- Genre: Turn-based Tactics
- Platform: Switch
I hope you’ll pardon my pun here, but Ubisoft has managed to pull a Rabbid out of a hat. This game seamlessly blends the Mario and Rabbid IPs into a single game, throws it into a turn-based game with some fantastic use of the Mario universe for its move set, and popped out a game that is one of the best I’ve played this year. While there’s a few things that I’d have liked to see improved in the overall mission structure, the end result is still a fine example of what developers can do with the Switch, and an interesting example of a team making a Nintendo quality experience, without being Nintendo themselves.
The biggest surprise to me is that this feels like a Mario title through and through. While the gameplay is obviously different, the little details are all there. It’s the sound of a coin when you pick it up. It’s the vibrant and varied environments across four main worlds (and the Peach’s castle hub). It’s the inclusion of red and blue coin challenges scattered throughout hidden areas. It’s Mario’s jump attack straight out of the Mario series RPG titles. Everywhere you look, there’s little details that make this feel extremely familiar, despite the huge differences in gameplay.
The nice thing about all of that is that it’s worth exploring every corner. Scattered throughout the environment are series of small challenges, puzzles, and hidden crates. While most of them contain little bonus art or music pieces, a number of the crates also contain weapons or power orbs. Make no mistake, the underlying systems of this game are very traditional to the tactics genre. Weapon upgrades for primary and secondary weapons are here, giving you obvious damage upgrades, but also adding secondary hit effects, bonus damage to specific enemies, and more. While there’s no direct XP for killing enemies, the power orbs you earn in battle or find throughout the environment act as a functional replacement, being used to purchase upgrades in character-specific skill trees. These skill trees act as a way to build out each character’s skill set, as well as provide more obvious passive bonuses like increased health and damage.
All of the skill upgrades compound into what ends up being a fantastic battle system. The basics that are there are all solid, and work in a very XCOM-like fashion. During your turn, you can run around and hide behind various pieces of the environment. In a very Mario way, you can warp to different platforms via pipes, or hide behind blocks. Also of note, brick-based blocks can be destroyed via friendly or enemy fire, and fans of the Mario series will know where not to hide if this is a concern. However, where the battle system really shows its greatest potential is in its exploitation of movement mechanics, both as an offensive helper, and a defensive measure to keep enemies away.
On the weapon side, the two main mechanics I ended up leaning heavily on were bounce and push. Bounce does just that; when you hit an enemy, it causes them to bounce in the air, taking additional damage, and also giving them the potential to get thrown off the level for further damage. Push on the other hand causes the enemy hit to ball up and start rolling around the level. They can then rebound off walls, blocks, and other enemies to cause a chain reaction of bouncing chaos. In both of these cases, I could take advantage of the damage increase, but more often than not I was using these mechanics to push the enemies backwards, and control the flow of their movement beyond them just moving towards me. I could also use things like the rebound on push to cause enemies to be knocked out of cover, offering more opportunities for large damage.
There were also some other traversal-based mechanics that were handy to use. Each character could dash through enemies, causing damage. However, each ally also had a special move for traversal. Mario could also jump off an ally, and jump stomp enemies, giving both additional damage and travel distance on the hop. Rabbid Luigi could dash and drop Vampire on an enemy, causing an HP siphon to be applied. Peach could jump off an ally, and heal anyone within range of her landing location. This all added up to each turn not just being about weapon damage, but in seeing how many things you could chain in one turn for maximum potential.
Given all that, the only real criticisms I had were involved in the occasional parts of the mission structure. There were a handful of escort missions that work about as poorly here as in every other game that uses them. The escorted units had no attack, and typically moved slower than the rest of the party, as well as spawned enemies. These missions usually just devolved into running forward to wipe enemies, then running everyone back to act as a damage sponge for reinforcements flanking from behind. The other main problem was in the mission chaining within each chapter. Rather than allowing healing between missions, you could only heal at the end of each chapter, and had to fight with the HP pool you had through multiple battles. There was healing to alleviate the problem, but I felt like they could have played up to higher difficulty within a single mission if they’d gone with a more typical heal in between battle setup. As it is, quite a few of the missions in place were simply too easy due to the chaining being in place.
It speaks volumes to the skill of Ubisoft’s developers that they pulled this off. They managed to seamlessly blend two franchises that have next to nothing in common, beyond a love of occasional slapstick comedy. They put them into a genre that hadn’t been done for the two series, and yet made it feel like it belonged. They turned what many gamers assumed was a joke, and made it one of the best games that has come out this year. It also speaks volumes to Nintendo’s ongoing willingness to let external development teams have the keys to the kingdom, in a manner of speaking. We’ve seen this with Metroid for years, Zelda with Hyrule Warriors, and a ton of great platformers out of the team at Good-Feel. Is this worth buying a Switch for? I dunno, I’d save that for Breath of the Wild, but it certainly makes a good case for the console.
