Way back when Mario + Rabbids Kingdom Battle was leaked, many were utterly confused as to what was going on, a Mario game that was not made by Nintendo and featured guns and turn based battles. Once it released, people saw the appeal and it did incredibly well, so a sequel was no doubt being talked about behind the scenes and now, a number of years later, that sequel is here. Has Ubisoft managed to strike gold twice with this formula, or was it just a fluke?

The setup for the story is pretty basic, Mario and crew are hanging about the gardens outside of Peach’s castle, when a large celestial ray appears, itself in the shape of a stingray, and is chasing down the luma, except these look a little different. Not one to let an injustice take place if he can help it Mario jumps into battle and quickly realises that there is more happening than just what we see here. Cursa, an evil being is attempting to capture the luma like creatures known as Sparks, for what reason is not revealed until later, but again Mario and crew are not going to let it happen, so they venture out across the galaxy, to stop this evil and rescue all the Sparks they can. Along the way, they will meet a few familiar faces and some new ones, but the overall story isn’t the games strongest point. In order to progress through the story, you will have to defeat the Darkmess on each planet, which will result in your obtaining two purified Darkmess crystals and once you have them, the next planet will unlock, moving you forward. There is nothing bad about the story, but the message it portrays, along with the reveal of Cursa’s origins and such, isn’t the revelation I think they were hoping for, thankfully the gameplay holds everything together.

Much like the first game, everything here is a done in tactical combat, you do have more freedom to explore outside of the battles, but story progression is tired to those. Perhaps the biggest change, at least in terms of getting into a battle, is that there are no longer any flags on fields, indicating you are entering a battle stage, now battles take place in these pseudo-dimensions. Once you are in combat, things are mostly the same as before, though there are two big changes, the grid has been smoothed out and by that I mean its round and you can now dash into enemies for a bonus attack. Both additions, on paper at least, sound like they won’t be that impactful but once you start to put them into practice, you can start doing a heck of a lot more than you could before and it really does make things more entertaining. Beyond those, the gameplay is mostly the same, you have an attack option, a special skill and you can use items, all things returning from the first game, oh but this time you can use Sparks in battle.

Using a Spark in combat is tricky, there isn’t any skill required, but finding the right Spark for the characters you want to use, can be an exercise in patient. Each Spark has a unique ability, some are power ups for the character they are assigned to, some have area of effects and others are buffs that can impact how battles shape out. Early on, you are limited to one Spark per character, but eventually the game will let you have two at once, which doubles the amount of decision making you will have to do. For example, Rabbid Peach is a healer class, so giving her access to some attacking Sparks, could make sense, however you could also do defensive, if you wanted to play up the support role. Thankfully you can swap out your Sparks or team at the start of any battle, and they all level up alongside you, meaning that you won’t have to grind to keep them balanced. All Sparks have a cooldown, so you can’t spam their use, so learning when to power up your attacks, or throw out a wave of destruction, is going to be just as important, as your placement of your team. Early on, I did spend time rotating through a few characters and Sparks, but eventually I got satisfied with my team and the Sparks within.

Upgrades for your characters and Sparks are handled independently from each other, your characters will earn XP in battle and when they level up, you will be rewarded with shards and then you use them to buy new skills. Much like the first game, you can have the game take care of your skill assignments, which is honestly what I did, I never wanted to dive into that aspect, so I was happy for the game to do it for me. Sparks on the other hand, their levels are tied to your progression, you can level up any Spark at any time, but your limits are tied to your characters level. So once you have a character above 15 and 21, then you unlock the next Spark level, making sure that your Sparks are powering up alongside you. All of your attacks are tied to a power bar, you can move as much as you want, but once you execute your main attack, your character will become stationary. Your use of items or Spark powers will also draw from that same power bar, so you can use an item and attack, use a spark and an item or so on, the combination is up to you and the game will let you know if you are going to use all your power. There are times when you will not be able to make use of your power in a turn, but as it doesn’t stack, if you don’t use it, you lose it, so making any play you can is better than none.

