60. Mario + Rabbids: Sparks of Hope [ Switch ] - 5 outta 5, holy shit.
Past me would have called me crazy at this point in my life, not interested in Fire Emblem anymore and having a crossover between Mario and the Rabbids of all things as the current, most compelling strategy game out of Nintendo, developed by Ubisoft in this case tho.
It's also pretty crazy that Sparks of Hope is the most soulful and without seemingly any creative restrictions Mario RPG since Dream Team, that was 2013, and really all it took was a crossover, Rabbids aren't Toads after all.
So, story, pretty nice, a simple tale told well, with some pretty nicely animated cutscenes, copious amounts of world building and character that I wasn't expecting from the Rabbids, lot of good humor, gave me some good Paper Mario and Mario and Luigi vibes here and there, but is still mostly its own unique charm and style which makes a great addition to the Mario universe.
Presentation wise is an improvement over the first game, while is not as tight of a looker as the original, the general art direction is something I like more, is less a basic Mario world, and more so getting its own identity across the different planets, I would have liked more visual polish, but if given only a choice, I take a more interesting take on Mario worlds over that. Music is a major step up as well, I like Kingdom Battle's soundtrack, but is not filled with excellence as Mario usually is, lot of fun tracks and a handful of more epic tracks for the later game, solid. Sparks of Hope starts with
this, is a bit jarring to hear this, not so much out of Mario because that always gets stuff like this, but a Rabbids game? A soundtrack filled with a great diversity of cheerful tracks, battle themes both of the uplifting and we are in a desperate situation for survival vibes, melancholic tunes, a lot of it pretty memorable, all 3 composers did a pretty great job.
On the whole, gameplay I would say is better than Kingdom Battle, is funny, despite the fact that now battles take place within a small parallel world, it does a great job in contextualizing them within the narrative more so than being a mostly level by level progression, Sparks of Hope is a lot more set piece heavy, a lot of the main battles having a story on their own, specially the darkmess shards fights, all of them pretty memorable. The new battle system leads to a lot more character expression when it comes to the strategy, being able to pull some really cool shit in a lot of scenarios, something that reminds me of Valkyria Chronicles, just with consistently good level design here. I tend to progress in the skill trees here towards the extra skills that make the strategy game a lot more fun over health and damage percentages, also means that you don't really need to improve that in order to beat the game, is a good balancing act to discourage game design where it would prioritize grinding and allows for the strategy game to be a strategy game. Exploration is pretty cool, you can walk around the well sized hubs for items and other fights as side quests, it also has a good amount of light puzzle solving, having this across the game's pseudo dungeons is something that takes me back to my favorites of the genre back in the Gamecube and PS2, and that has pretty much died for the most part. Another system that I find cool is how healing your team outside of battle works, you have to pay coins for that, and every time you use it, it increases the rate by 5 coins, is a neat feature that encourages playing well instead of risking your characters taking damage across every encounter, a system like that would have been welcomed in a game like Origami King that puts a heavy emphasis on them. An issue with this game, is that there is sometimes delays in your actions, so the game controls in exploration doesn't feel as tight as it should be, and much like Kingdom Battle, it feels like the game is being held together with duck tape and Miyamoto's blessing, in the sense that I feel that something might glitch out at any moment, I had a mostly stable time with it, only had one crash, plus in some puzzles boxes would get stuck and not go over a button, for one in the later part of the game, I had to exit to the title screen and load the game again for it to work again.
In terms of difficulty, at the normal level, Sparks of Hope is for the most part easier than Kingdom Battle, but that still leaves a fairly challenging strategy game where you need to think about your moves and there will also be moments where a slip up can lead easily to a wipe, maybe I'll try the harder mode sometime but I don't really need it, besides, I don't trust difficulty levels in RPGs. Anyways, good on the challenge, I don't mind Mario being on the easier side, but is fun to have a tough enough game here and there to mix it up.
The only sticking point as a negative that I have with this game, are the, skirmishes, the overworld enemies fights, is something that I don't think it will ever work in a strategy game the same way it works in a turn based or action RPG, making complex level design and encounters in strategy game would lead to fatigue on the player, asking for a same or similar amount of strategy in inconsequential fights against grunts and main story scenarios that matter, and the game could have done away with them, the hub aren't gigantic or anything like that, there are plenty of side scenarios to keep one busy beyond the main story, and due to the leveling, progression, and some level scaling in a lot of missions, it becomes unnecessary to even have these. Some props to it tho, is that it at least tries harder than a Fire Emblem in this regard, the level design and enemy load outs are good enough, and you can be efficient in these, trying to do it in a single turn and stuff like that, it still encourages character expression to a decent extent, but again, can live and rather live without them, they are also easily avoidable for the most part, and even the game design mini stealth portions here and there by having some cover if there is an item beyond one of the patrolling enemies, so is not the worst thing in the world, but still, didn't need them.
In conclusion, Sparks of Hope is fantastic, is quite something that Ubisoft (of all companies), instead of just making am iterative sequel (which would have been perfectly fine), decided instead to take the mold and shift it just enough to create a different dynamic of play, put a ton more effort in creating a world and story that stands up to the better RPGs in the franchise, truly a work of passion. At the end of Kingdom Battle I said "this was pretty cool", at the end of this I say "gimme another one, I want more of this universe".
Also I like that the Rabbids talk, but it was cruel that we didn't get a latin american spanish dub, 0/10 game.
