Prepare for Bwaaah-ttle!
Developer & Publisher: Ubisoft Paris & Ubisoft Milan
Director: Davide Soliani
Dates Played: February-May, 2018
Platform: Nintendo Switch
Duration: about 20 hours, 40 hours for completionists
Price: $44.99 on Amazon
REA Reaction
Mario + Rabbids Kingdom Battle was turn-based tactical combat brilliantly distilled to its primary elements.
Puzzles show up in interesting places. Despite the kid-friendly Mario palette and quirky cast of characters, the game took itself seriously. It delivered a strategic challenge throughout.
As a puzzle fan new to this genre, I was impressed with the high level of forethought needed to succeed in each world. As a kid-at-heart, I fell for the Pixar-quality writing and animation of its cutscenes.
Who is this for?
- Tactical combat newbies
- Applied puzzlers
- Smart kids
- Fans of silly humor
Why play?
- Puzzle play merged with action and combat
- Creative and engaging strategy
- Beautiful graphics and excellent music
- Princess Peach with a shotgun
Story & Setup
Nintendo teamed up with Ubisoft to bring their popular Rabbid characters out of the party-game realm and into a tactical combat genre alongside Mario mainstays. Rabbids are insane rabbit caricatures with zero impulse control. They’ve been screaming their way from hijink to hijink way before the Minions ever met Gru.
The story began with the Rabbids having travelled through time and space to the bedroom of a Nintendo superfan. There, one of the Rabbids picked up a VR helmet – which got stuck to his face – and they all got sucked through a time-traveling washing machine into the Mushroom Kingdom and… it was pretty ridiculous. Like most mashups, it wasn’t worth overthinking the story’s logic.
After the story intro, a hub world led to four themed sub-worlds where my group of three Mario heroes and their Rabbid counterparts explored the land fully armed and looking for trouble.
Gameplay
There were two types of puzzles in Mario + Rabbids Kingdom Battle: battles with baddies and environmental challenges.
In battles, the task was usually to defeat all the enemies with various blasters, grenades, and exploding drone vehicles. Other times, I escorted an unarmed ally (usually Toad) through the gauntlet or got my characters to a particular zone of safety.
Each battle asked me to consider my team’s strengths & weaknesses, enemy positions, and terrain conditions. I had to plan my moves in such a way that I could set myself up for success. For example, did I have enough movement points to duck behind cover and flank my enemy, while keeping in mind that another enemy may be able to jump up and reach me from higher ground? I also had to react to unexpected behavior and the slight amount of randomness that occurred when damage was calculated.
At the end of each battle I received a grade based on how many turns it had taken me to complete the battle and how many of my teammates had survived. Higher scores rewarded me with more coins, which I used to buy better weapons, so optimization mattered.
Environmental puzzles occurred in between battles as I traversed the world. Adventure game players will be familiar with these: move these crates to push the floor switches, bounce lasers around these mirrors to hit the target, or rotate the pieces of this column to create a staircase upward.
Often times, completion of the puzzle led to a hidden chest containing in-game collectibles: a music track, a 3D model of a character, or a piece of concept art. Other times it unlocked a good weapon for use in the next battle.
Analysis
+ Mario + Rabbids Kingdom Battle was an adventure of cartoony beauty. The design was spot-on — true to the Mario universe while taking it in a completely different direction.
+ Cutscenes were cleverly written, full of personality, and professionally shot.
+ The music was fantastic. I found myself with the songs in my head long after I’d put the Switch away.
+ While the setting was whimsical, the tactical aspect of the battles would make any SEAL team proud… I was able to access the “Tacticam” which allowed me to sweep over the battlefield and analyze the movement, weapon, and special ability range of every character on the map. Enemy AI was generally intelligent despite being a bunch of wacky Rabbids.
+/- When I executed a command to attack, the camera swept into one of several action movie slo-mo modes. This added to the thrill of the moment, but occasionally the terrain blocked the camera. This was jarring in what should have been an awesome moment.
– Some worlds had too much backtracking during the main missions (especially the spooky world). Others had too much ground to cover in between the action. While I explored many nooks and crannies for those hidden chests, since I’m not a big completionist or collector, the searching lost its appeal in later levels.
? It was strange to see Luigi whip out a sniper rifle (dubbed “precision” in the game) or Princess Peach wield a shotgun (boomshot). The cognitive dissonance for a Mario fan like myself was a bit shocking at first, but I got used to it.
– Bonus challenges offered some replay value. I could also attempt the game’s battles again to get a better grade. However, as I progressed through the game, my team got stronger and acquired better weapons. This made repeating a challenge trivially easy compared to when I had first tried it.
+ Mario + Rabbids Kingdom Battle never forgot that it was a silly premise in a Rabbid-rules world. Throughout the levels, there were regular “points of interest” where I was encouraged to press a button to watch a Rabbid sleeping on a doghouse like Snoopy or stuffing his friend into a pipe with a plunger. These funny moments broke up the travel time a bit, before I went back to the serious stuff like commanding Yoshi to mow down enemies with a machine gun.
Tips for Playing
- Once you finish a world, dive right back in and do its extra challenges. Replay any battles you want to improve your score on. If you wait until later, you’ll be too overpowered for them to be fun.
- Let the game autofill the skill-tree as you build in experience. This will save you a lot of time. As your roster builds throughout the game, it’s tedious to manage so many characters’ skill-trees simultaneously. You can always reset it and build from scratch if you need a particular skill for your next battle.
Purchase your copy of Mario + Rabbids Kingdom Battle on Nintendo Switch.
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