Rating of
4.5/5
= BWAAAAH-some
Nelson Schneider - wrote on 02/03/18
Nintendo has a long, yet incredibly sparse history of partnering with third-parties to release spin-off games in Nintendo IPs. Perhaps the earliest and most well-known success that came out of these partnerships was “Super Mario RPG: Legend of the Seven Stars,” which was the result of Nintendo collaborating with the Golden Age RPG giant, Squaresoft, to bring the ‘Super Mario’ universe to life in ways it had never been before. The formula proved simple enough to copy, so when Squaresoft left for Sony’s greener pastures in the 5th Generation, Nintendo was able to produce both the ‘Mario & Luigi’ and ‘Paper Mario’ RPG franchises on their own. Later, Nintendo partnered with Capcom to produce the Game Boy Color “Oracle of Ages/Seasons” games in the ‘Legend of Zelda’ franchise, and still later partnered with Tecmo-Koei to bring something vaguely ‘Zelda’-like to the WiiU that wasn’t a remaster of a Gamecube title with “Hyrule Warriors.”
The most recent collaboration between Nintendo and another company involves not a beloved titan of the industry such as Golden Age Squaresoft or Capcom, nor does it involve a doggedly persistent producer of mediocrity such as Tecmo-Koei. Instead, Nintendo’s latest collaborative game is a Tactical RPG made by Ubisoft, one of the most reviled hives of scum and villainy among the modern “AAA” Western third-parties – and also a company not well-known for making TRPGs! The awkwardly titled “Mario + Rabbids: Kingdom Battle” (“Kingdom Battle”) is the result of this collaboration with Ubisoft, merging the rich ‘Super Mario’ IP with the decidedly more shallow ‘Rabbids’ IP, which Ubisoft created specifically for the Wii when it appeared that Casual Party Games were going to be the new gold rush.
Ubisoft has a way of surprising me, however, as just when I think they’re nothing but a French version of EA, they manage to come up with some smaller-budget title, like “Rayman Legends” or “Child of Light,” that proves they actually are capable of producing games with heart and soul when they aren’t busy stuffing their moneyhat full of profits from a ‘Tom Clancy’ or ‘Assassin’s Creed’ release or attempting to finagle the most deplorable modern monetization methods into their games. “Kingdom Battle” is one of those surprising Ubisoft games that makes me stand back in dumbstruck awe, wondering just how many more great things could come forth from Ubisoft’s gates if they simply gave up on being evil.
Presentation
Presentation is definitely “Kingdom Battle’s” weak point. Whereas other Switch games look clean and crisp, “Kingdom Battle” has a slight blurriness that makes the entire game look a bit fuzzy and over-aliased. Granted, there aren’t any visible jaggies, but perhaps the smoothing went a little too far. For visual styling, Ubisoft seems to have borrowed a bunch of character models and other assets from Nintendo’s own development teams. Mario and co., plus the variety of Mushroom Kingdom stock assets look and feel very authentic, while the stylized Rabbids (white rabbits who appear to have some form of mental retardation and amblyopia) and their crazy inventions feel both jarringly out-of-place and right at home amongst the Nintendo mainstays. I must point out, though, that the ‘Mario’ cast all look very simple and plasticky, without any nice textural details on their hair or clothing. After seeing actual hair texture on Mario’s signature mustache and denim texture on his overalls in “Super Mario Odyssey,” it’s hard to go back to the simpler-looking character models used in “Kingdom Battle.”
Audio-wise, “Kingdom Battle” is quite pleasant and well-done. The soundtrack is an original series of recordings by a philharmonic orchestra (that couldn’t have helped the budget, but real instruments are so much better than synth), featuring both original tunes as well as remixes of classic ‘Mario’ accompaniments. The game is not fully voiced, but Mario and co. have some of their signature quips (by Charles Martinet, of course, and most likely recycled from Nintendo’s collection of odds and ends), while the Rabbids themselves are rather fond of shouting, “BWAAAAH!” at any given opportunity. Perhaps the biggest, and most pleasant surprise hidden in “Kingdom Battle’s” audio is a boss fight that takes place in an opera house, featuring an original vocal accompaniment which mostly makes fun of Mario and his idiosyncracies.
Technically, “Kingdom Battle” is fairly solid for an Ubisoft game. Note: FOR AN UBISOFT GAME. Thankfully, the unpatched version that comes on the physical game cards doesn’t install anything to the Switch’s internal memory. However, the game is prone to crashing (mine crashed to the Switch system menu 4 times during my playthrough), and characters are liable to fall into the floor and get stuck while navigating the areas between battlefields (this also happened to me 4 times). The only solution to characters falling into the floor is to teleport back to the world selection hub, then returning to the world where the glitch occurred. Thankfully, “Kingdom Battle” is good about auto saving, so running into an Ubisoft glitch isn’t the end of the world and typically results in zero lost progress.
