Mario + Rabbids Kingdom Battle review: Dare you to move

Mario + Rabbids Kingdom Battle is a bizarrely brilliant and occasionally brutal strategy game that hopefully is the start of a promising franchise

Developers: Ubisoft Paris, Ubisoft Milan
Publisher: Ubisoft
Platform: Nintendo Switch
Release Date: August 29, 2017

Mario and Rabbids together? Surely that must be some dumb party game we can just pretend doesn’t exist, right? I’m sure that’s the thought nearly everybody had when we heard of this bizarre crossover. Rabbids got their start on the Wii, and despite some friction during the Wii U years, Ubisoft and Nintendo have had a fairly amicable relationship. But still, nobody could’ve predicted any kind of joint venture between the two would result in a turn-based tactical strategy game titled Mario + Rabbids Kingdom Battle.

The story, inconsequential as it is, has the chaos-loving Rabbids traveling through time and space in a laundry machine. One of their adventures leads them to the room of an enterprising young scientist who has created a device that magically blends objects together. Experimenting with said device somehow has them winding up in the Mushroom Kingdom, where the device itself has gotten out of control and caused all kinds of weird stuff to happen. Mario, of course, wants to try and stop it and he’s aided by friendly Rabbids as they fight some not so friendly Rabbids along their way to retrieve the device, which itself has merged with a Rabbid.

It’s all kind of a goofy explanation as to why the Rabbids are in the Mushroom Kingdom to begin with. You could have just as easily had them hop out a pipe with the same effect. Granted, the story isn’t the highest priority in most Mario titles, but when he ventures into the RPG genre in games such as the Mario & Luigi and Paper Mario series, the storytelling is pretty top notch (and funny to boot).

There were a few times when I found some out right very funny moments, especially with your robot buddy Beepo. He is constantly exasperated with not just the Rabbids, but the Toads as well, who you have to escort multiple times in the game. Much of the attempted humor comes from The Rabbids themselves and while it’s not so bad as to be offensive, it’s all very meh. Lots of selfie jokes, burp jokes, screaming for no reason except it’s supposed to be funny, etc. None of this was so bad to turn me off the game, but your mileage on Rabbids and their humor may vary.

The fact that Mario + Rabbids Kingdom Battle stars Mario, his friends, and the Rabbids, and features humor more aimed at a younger audience, might lead you to believe that you’re playing baby’s first X-Com with a much easier take on turn-based strategy. Even the first world, which does a pretty good job of easing you into the basic mechanics and how skill trees work, suggests that this will indeed be an easy ride.

But by the second world, things kick into gear, and enemies have access to, and effectively use, many of the same moves and techniques you do. It leads to battles where you have to think several steps ahead because if you don’t, you will get pulverized. Not to say it’s on the same level as X-Com; it’s easier than that with only three percentages to hit (100, 50 and 0, where 50 often seems more generous than it should be). However, you still need to think about every move you make.

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It’s with combat movement where Mario + Rabbids Battle Kingdom makes itself stand out from the rest of the turn-based strategy genre. Movement and placement of your field units is important in any game of this type but in Mario + Rabbids Battle Kingdom, it’s more the key to staying alive and victory than ever before. Your characters can slide-tackle enemies and affect them with status ailments in the process. Jump off other team members to attack, heal, or simply move across the field to the best spot.

Many of the stages involve trying to get at least one party member (or escorting an NPC) to an end zone area while trying to stay alive, so knowing how best to move is of the utmost importance. Between that and various field effects, your party members and enemies can also perform overwatch-style moves that pelt units if they move in your field of vision. Mario + Rabbids Kingdom Battle offers a surprisingly deep strategic title where you can enjoy every victory because odds are you really earned it.

Mario + Rabbids Kingdom Battle offers a surprisingly deep strategic title where you can enjoy every victory because odds are you really earned it.

This comes into play with boss encounters, as well. Each boss isn’t simply one you must hit until the HP reaches zero. There is a puzzle with each boss to make them vulnerable and while none are extremely hard to figure out, they are creative and add another layer of strategy to battle.

In-between battles, you’ll mostly run along a very fixed path which has the occasionally hidden goodies off to the side for you to discover through various abilities you earn throughout the game. You’ll also do switch puzzles; lots of switch puzzles. These aren’t complex, mostly a little tedious and frankly just make you want to get to the best part (actual battles) all the more.

I do have some slight issues with the character setup in Mario + Rabbids Kingdom Battle, however. One has to do with the rate of characters added to your party. The story only has four worlds, and a couple of your final party additions don’t even happen until the final one. This seems like way too late in the game to be adding new characters to the party; I don’t have much urge to swap these new characters in when I have a team that I feel has been working most of the time and am near the end of the game.

…I didn’t feel compelled to beat every optional challenge or find every treasure.

There are also arbitrary restrictions on the makeup of your party. Mario must always be on the team, and you can’t have an all Mushroom Kingdom team; at least one member of your three-person team must be a Rabbid. Mario is a great party member, and the Rabbids all have pretty useful abilities (my personal favorite being Rabbid Luigi with his vampire slide), but it limits the possible combinations for no discernable reason.

While I found my time with Mario + Rabbids Battle Kingdom incredibly fun, it’s also a very short experience. There is some added value with optional challenges and the opportunity to replay stages for a better score along with a co-op mode, but the main story clocks in at under 20 hours. That is incredibly short for a game of this type and frankly, while I had fun, I didn’t feel compelled to beat every optional challenge or find every treasure. It’s there for the completionists that want it, but I would’ve preferred a few more story chapters to go through.

Mario + Rabbids Kingdom Battle isn’t the deepest turn-based strategy game on the Nintendo Switch, but it has a lot of unique quirks that work in its favor and is way deeper than you’d ever first guess. Hopefully, a sequel will take this ball of an idea and run with it but for now, Mario + Rabbids offers a pretty good several days worth of turn-based strategy fun on the go, and that probably makes it worth your time to check out.

A copy of this game was provided to App Trigger for the purpose of this review. All scores are ranked out of 10, with .5 increments. Click here to learn more about our Review Policy.