Mario + Rabbids Kingdom Battle
Mario + Rabbids: Kingdom Battle is the game from E3 2017 that I didn’t know I wanted until I saw it. When I first heard that Nintendo’s Mario and Ubisoft’s Rabbids would be coinhabiting a game world, I assumed it’d be yet another forgettable party game, which would hold gamers’ attention for exactly as long as it took the novelty to wear off.
Mario + Rabbids Kingdom Battle might just be the next best reason to buy a Nintendo Switch. Not only is it one of the most charming strategy games I’ve played, it’s also surprisingly deep. Think of Worms crossed with XCOM, and you're half way there.
Here’s the official word on plot: “The Mushroom Kingdom has been torn apart by a mysterious vortex, transporting the Rabbids into the once-peaceful area, splintering this beloved land. To bring order back to the Kingdom, Mario, Luigi, Princess Peach, and Yoshi team up with Rabbids heroes in a journey through four different worlds.”
Mario and Rabbids meet because, for some reason, the crazy furballs’ world begins merging with the Mushroom Kingdom. While some of them remain their faux-rabbit selves, many of the rabbids seem to have merged or taken on traits of creatures from the mushroom kingdom. That’s why Mario is joined by Mario Rabbid, his half-rabbit doppelganger. There’s also a piranha plant rabbid and, as we saw in Ubisoft’s E3 2017 trailer, a Donkey Kong Rabbid.
The setup for Mario + Rabbids: Kingdom Battle is bizarre, but fundamentally simple. The Rabbids have lost their minds, invaded the Mushroom Kingdom and scattered Mario’s supporting cast. Mario must team up with a ragtag group of unaffected Rabbids (who are mischievous, but not malicious) to rescue his friends and find out how to save the Rabbids from whatever’s causing them to go bad.
The whole game takes place in an isometric perspective, and consists of two main components: exploration and combat. Exploration is closer to the traditional Mario formula. You’ll take control of a robotic Rabbid named Beep-o, who leads Mario and two party members around an open-ended Mushroom Kingdom. There are lots of coins to collect, puzzles to solve and hidden treasures to find. Lots of Mario mainstays are present, such as collecting red coins in a limited period of time – although surprisingly, Mario and co. can’t jump anywhere.
The meatier part of the game is in its combat. When Mario and his party encounter enemies, Beep-o takes a backseat, and players can control the combatants directly. You need three characters in your party at any given time, but you can choose from a wide variety of Mario mainstays and Rabbids impersonating them. Each character has slightly different abilities; for example, in my session, Mario could attack enemies when they moved past his line of sight; a Luigi-Rabbid could protect himself from powerful attacks; a Princess Peach-Rabbid could heal the party.
Two worlds collide in Mario + Rabbids: Kingdom Battle! The Mushroom Kingdom has been torn apart by a mysterious vortex, transporting the Rabbids into the once-peaceful area, splintering this beloved land. To bring order back to the Kingdom, Mario, Luigi, Princess Peach, and Yoshi team up with Rabbids heroes in a journey through four different worlds.
Join these eight heroes to explore a new world twisted by the mischievous Rabbids, filled with secrets and nods to classic Mario games! Outwit unpredictable enemies in dynamic turn-based combat and co-op challenges, and solve puzzles along the way. Discover a feel-good and modern combat adventure designed exclusively for the Nintendo Switch system, playable anywhere, anytime, with anyone.
But roaming in 3D platform-game style is far from the point of Kingdom Battle. It's more on rails than that, the goal always to pass through the exploration sections and reach battle phases, in which various opposing Rabbids and other nasties team up against Mario and your gang. It's a good job exploration isn't prolific as it doesn't run very well: the animation is choppy and the frame-rate not right; cutscenes are also noticeably compressed with lots of artefacts which detract from the overall quality that's possible from the Switch.
Kingdom Battle is a series of tactical encounters split up by an exploration element that tasks you to hunt for coins, pick up weapons and other goodies to kit out your squad. It’s pretty, full of puzzles and familiar characters from the Mario universe.
Peach’s castle, meanwhile, acts as the game’s home base, an ever-changing HQ where you will often return and modify who’s going into battle next. But it’s once you get to the arenas themselves, that’s that the fun really starts.
The encounters see your crew facing up against any number of enemy Rabbids and other, more powerful, non-Rabbid characters. The bunnies are placed onto the map at the start of the game, and whatever your mission objective, they’ll run around and cause huge damage if you’re not careful. The game is turn-based, which means each team completes their moves at the same time before letting their opponent begin. That may sound obvious, but it’s crucial that you think one or two moves ahead when choosing what to do because a character that's been flanked is at real risk of being knocked out.