Story
“Kingdom Battle’s” story is a bit on the disjointed side. During the pre-rendered opening cinematic, we are presented with a girl genius who is working on some sort of VR-helmet-looking device (whilst humming the ‘Super Mario Bros.’ theme to herself) called the ‘Super-Merge,’ which will allow people to combine two disparate things to get something new. Helping her in this task is a virtual digital assistant named Beep-0, who looks like a Roomba vacuum. As the un-named girl leaves her workshop –which presumably exists in the real world – for the evening, the peace and tranquility of the night are shattered by a group of Rabbids – the afore-mentioned mentally retarded white rabbits – teleporting into the middle of her workshop in… a time machine made out of a clothes dryer.
The Rabbids then proceed to do what Rabbids do best: Create chaos and destroy things. One of the Rabbids starts to play with the Super-Merge helmet, accidentally overloading it and merging the girl inventor’s collection of ‘Super Mario’ paraphernalia with the Rabbids’ time machine.
The scene then shifts to the Mushroom Kingdom, where a gigantic digital glitch has appeared in the sky, hemorrhaging mutated Rabbids, massively oversized bits and bobs from the real world, and generalized chaos. The Rabbid wearing the Super-Merge accidentally merges the device to his own face, causing it to misfire and create abominations every time he gets scared. Beep-0, now a physical Roomba in the Mushroom Kingdom, rallies the forces of goodness in an attempt to put things back in order.
In the chaos, Mario and his friends have become separated, but the misfiring Super-Merge inadvertently provides the heroic plumber and Beep-0 with additional manpower in the form of dissociative identity Rabbids who think they are various heroes from the Mushroom Kingdom.
Before long, Bowser Jr. gets in on the action. Seeing just how powerful and destructive the Super-Merge is, he decides to befriend the Rabbid with the helmet merged to his head, naming him ‘Spawny’ and setting up an elaborate plan to crush Mario and co. in order to impress his Daddy, who is on vacation (I guess being snubbed at the altar by your kidnapped bride is exhausting).
Aside from the disjointed and confusing introduction of the Super-Merge, the invasion of the Rabbids and the chaos they bring with them is a decent plot device as far as ‘Mario’ games are concerned. A lesser villain trying to take advantage of the situation to impress the main villain of the series also works well as a way to push the narrative, while providing an antagonist. The Rabbids themselves almost seem like the Tinker Gnomes from the older editions of Dungeons & Dragons in that they are somehow completely insane and idiotic, yet capable of building crazy inventions that inexplicably work, despite their impracticality and implausibility.
In general, though, “Kingdom Battle” is fairly narrative light. While cutscenes drive the entire plot, there really aren’t a lot of them, proportionally. The cutscenes do a great job of pushing the player’s ragtag team through each of the game’s four worlds and their associated story threads. Beside the cutscenes, the game is also crammed full of silly jokes and puns, be they in the weapon descriptions or as unrelated visual jokes that dot the path through the game’s narrative. Overall, I would estimate “Kingdom Battle” to last roughly 30-40 hours, which is a nice length of time for a game that is completely devoid of unnecessary padding.
Gameplay
One of the bigger flaws that has haunted the TRPG sub-genre since it came into being is its grindy nature. Some TRPG franchises, such as ‘Disgaea,’ have fully embraced this grind, wallowing in the supposed act of giving their games ‘value for the dollar,’ while really burdening players with hideous amounts of padding via a laborious, repetitious build-up of individual characters, often shackled lock-step to a painfully outdated form of player punishment in the form of permanent death for individual units/characters that have had so much player time and effort invested into them. I am very pleased to report that “Kingdom Battle” casts aside all of those outmoded and tiresome TRPG traditions for a streamlined character development system that not only discourages grinding but makes it impossible, as well as forgiving failure state that encourages players to try, try again.
For those unaware of the defining features of the Tactical Role-Playing Game, the subgenre typically consists of a series of battles in which the player and enemies take turns moving their individual characters/units on a square-based grid. Placement, range, facing, and cover all play an important part in making the battles – which typically comprise the vast, overwhelming majority of the gameplay – feel strategic. “Kingdom Battle” hits all of these notes, with battles that are immaculately balanced, making them neither too easy nor too frustrating.
“Kingdom Battle” allows players to move from the world selection hub at Princess Peach’s castle to one of four worlds, requiring each world to be complete in order before the next becomes available. These worlds are the Ancient Gardens, the Sherbet Desert, the Spooky Trails, and the Lava Pit, each featuring thematically relevant enemies and obstacles. Each world is a linear affair consisting of roughly 10 battles interspersed with environmental puzzles (typically of the block-sliding or button-pressing variety) which the player must solve in order to proceed. The battles play out in typical TRPG fashion, with the player controlling a team of three heroes going up against a wildly variable force of mutated Rabbids of various types. Mario, as the de-facto leader of the team, must always be used in battle, but the player is free to swap-out the other two party slots with new friends as they are recruited as part of the story. Unfortunately, because the game is ‘Mario PLUS Rabbids,’ the team must always include at least one dissociative identity disorder Rabbid, making killer teams such as Mario/Luigi/Peach impossible (though Rabbid Peach is quality substitute for the real thing… but Rabbid Luigi is NOT).