When you are not in combat, you can freely explore the planets that you have access to, some of them will require you to collect one of the Darkmess shards to unlock some additional areas, but there are still other things to do. For the most part, everything is still battles, so you will be going in and laying the smackdown upon waves of enemies, there are a few exceptions to this however. On the first planet, there is a guy who wants you to catch some fish, a very simple task but as it was not a battle, it was one that I found to be quite enjoyable. There are some light puzzles in the world, usually flipping switches and whatnot, but while they are good distractions, they are not that complicated and you will be done with them too quickly. Exploration is fine, but Mario or whomever your characters are, can’t jump at all, which feels wrong and beyond that, there is also the inability to have your characters drop from a higher ledge to the ground below, unless the game has a certain ledge to do it from. While the worlds are nice, they seem to lack the charm that the first game had, there are only a few unique scenes with Rabbids doing silly things, something that the first game had in abundance. If you were hoping for a more Mario-esq adventure this time around, you will be let down here.

Moving over to the games presentation, there is a lot to like, but also a few things to be aware of, but thankfully those are minor in the grand scheme of things. First the good, the game looks even better than the first and most of this is down to the more complicated art style, which is most likely down to the developers having some confidence in the designs. The games locations are fun as well, the first planet you visit after the prologue is a beach themed planet and once you remove the Darkmess, you can see the fun in its design and colours. Later planets also make tremendous use of colour, one especially uses its story and design and while the battle stages are quite varied, they never feel like they are using a small set of pieces to build larger spaces. While the design of most of the main characters are the same that we saw in the first game, there are a few new ones, Rabbid Rosaline and Edge and both have their pros and cons. Edge is one you will need to learn about as you play, but Rabbid Rosalina fits within that Mario/Rabbid look and slots in very well.

The issues that I noticed are down to some of the locations having a draw distance that the engine can’t quite manage on Switch. For the most part, the engine handles things brilliantly, but in some battles and establishing shots of the planets, there is just a little too much to going on and you will notice a significant amount of pop in. An over use of effects also impacts some battles, especially if you are making full use of some Sparks, as when the game gets busy, it can struggle to play things are the standard frame rate, thankfully as a turn-based game, it won’t impact you directly, but you will notice it. The other issue that I spotted is more akin to the texture work being too low resolution for the game and this is only a sometimes issue, when the game puts the camera up close to somethings. When this happens you will see the pixels in the texture and while it doesn’t impact things, it’s such a noticeable effect that you will have a hard time over looking it.

Across the games audio design there is some truly amazing music to enjoy, which given battles can take a while at times, hearing the tunes often means they had to be the best and they are. I can’t call out any specific piece of music, as all of it works for the game, a testament to the three composers that were brought on to score it. I do have to call out the final boss battle, because of its absence in music, which is just a juxtaposition from the rest of the game, it felt so alien comparatively. The downside to the games audio comes from the speech that is spoken, none of the Nintendo characters speak beyond wahoo and yeahs, but all the Ubisoft characters do. Beep-o speaks now and after the first 30 minutes of the game, I despised the voice they gave the upright Roomba, but as he doesn’t speak outside of cutscenes, I was prepared to deal with it. Sadly, Rabbid Peach and all the others speak and they are pure frustration, so much so that 1.5 hours in to my 14-hour playtime, I tuned off all spoken dialogue, it was just so annoying.

Mario + Rabbids: Sparks of Hope is an exceptional sequel, taking all that was achieved in the first game and expanding upon, making things smoother and adding more depth to the experience. Taking the game off the fixed track, and letting players explore multiple locations as much as they desire, really changes the flow of the experience, I just wish they expanded some of the gameplay to match. The few issues that I had with the game were more annoyances rather than grievances and while I can appreciate them putting in full voice acting, the voices did not appeal to me at all. If you were a fan of the first, you will surely enjoy this one, and while those who didn’t gel with attempt 1 will find a more welcoming entry into the tactical genre. This is perhaps the best way to do a sequel, expanding and improving on every aspect and it is something that the team have done very, very well.