[NSW] Mario + Rabbids: Spark Of Hope

[briareos_kerensky]

The second crossover between Mario, Rabbids, and X-Com is upon us, so here's a first play thread.
I have completed the first planet and now making my way through the second. The game plays like the first, and as such this feels more like an expansion to Kingdom Battle rather than a full-fledged sequel.
You get more playable characters from the start and one more joined the crew whilst exploring the first planet, each one having some special attribute: Mario dual-wields guns (man that's hard to write) so he can shoot two targets per turn; Rabbid Peach ignores cover; Luigi is death incarnate as farther is the target, more damage he does; he can go into overwatch to snipe enemies during their turn and one of his upgrades allows shoots to pass through cover; Peach has a cannon-umbrella with both defensive and offensive properties. Don't really know about Rabbit Mario, Rabbid Luigi, or the other character: like the first game I still haven't found why you shouldn't use the first three I mentioned.
The party starts off with onyl two playable members (whom you can switch when you want when outside battles) but it quickly grew up to three, so I'm expecting the fourth slot soonish.
You still get movement options like dashes, team jumps, and air stomps, and maps are still littered with waist-high and full-height covers you have to move across to clear the mission.
New to Sparks Of Hope are the Rabbid Lumas, or Sparks, that give characters passive bonuses (like resistance to burn damage) and active skills (like adding burn damage to attacks).

Levels are now planets you have to explore to clear the Darkmess (actual in-game name) the badguy du jour, Cursa, unleashed upon the universe/solar system. I like that Cursa's designs kinda resembles something out of the Mario RPG titles, and because Bowser is not involved in the story, I hope he'll become playable at some point.
Planets have some light puzzle elements and NPCs will give the party quests to collect planet coins to unlock areas required to progress or areas with extra coins, lore, Sparks, or weapon skins. You'll find enemies too, and colliding with them will start a battle. Unfortunately enemies respawn and getting into a fight with a lower-level enemy while exploring the planet is annoying...I'd wish there was some way to avoid or squash them immediately, like, I don't know...a jump. Luckily you can flee from the battle, but you'll still be subject to loading times.

And Sparks Of Hope loves loading and saving. The game saves every time you enter any menu, and all menus (with the exception of the pause menu) require a bit of loading. The graphics are nice and well defined, with plenty of drawing distance and never a frame drop, but are locked at 30fps and if you are used to Mario platformers controls will feel a bit heavy.
Music is another thing I can't quite get used to: the BGMs are orchestral compositions that fit the genre, but are nowhere near anything you'd expect from a Mario game...they lack that lightheartedness of a typical Mario score, and at times there's no BGM at all, especially when exploring planets. There are some sound effects from the platformers here and there, and the red coin challenges have the music you'd expect, but this only exhacerbates the fact that you are not listening to a proper Mario soundtrack.

Audio aside, Sparks Of Hope is an OK game. Very similar to the first, so if you played that, you know what to expect from this one.

[briareos_kerensky]

Bowser's playable and he summons explosive mechakoopas and wields a bazooka. The game got 100% better.

[briareos_kerensky]

Game completed. I knew I was close to the end, but not that close...full impressions coming later.

[briareos_kerensky]

Let's start with the technical aspect.
Graphics are bright and colourful, with a constant 30fps framerate, good static resolution (I think it's 720p mobile and 1080 docked, but I'm not quite sure), and quite a lot of detail. Animations are expressive and fun; Rabbids continue to be amusing without being annoiying, and most characters from SMB are given some visual flare unique to this universe...well, with the exception of Mario, who continues to be the straight man. Think Luigi's Mansion or any other SMB game that doesn't revolve around Mario: other characters are always given more personality than Nintendo's main mascot and Sparks Of Hope is no different.

The sound design, on the other hand, doesn't fare as good, mostly because it clearly shows that Sparks Of Hope is more of a Rabbid game with Mario in it, rather than the other way around. There are entire sections of the game with no BGM at all, and battles use orchestral tracks that do fit with the rest and are well executed, but music doesn't feel like Mario music...BGMs are as generic as they could be.
Some characters are fully voiced, the Rabbids (both playable characters and NPCs) have only few spoken lines, and SMB characters get their usual "Mamma mia", "Okey Dokey", and so on. I would prefer the whole cast used the same quips as SMB characters do, I find it's strange to hear full voiceovers in a game with Mario.

The game design itself is a mix of high and lows.
The highs: primary and secondary missions, overall world layouts, the different playable characters, the bosses.
The lows: puzzle design, standard enemies, menu design.