Each character’s turn consists of three actions: Movement, attack and technique. Without going into excessive detail, even these three actions require a lot of thought about which order you do them in, as each character has different advantages and skills, such as being able to move further, area-effect healing or the chance to inflict fire damage on an enemy.
The game’s story plays out in classic RPG fashion. In our demo, the team of three heroes — Mario, plus two others — traversed a fairly linear mushroom kingdom, stopping to examine the chaos and converse with confused rabbids along the way.
The out-of-combat sections, which Ubisoft described as the “exploration phase,” also features some light, Mario-themed puzzle solving. We encountered a New Super Mario Bros.-esque “red coin” puzzle, where the party had to navigate a maze and collect 8 red coins within a short time. Later, after completing a switch puzzle, we found a blue cannon that shot us to another timed platforming puzzle. In both cases, completing the puzzle unlocked a chest, which contained a more powerful weapon for our team.
If you’ve played a turn-based tactical game, you already know how combat works. You equip Mario and his party with various long-range weapons, then position them on a battlefield to do battle with small armies of foes. You can hide behind cover, blow up explosive boxes, plow into enemies for extra damage or leap off of allies’ backs to increase your movement range. Different weapons can stun enemies, push them back or even steal health. Considering the game’s cartoony, kid-friendly aesthetic, it has the potential to become surprisingly deep.
Another thing that surprised me was that the game is no pushover. An early boss fight against a Piranha Plant Rabbid left my characters scattered across the map and taking more damage than they could reasonably absorb. Only after restarting the battle did I learn to take my time, eliminate enemies methodically, and make full use of cover and positioning. I never thought I’d have to play a Rabbids game with a slow, methodical eye, and yet here we are.
The levels themselves are mind-bending as well. Not only are they split onto multiple levels (relative height affects weapon accuracy), but they’re littered with cover, some of which explodes of they’re shot, causing massive damage. They’re not linear, either: classic Mario pipes let you flank enemies by transporting you to another part of the battlefield without consuming movement points. They work both ways, though, and the AI will spring surprises if you’re not careful.
In my third battle, up against a deadly Rabbid-controlled Piranha Plant, I came very close to losing all of my characters; both Rabbid Peach and Rabbid Luigi were knocked out in the fight, and only some rather fortuitous gunfire from Mario saved the day. It was genuinely intense, and you’ll need to be on your A-game to get through these levels unscathed.
Early impressions
Kingdom Battle is charming, challenging and funny. Throw in deep, tactical battles, weapon upgrades, unique character skills, even more complex enemies and a (hopefully) long campaign, this is a sure-fire Nintendo Switch hit. The only questions that remain is whether the game can keep the variety up as it wears on.
Mario + Rabbids: Kingdom Battle was easily my biggest surprise of E3 – even counting the unexpected announcement of Beyond Good and Evil 2. The game looks great and is a ton of fun to play, but more than that, it’s a concept that came out of nowhere and lets Mario and the Rabbids do something they’ve never done before. The game will be out in August for the Nintendo Switch.
Various blocks and pipes are present on the battle ground to use to your advantage: whether for defence from opposition, or to whisk yourself away to farther-away points where the opposition can't engage you.
The control mechanics take a little getting used to, but it's soon apparent that dash attacks - used to knock enemies out - are critical when used in combination with shooting attacks. In our demo we also witnessed a shield which was only available to one player of the team every three moves, and we expect there will be an array of additional tools at your disposal as the game progresses.
With each battle the game escalates from a simple premise to something increasingly complex. Using available moves in the right order, avoiding certain enemies - there's a giant Chomp Chain in one battle, which will attack whoever/whatever is nearest to it each turn - will become critical to winning.
We also experienced weapon upgrades, opened by progressing through battles, but only available to purchase by collecting sufficient coins from throughout the exploration sections of the game (i.e. not withing battles).
If you're after a new Mario or Rabbids game then Battle Kingdom is a cute and compelling game. It's not a platformer by the conventional means, so you'll absolutely need to be a tactical turn-based battle game fan to give it the time of day. If, however, turn-based is right up your street then Mario + Rabbids is a perfectly good fun... although it's not a Mario game as you may expect it.
While many role-playing are focused on story and character development, the main appeal of Mario + Rabbids Kingdom Battle will be its combat. The turn-based strategic battles take place on arena-esque grids sprinkled with columns and walls to use as cover. Where the XCOM series masked its cover points with buildings, trees, and benches, Mario’s battlegrounds look more like Nintendo-themed paintball fields.
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