like the "Survival" fights (my least favorite) where you have to survive endless waves of enemies for a certain amount of rounds.

I will say that it took awhile for the game's charm to hook me, as I struggled at first to get into it. To be fair, I was completely consumed with playing Persona 5 Royal at the same time as I started this, but nevertheless it still took me a little while to get into it. I was also shocked by how buggy the game is. There were a couple of instances where the game locked up midbattle, causing me to have to restart, which is infuriating when you're this close to sewing up a particularly difficult fight. It didn't happen often, but it happened enough to surprise me considering Nintendo is usually known for nothing if not the polish of their games (although I am aware that Ubisoft made the game, but still, you'd think Nintendo would have insisted on rigorous quality control).

Overall, if you liked the first game, you'll probably enjoy this one as well!

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