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Remember when a Mario + Rabbids game seemed like a rumor too ridiculous to be true? The joke was on us though, when Kingdom Battle came out in 2017 and was a surprise delight in a year already packed with fantastic Switch games. Now Ubisoft is back with another tactical-RPG, Mario + Rabbids: Sparks of Hope, which sends our heroes (and their Rabbid counterparts) across space. Despite some significant changes to the gameplay, Sparks of Hope is another absolutely delightful crossover packed with strategy gameplay options. The game begins at a peaceful gathering at Peach's castle, but our heroes soon learn the dark cosmic entity Cursa is spreading Darkmess tentacles across the galaxy, and only Mario & friends will be able to stop the spreading evil. Along the way they team up with Sparks, Rabbid + Luma hybrids that grant special effects in battle and in exploration, as well as a few new allies. Sparks of Hope has the same silly Rabbid humor as its predecessor, which once again skirts a line between kind of dumb and kind of charming. Yeah they're not the best jokes in the world, but the way they embrace their juvenile silliness does give the game a certain charm. Surprisingly there isn't that much interaction within your party—maybe the developers feel like they got enough of that out of the first game, so this one is much more focused on the new characters, including NPCs you meet. They're still decently charming, though maybe the Rabbids should stick to physical comedy, which usually comes off much better than the written comedy in Sparks of Hope. Although most of the tactical-RPG gameplay is fundamentally the same—along with all the little things that entails, like managing sightlines, dash attacks, status ailments, etc.—Sparks of Hope switches up a number of features from Kingdom Battle. For one, you now have open environments that you can explore instead of relatively set paths. These open areas allow you to tackle side quest battles in any order you want, and you can even engage in replayable small battles just to earn a little extra EXP and gold. And don't worry, since side quests scale to your level you can play them in any order. The environments are also a fair bit bigger than the first game and contain plenty of little things to discover, so it's a lot of fun to just wander around, collecting coins/items and completing side quests. This open format is also reflected in the battle system, which is no longer grid-based and instead allows for full freedom of movement, which opens up your strategic options a bit. The first game limited you to always have a mix of Mushroom Kingdom heroes and Rabbids in your team, but now there's no restriction, and since you start the game with most of the roster available you can get right into mixing and matching party compositions. More importantly, every character can now equip Sparks to grant both active effects and passive buffs, and there's a huge range of possibilities here as you figure out which Sparks complement each character's natural strengths or are most effective against the enemies in a specific battle. Since each character can only perform two actions per turn they won't feel too overpowered, even with good Spark synergy. In a sense, Sparks of Hope feels less structured than its predecessor, in a good way. You have a lot more opportunity for experimentation and playing your own way, which makes it easy to play around with team compositions, Sparks, and different strategies. Maybe you've been sticking with Rabbid Peach for her healing ability, but now you try a level with a more purely offensive team to crush enemies before they can damage you in the first place. Maybe you want to use items to get the most value out of dash attacks. The flipside is that battles in Kingdom Battle almost felt like puzzles since you were encouraged to beat them with a high rating (fewest number of turns, no party member KOs) for more rewards, and it's a little bit of a shame that this sense of perfect planning isn't present here. Still, it's hard to complain about a game giving you more options for approaching battles in your preferred way. Overall, Sparks of Hope grants a wonderful degree of freedom to the player, though perhaps at the expense of challenge. Kingdom Battle was a meticulous game, partly because of those puzzle-like mechanics, but Sparks of Hope gives you so much freedom in how to play that it's actually pretty easy, at least for Kingdom Battle veterans. There's far less punishment for mistakes since you can recover health with both items during battle and by paying a small fee outside of battle (and you'll probably always have plenty of coins). The new characters bring some incredibly powerful abilities, and the returning characters can also become almost over-powered once you've upgraded their skill trees a bit. No rating system means you can even barely crawl across the finish line without any negative repercussions. The good news is that you can adjust the difficulty at any time, though even hard mode doesn't quite feel at the level of the previous game, unless you just hobble yourself by not using Sparks or abilities. Regardless, even if Sparks of Hope generally feels a bit easy for a turn-based strategy game, it's still a blast to build a team with complementary abilities and then execute strategies where everything comes together perfectly in the end. And there are a handful of different battle objectives—defeat all enemies, survive X number of turns, reach the goal, etc.—so there's still some variety in how you have to approach each level. The game does have one minor flaw that is unfortunately all too common: load times. They aren't terribly long in Sparks of Hope, but opening the character menu to change your team or the map to get your bearings is just long enough that it's noticeable and annoying. Such menus really need to be snappy to maintain the flow of a game. Presentation-wise, Sparks of Hope is just as sharp and stylish as its predecessor—moreso even, if only for the more varied environments that see you traveling from planet to planet. The character and enemy design hasn't changed all that much, but the scenery is lovely, which gives you all the more reason to stop the spread of Darkmess tentacles and restore each planet to its former glory. The music is also quite nice, but the voice acting doesn't quite feel like it's on the same level. Beep-O seemingly has the most lines but it's not the most charming of voices, and the less the Rabbids speak the better. Literally—it's just weird to hear Rabbids talk, even if it's limited to short phrases in this game. Sparks of Hope is a good 20–30 hour game, depending on how you tackle side quests. It's hard to pass them up though. Mostly they just mean more battles, including some of the only truly challenging battles like the secret bosses on each planet, though there are also some environmental puzzles that are actually quite fun to tackle. Unfortunately Sparks of Hope doesn't have a co-op mode like the previous game, but there's still plenty of replay value here if you wanted to run through the game again while focusing on using different party compositions. Mario + Rabbids: Sparks of Hope makes some surprising tweaks and adjustments to its predecessor's formula, perhaps ultimately to the benefit of a wider audience. With the move toward less restrictive, more open gameplay options, the challenge ends up reduced. However, that more welcoming sense of difficulty, paired with a wide variety of strategic options with character choices and Sparks, allows for a wealth of approaches to any battle, which is wonderfully rewarding in its own right. Strategy fans will still love the opportunity to craft their perfect battle plans, and anyone that found Kingdom Battle a little too tricky to master should absolutely give this game a try. Rating: 9 out of 10 Sparks

Nintendo site Stoked to see Mario + Rabbids is getting a sequel! The first game remains one of the best surprises on the Switch and probably one of the best third-party games, and it totally deserves a sequel.