Mario + Rabbids – Sparks of Hope Preview

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We’ve already spent four hours in the first two areas of the successor to the crossover round tactics Mario + Rabbdis – Kingdom Battle – and they made us want more!

All screenshots and video scenes are from GamersGlobal

Ubisoft invited GamersGlobal to a try-out event where I first experienced the beginning of Mario + Rabbids – Sparks of Hope for several hours and then explored the second planet with a separate save game where the Mushroom Kingdom crew and their Rabbid cosplayers are in the new adventure. Why the galactic trip? Well, everything starts peacefully: In the tutorial you shake trees and nudge bushes to find Rabbid Mario’s missing dungarees. But then a Spark falls from the sky, a cross between Rabbid and the Luma stars, who, like their maternal princess Rosalina in Super Mario Galaxy were introduced.

After the Spark, a great shadow falls over the castle, because the dark Misera comes to abuse the powerful creature for her purposes. After you’ve subsequently escaped the combat tutorial (accompanied by finely produced cutscenes), the plan is: help Rosalina, who is being stalked by Misera! But first you have to land your ship on a nearby planet that was also afflicted by Misera, free the sparks there and, by fighting the dark presence, collect energy that will serve as fuel for you to travel from planet to planet to Rosalina’s observatory to jump. Of course I didn’t make it that far in my time. And so much in advance: The time until the end of the event flew by!

Because of Misera, the radiant beach (the first world) no longer lives up to its name. As you will notice when you first meet the local sea god, there is a consistent German dubbing. Apart from dialogues, the first words of a text box are usually set to music.

Turn tactics with direct action

In the new Mario + Rabbits you also compete in round tactics battles, but they not only stand out pleasantly from the predecessor, but also from other genre representatives in general. Battle arenas are not divided into tiles, instead lines show you your radius of action. You do not give your up to four units any running commands, but control them directly with the stick. It’s not just about finding cover closer to the target. In passing, slam enemies with a frenzy ramming attack, or let allies team jump you to launch you into the air to soar across the map. Mario can do extra damage when he lands on opponents’ heads, while other characters like newcomer Rebella can perform multiple ramming attacks per turn, for example. The team jump and frenzy also makes it feel different than the Valkyria Chronicles series, which mixes real-time and turn-based tactics. Also, enemies here won’t shoot at you while you’re moving unless they’ve activated the equivalent of the Overwatch mode from Xcom and Co.

You can plan these special actions in peace and run up and down in your radius endlessly, only when you carry out an attack does the character stop for the rest of the turn. That sounds like a small limitation, but with enemies often lurking in multiple directions, finding the right balance between gross hit chance and protection from counterattacks is often important. Cover can also be destroyed while Rabbit-Peach’s attack flies in an arc, mostly avoiding obstacles.

Bob-ombs knocked over by frenzy explode. You have a few seconds to pick them up and throw them at enemies.

Spark powers

For one of your two action points, you not only trigger the attack with each hero’s specified weapons, but also items, character abilities and spark powers. Some abilities like Peach’s powerful barrier are designed to support the team. Others, like Archer Luigi or Steel Fist Rabbit-Mario, correspond to the Overwatch feature of other tactical games. With Rabbit-Mario, however, the counter is only activated when he is attacked. Opponents can also activate Overwatch (Peach’s barrier is very helpful here, by the way).

The spark abilities are versatile: one reflects damage, the next charges a weapon attack with element damage, but you can also give your frenzy an element kick with the corresponding spark. The nasty: ice, lightning and co. force those hit out of cover, which can be combined fantastically with Overwatch. However, both Hero Abilities and Sparks have a cooldown.

In battles and in the overworld you collect material to improve the Sparks. Your heroes, in turn, level up and can learn powerful passive bonuses in the skill tree. Two sparks can be created per hero after the start and in combination with the skill tree that can be reset at any time, Sparks of Hope offers some room to experiment with specializations. Since healing costs money, you also have an incentive to mix up your active team.

Exploiting elemental weaknesses is an important tactical element. With your robot companion you can scan the battle arena at any time and also the properties of the opponents.

Pretty hub worlds

The planets are nicely designed open hubs. In the respective dungeon of the two worlds, small puzzles provided variety and in the second there were also hidden treasures behind crumbling walls. The design of the opponents is also charming, or rather stupid at times, such as the mixture of Rabbid, pig and bear with a Thwomp on the back. Otherwise, various side tasks await you on the planet, such as collecting classic red coins, finding hidden items or defeating a certain number of enemies. To do this, you free the map from the evil presence, the so-called Dark Age, in somewhat tougher battles. This raises the question of whether the fights aren’t there after all out of control takes. The standard encounters were often quite easy to win, but the combat mechanics remained very fun. In addition, I always see enemies in the world, so I can avoid them when in doubt, and defeated enemies didn’t seem to respawn.

Last but not least, there were also trickier battles. In a fight against two snipers and many opponents with water attacks, I charged too fast and got hit on the nose. Even in the long boss fight against the ghost lady Trauma, I wasn’t far from defeat, but luckily for me, defeated cronies are revived with one life point at the beginning of each phase. But there are also checkpoints within the fights that you can load in case of doubt instead of having to start over with the first move.

Author: Hagen Gehritz (GamersGlobal)

Opinion: Hagen Gehritz

Mario + Rabbids – Sparks of Hope was in mine several hours play session continuously a greater fun. There was previously one time there could I the hyperactive Rabbids Not more see, yet here I found the most small jokes at the exploration or in the Nice produced I found cut scenes charming. the exploration the planets falls simple out, but the all over distributedquickly done tasks function as motivating carrots. Also the both dungeons the first planets were of the length I agree correct, messengers Not only through puzzle some variety and scored to With pretty details. In addition, the first-class compositions by Gareth Cocker, Grant Kirkhope and Yoko Shimomura and the fights create an almost exaggeratedly epic atmosphere, but in any case are wonderfully catchy.

The star are but the fightsthe accessible stand out and yet With the Sparks and skill trees the hero so some details for fun figure out of next train to Offer. Both standard fights power it fun, With synergy effects the field roll up, yet at all accessibility experienced I also tricky skirmishes. Once started to sure of victory in a battle With two snipers and many Water-enemiesthe think heroes out the cover hunted teen and had to then New start. At the multilevel Ghost Boss Trauma could I in turn only meager one defeat turn away.

All alongside succeed the developers also still, through the tileless direct steering velvet some action moves one refreshing other experience in the round tactics-Genre to Offer. In the long run itself demonstrate, if the fights so motivating stay or me yet to a lot of cannon fodder before the blasters comes, but I am definitive ready for more actions With Mario, the Rabbids and Co., then Sparks of Hope power a very good impression.

MARIO + RABBIDS – SoH