7.8 KiB
| title | date | score | game_release_year | howlongtobeat_id | howlongtobeat_hrs | game_name | game_developer | game_genre | tags | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Mario + Rabbids: XCOM Battle For Newbies? | 2024-01-03 | 3 | 2017 | 46464 | 21.5 | Mario + Rabbids | Ubisoft | SRPG |
|
For both Mario and Rabbids fans, Mario + Rabbids: Kingdom Battle seems like an impossible combination that should never have happened. For XCOM fans, having the Mario universe join in on the turn-based tactical action seems just as ludicrous. Yet Ubisoft somehow managed to wrap strong enough tape around these seemingly disconnected formulas: the result is a solid strategy game with the expected funky rabbid goofs that has been played by over 7.5 million Switch players since 2021.
Its conception emphasized the unique "dissonance of both franchises", according to Wikipedia:
Mario + Rabbids Kingdom Battle was conceived in 2014 by Ubisoft Milan creative director Davide Soliani and Ubisoft brand producer Xavier Manzanares. The design objectives emphasized the dissonance of both franchises and creating a strategy game that stood out with unique elements.
The result is Mario's warp pipes turned rabbity-white and grew a pair of fluffy ears. Judging by the huge amount of involved people, from animation work (22 folks) to enginge programming (15 people), both Ubisoft and Nintendo treated this strange cross-over seriously.
The biggest question then becomes: who is this game for, Mario fans, Rabbid fans, or XCOM fans? After four worlds of this stuff, I still didn't really know. The problem is that I dislike Ubisoft's Raving Rabbids but have a soft spot for tactical games. I didn't mind the Mario sauce but would have preferred something else, as Mario fatigue is setting in, especially after encountering the same problem in the Captain Toad game from last year.
As for the Rabbids themselves... Well... Their humor can be very divisive. Unfortunately, I was very much in the against camp. In Kingdom Battle, most encountered Rabbids are just there to be marveled at: a magnifying glass icon appears, after which a pristine but completely useless animation plays while your robot vacuum cleaner called Beep-O quips a stupid remark. Unfortunately, that's all there is to it.
The world, meticulously built with lots of lovely animations connecting the battles, feels completely useless. In-between the twenty or so battlegrounds for each world, you're forced to solve irritating sliding and colored button puzzles: some block off progress, others reward you with a 3D figurine to look at in the museum---yay? I'm here for the tactical gameplay, not for having to shove a block up and down. It sometimes feels as if the player is forced to move through these parts, applauding Ubisoft's animation team along the way, while all the player wishes for is to get on with the actual gameplay.
That's because the XCOM-like gameplay is actually surprisingly solid and had me hooked until the end. It's much better than I anticipated it to be, as my expectations of this game were quite low. In each battle, you select up to three heroes, equip them with strange weapons (jo-jos?), and beat the crap out of the bad rabbids that went crazy because of a small innocent looking rabbid called Spawny who stole a helmet capable of shooting out evil-transformation-beam things. Needless to say, Bowser Jr. seizes the opportunity to steal the fluffy thing. You guessed it: the plot is worthless.
But the tactical turn-based gameplay during the battles themselves luckily isn't. Sure, your squad might be on the small side, but heavy emphasis on movement-based tricks combined with ample fire power usually yield quick victories. The unique strategic twists of Mario + Rabbids are the dash and team jump moves that can be combined with taking a shot in one turn. It boils down to this: first, you dash into an enemy, flooring him and doing 40 damage in the process. Then, you jump on a team member who hurls you across the battlefield to land and squish another enemy for an additional 50 damage. Finally, you take a quick pot-shot, introducing a nasty status effect like the ridiculously overpowered "stone", rendering that enemy unable to take action next turn.
I flew through the game in about 15 hours with Mario (a mid to close-range expert with a huge area of effect hammer), Luigi (a long-range sniper with high damage output and status effect applier), and Rabbid Luigi (a mid ranger that's great at life leeching). Other members include of course Peach (the best healer that I didn't need), Yoshi, and their Rabbid counterparts. In theory, you can further tweak each member by fiddling with the simple skill tree, but in practice, the obviously important and irrelevant skills make for rather linear builds.
In strategy RPGs, map design is an important factor to take into consideration. For Mario + Rabbids, besides the difference in theme across the four worlds, variety in map and battle design is a definite shortcoming. Besides breakable blocks and shortcuts in the form of rabbid/mario pipes, there's little to it. On the flip side, this can be a good thing, as you don't need to keep track of a dozen different factors that might influence your strategic decision. In more ways than one, Kingdom Battle feels like an "XCOM for Dummies" lesson. The squad is small, the skill tree isn't complicated, weapon upgrades are just linear upgrades bought with collected coins, and enemy movesets and variety is limited.
Most game review sites lauded Kingdom Battle for its challenging tactical gameplay. I myself found little challenge once I figured out I could abuse Rabbid Luigi's Vampire Dash to quickly heal everyone targeting the affected enemy, while also using the jojo's stone ability to freeze the more problematic units. Granted, I had to replay every boss battle a few times to find a good opening position, as they are immune to status effects. In these rare cases, it's probably a good idea to swap to Peach's healing abilities, but I never really found the need to play with other characters than Mario, Luigi, and his Rabbid counterpart. Who doesn't want to snipe with a vacuum cleaner?
In the end, it's hard for me to recommend this game to die-hard XCOM fanatics, as they'll likely find the tactical mechanics too simple. After Kingdom Battle, I'm not sure whether or not to put its successor, Sparks of Hope, on my radar. On the other hand, these games might be the ones for you if you like goofy animations and are a fan of Mario and/or Ubisoft's Raving Rabbids, and likely haven't dipped a toe into strategy RPGs or tactical games. If you can't get enough of the game, I heard that the Donkey Kong-centric DLC is pretty good as well.
Until then, it's a bit like Beep-O is saying in the screenshot below: Well, I don't think it's inviting us over for hot cocoa and lemon bars! Yet it would be a bit of a stretch to call this game average. Judging from the animation work and the plasticy toy-like world, it's clear that the team put in a lot of love. It's just that I have played too many better XCOM-like alternatives.
