The player experience outside of combat is overhauled as well. Watch on YouTube Mario + Rabbids Sparks of Hope - the Digital Foundry video review. But Sparks of Hope demands tactical play, even on its default difficulty setting, as enemies can punish you with massive damage if you make a mistake. Kingdom Battle was painfully easy and most of the game's systems could be ignored if you felt so inclined. And that doesn't just come from the mechanical tweaks - the game actually requires some serious strategy at times. In general Sparks of Hope feels much more engaging than the first outing. Other actions, like throwing bombs and executing team jumps, are now fully unmoored from turns as well and require a bit of real-time dexterity to pull off. Critically, you can move a character as much as you like within certain boundaries without using a turn, which makes lining up abilities less stressful.

It's less contemplative, and feels like a more natural fit for a console controller.

Gone are the movement grids, which have been replaced with a fully analogue traversal system. Sparks of Hope radically reworks the first title's combat. It's all about the gameplay enhancements with this one, which are substantial. Gameplay is solid, but it comes at a cost: Mario + Rabbids Sparks of Hope lacks the same level of visual accomplishment as its predecessor. Tech-wise, we're looking at another outing for Ubisoft's Snowdrop game engine, the toolset best-known for powering The Division and its sequel. Now, finally, the sequel is here, promising a substantially expanded scope alongside a reworked, more flexible combat system. It was made by Ubisoft, but had all of the polish you'd expect from a Nintendo first-party title - and arrived just a few months after the Switch debuted. This Switch-exclusive title combined X-COM style tactical gameplay with beautiful graphics and animation. Mario + Rabbids Kingdom Battle was a genuine delight when it launched some five years ago.

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