Mario + Rabbids: Sparks of Hope brings noticeable improvements
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It’s funny how Ubisoft‘s best effort in years is a Mario game.
Mario + Rabbids: Sparks of Hope comes out for Switch on October 20. The strategy RPG is a sequel to Mario + Rabbids: Kingdom Battle, which debuted back in 2017. Sparks of Hope is an improvement on its predecessor in just about every way.
While Kingdom Battle was a tile-based affair, Sparks of Hope offers more freedom on the battleground. Characters have a limited range of movement each turn, but they can walk and plant themselves anywhere within that range. It may sound like a small change, but it helps make combat feel less rigid.
Speaking of characters, this includes Mario and friends … and their Rabbids counterparts. Look, I’m not the biggest fan of the Rabbids. Their Minion-esque energy is just too much for me. But even with Kingdom Battle before, Ubisoft has mellowed the little creatures a good bit, making them less obnoxious and more just silly.
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Sparks of Hope continues that trend, so much so that I’m not even sure why they have to be Rabbids anymore. I’d feel happier if, like in Super Mario RPG, we just had a cast of new characters. Granted, we do get one of those with Edge. She’s a, uh, edgy Rabbid who looks like she took all of her fashion advice from Final Fantasy characters.
So, OK, nice to have a new character. But here, it’s even more confusing why she’s a Rabbid at all. She has none of that slapstick, zany energy that used
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