Because the Rabbids are renowned (apparently?) for their crazy inventions, Mario and co. finally have some genuine weaponry at their disposal, employing projectile weapons (i.e., guns) for the first time that I can ever recall in decades of playing this franchise. These guns and other weapons come in a variety of types, with each character utilizing one specific type of main weapon and one specific type of secondary weapon. It’s possible to find new weapons hidden in chests throughout the worlds, as well as unlock them for completing worlds or by tapping specific Amiibos. Once unlocked, the player must spend coins – which are awarded for completing battles and can be picked up all over the place while navigating the worlds between battles – to add them to the character’s arsenal. These weapons include medium-range pistol-like blasters, remote controlled sentry drones that home-in on enemies before exploding, massive melee hammers, long-range sniper-like rifles, exploding rubber duckies called grenaducks, area-of-effect shotguns, rocket launchers, and gatling guns, providing plenty of different options for any given situation. In addition to their main weapon and sub weapon, each character has two special abilities which can’t be used in the same turn and operate on a cooldown.
As mentioned previously, the act of improving characters in “Kingdom Battle” is extremely streamlined, and the only real punishment for a character getting killed during a battle is a reduced coin award at the end. Completing a battle rewards the player with either a “Fair” rating and the minimal amount of coins if they take too long and/or get multiple team members killed, a “Good” rating if they only go over the par turn count or get one team member killed, or a “Perfect” rating for completing the battle under the par number of turns and getting no team members killed. Completing a battle always rewards the same amount of Power Orbs, which happen to be “Kingdom Battle’s” take on experience points. Power Orbs are earned by completing story battles, optional Challenge battles which become available in each world upon defeating the world boss, and hidden in treasure chests throughout the worlds. Obtaining an amount of Power Orbs grants that amount to every character (even retroactively for characters recruited after the Orbs were collected), and it’s possible to redistribute these orbs for free from the character customization menu. Power Orbs are spent on a perk tree system of unlocks that grant characters new abilities and increase the potency of their extant abilities or attributes like health or movement range. Each character’s tree is different, and there aren’t enough Power Orbs in the game to max them out, but there are some very crappy abilities in common in every character’s skill tree that are obviously intended to be ignored. In addition to the Power Orb system, all characters ‘rank-up’ after defeating a world boss, granting them more health and attack power across the board.
In battle, the player is allowed to use all of their characters’ abilities in any order they chose. Characters can move (which includes bodyslam attacks against enemies and boost jumps from allies) use one weapon attack and activate one special ability during each turn, but none of these things need to occur in a specific order, allowing for some creative tactics to maximize damage output each turn. Accuracy of attacks is determined entirely by cover. Unlike the ‘X-COM’ TRPG series, which is infamous for screwing players by causing attacks with a 95% chance of hitting to miss – repeatedly – “Kingdom Battle” simply assumes the characters and enemies are competent, granting a blanket 100% hit chance for all attacks that can be mitigated to 50% by low cover or 0% by high cover (cover can be damaged/destroyed). Critical hits do factor into the game, however, with typically a 10-30% chance of triggering, which applies both extra damage and a super effect that applies some form of negative status to the target for the next turn or moves them against their will. I had a LOT of fun with this battle system, and found myself using the same team for almost the entire game – Mario/Rabbid Peach/Luigi – simply because the Mario Bros. both have the ability to snipe enemies during the enemies’ turn – typically called ‘overwatch’ in tabletop tactics games – that’s too useful to pass-up.
Finally, I’d like to address “Kingdom Battle’s” professed multi-player. It’s not all it’s cracked up to be. The campaign can’t be played co-op, but instead two-player fun, with each player controlling a team of 2 heroes, for a total of 4 in each battle, is restricted to a series of BuddyDome challenge maps. These co-op exclusive maps are rather pointless, as they just rehash the worlds and mechanics of the base game, but provide no tangible reward. I ended up playing these by myself (it’s a turn-based game, so I just swapped between joycons to change which team I was directing), which provided a bit more longevity to the game, but ultimately felt like a let-down as the last thing I did in the world of “Kingdom Battle.”
Overall
“Mario + Rabbids: Kingdom Battle” is a feather in Ubisoft’s cap. Not only did they prove that they’re capable on honoring Nintendo’s religiously-beloved ‘Super Mario’ IP, they proved they’re capable of making a great Tactical RPG that is perfectly balanced, fun to play, and doesn’t suffer from any of the sub-genre’s most persistent pitfalls. While a few Ubisoft bugs and crashes prevent the game from receiving a perfect score, this is one of my favorite TRPGs and another winner in the Switch’s launch window.
Presentation: 4/5
Story: 4/5
Gameplay: 5/5
Overall (not an average): 4.5/5
