Several years ago, a bizarre crossover was released, which combined the popular Super Mario Bros franchise with Ubisoft’s Rabbids.  As much as Wikipedia wants to insist that the Rabbids are popular and well-loved, I’ve always heard a different story, and I myself have always found the crazy bunnies to be similar to those yellow Minions that spawned from the Despicable Me movies.  Sure, they can be funny, but they can also be quite annoying.  And yet, when I saw footage for Mario + Rabbids Kingdom Battle, I couldn’t help but admit that the game looked surprisingly fun.  My interest waned, however, and several more years passed, and another entry into what is now apparently a franchise was released, Sparks of Hope.  When I saw that this one came with a demo, I decided it couldn’t hurt to give it a try.

The Mario + Rabbids games feature Mario, Luigi, and Princess Peach, along with their Rabbid counterparts.  How the heck such beings came into existence is apparently due to some SupaMerge device that appeared in the original game.  (So I guess the Rabbids aren’t merely cosplaying as Mario characters as I had assumed.)  Sparks of Hope opens with all of these characters just having a pleasant day at Peach’s castle, with your initial goal being to help Mario find Rabbid Mario’s missing overalls while Rabbid Peach comically skips about two inches behind you.  (Oh no, are the Rabbids starting to grow on me already?)  After you complete this initial task, we are thrust into the story and tutorial, which I will speed through.  Basically, this game introduces Rabbid Lumas (excuse me, I guess they prefer to be called Sparks) and a villain named Cursa, who is corrupting the galaxy with Darkmess (no, I did not misspell that).  After this, the rest of the demo takes place on the first planet, Beacon Beach.

And it is at this point that I’ll get to the gameplay.  For one thing, there is more freedom to explore than I had expected, and this rainy beach offers a decent amount of space in which to run around, collect coins, fight battles, and complete side quests.  One of the most important aspects of the game is the battles, however, which are of the tactical role-playing variety.

So the way these work is you get to swap between two characters (three once you reach Beacon Beach’s boss), each of whom have different weapons and abilities.  You can move within a set radius and can pick two options per turn from among three abilities, using a Spark (for example, one useful Spark can scare enemies away from your position), using your character’s unique power (for example, Rabbid Peach can heal herself and allies within a certain radius), and attack.  My two favorite characters were both of the Peach variety.  Rabbid Peach can shoot rockets over obstacles, while Princess Peach can hit a bunch of enemies at once (as long as they’re fairly close to each other).  Once you choose to shoot at your enemies, however, you can no longer move around the battlefield, so make sure you take cover so that your enemies can’t shoot you back!  Oh, and there are a few other moves that don’t count towards your limited two options.  You can dash into enemies once per turn (like to defeat Goombas) and you can toss one of your teammates to help them to cross an even greater distance.

Mario + Rabbids Sparks of Hope turned out to be much more fun than it has any right to be.  I did not expect the Mario and Rabbids franchises to blend together so well, nor was I sure about Mario and his friends shooting enemies with GUNS, of all things!  Nevertheless, I had a really fun time with this generous 3-hour demo, including the tactical role-playing aspect of the gameplay, which I think was more fun and less confusing than most games of this genre that I’ve attempted in the past.  (I tried the demo for Disgaea 4 a while back, and the battles in that game made very little sense to me.)  And you know what, I didn’t even mind the Rabbids.  They were actually entertaining rather than annoying, with Rabbid Peach being the standout character, partly due to her penchant for taking selfies at inappropriate moments.

Now that I’ve played through the demo for Sparks of Hope, I’m actually rather compelled to give this franchise a chance, though I still must ask one final question: which game should I buy first?  While I hear that Kingdom Battle is more challenging, the way you move about in battles sounds a bit confusing to me.  On the other hand, I also read that Sparks of Hope offers more exploration, which is something I always like.  Hmm, decisions…  Mario + Rabbids Sparks of Hope is available on the Nintendo Switch for $39.99 and takes about 20-44 hours to complete.