Starting with the lows...
Puzzle design. Puzzles start off easy and never get particularly difficult to figure out, but they become way too long to execute. Let's say you have to deploy a bridge to proceed. The first step is to get near the bridge and grab an item. Place the item on an elevator, go to a ladder to descend, get near the elevator, activate it, grab the item and place where it goes, then go to the ladder to cross the bridge. This is all because you can't use ladders while carrying items and elevators don't work with party members on it. To run you have to hold (or press, depending how you set options) a button, and if you hit an obstacle characters get dizzy for a couple of seconds; running isn't alll that faster than walking, and later puzzles become tedious as you go around the puzzle area to bring items from one end to another.
Standard enemies are divided by element (water, fire, lighting, ooze) and there aren't that many types. Some situations make good use of the few classes available, but it's not particularly hard to deal with the opposition.
Menu design doesn't fully use available buttons, and it's somewhat rigid to navigate. Not to mention the game saves at every getting into/getting out of the menu, and there are slight delays due to things loading in between submenus. The best way I could describe it, is as menus have been though for a mouse and fully adapting them to a pad was kind of secondary concert. It's not as bad as, let' say, Darkest Dungeon, but there are much better menus for this kind of games on console. Not using ZL and ZR for more shortcuts is the biggest downside of the whole menu system, and Sparks Of Hope rather relies on B (back) and A (confirm) to navigate the various entries.

But the highs firmy overweight the lows.
The playable characters and the various Sparks (or Rabbid Lumas) are varied and give plenty of options on how to approach battles. Every character has its place and you build very different teams, though Peach and Luigi are the most useful, with the ability to protect allies from damage and special effects, and snipe enemies across the map, respectively. You can take out Mario out of the party, and the party itself is limited to three playable characters; some missions might add a fourth member, limit characters slots to two, force one or more characters on you, or a combination of the above. This is a nice ay to show players how everyone fights and focus on a small set of characters at a time for skills and Sparks, to avoid menu overload.
Map layout is another highlight. All planets have their own visual theme and often missions feature one or more gimmicks to use...unfortunately you are not told what some of those do until you try them, but they aren't exactly hard to figure out after seeing them. Later maps force you to make good use of dashes and team jumps both to dish out extra damage, and for traversal.
Bosses are always interesting, and add their own gimmicks to tricks previsouly introduced in normal maps. The final confrontation against Cursa is particularly cool, and definitely the most engaging boss battle in the whole game.
The planet layouts never get too large or too small, with enough shortcuts and checkpoints for fast travel. As you clear primary objectives, more and more tasks become available, and their graphical look change. The fourth planet is particularly nice to play, and probably the most "Mario-like" of the whole lot.

Oh yes, I forgot: most enemies are Rabbids, and you don't get many enemies and bosses from SMB: Goombas and Bomb-Ombs are there from the start, you have a couple of Rabbids using Twomphs, and Magikoopas are present towards the late part of the game. Personally, I would have preferred more SMB enemies, or more mixes with Rabbids.

Completing the game allows to go back and explore the rest of the planets. Level cap for party members is 30, and 5 for Sparks, both easily reacheable during normal progression (especially Sparks). Clearing the game does not add any new character, but haven't completed everything, so maybe someone will be unlocked with a 100% completion rate.

To recap:
Playable Bowser makes everything better
Rosalina is much better than Peach or Daisy
Sparks Of Home is a nice game, maybe a bit too similar to its predecessor, but has enough new and good content to warrant at least one playthrough.

[briareos_kerensky]

Some more thoughts after a few time spent trying to 100% the game (but stopped because it got a bit boring).

Each planet has a giant enemy that once defeated drops a golden token to unlock the fourth skill tree for a character. This token cannot be refunded and there are only five of those, so you have to take your pick carefully. This fourth skill focuses on Sparks, and contains some pretty powerful skills (like the chance of getting an action point back when using a Spark's skill), but you are still locked at level 30 with no extra skill points, so you have to sacrfice some other skills.

After unlocking all battles, sidequests, and memories on the first planet I still couldn't 100% it. I think it's due to a sparkly stone spiral found on all planets, but right now I don't what to do it. Maybe that is the very last skill to unlock and requires to clear a particular sidequest on a planet.

[Nu-Eclipse]

Could this be what's stopping you from 100% completion [MENTION=7539]briareos_kerensky[/MENTION]?

https://www.nintendolife.com/news/2022/12/mario-plus-rabbids-sparks-of-hope-receives-its-first-title-update-on-switch

[briareos_kerensky]

Maybe...I've just put the cart away so it'll have to wait a while for me to test it :P Appreciate the various QoL improvements, though.

I still have to complete several sidequests, and there's that obvious sparkly stone spiral I don't know what to do with, so maybe I haven't met the progression bug yet.

[dazza_cole]

Maybe...I've just put the cart away so it'll have to wait a while for me to test it :P Appreciate the various QoL improvements, though.

I still have to complete several sidequests, and there's that obvious sparkly stone spiral I don't know what to do with, so maybe I haven't met the progression bug yet.

The spirals on the ground you just need to spin on, gives coins only.

Did you do the special room/stage a second time? That seems to be the common cause for people being stuck below 100%

[Nu-Eclipse]

Nintendo and Ubisoft have left it hella late, but a demo for Sparks of Hope is now available to download from the Switch eShop.