Mario + Rabbids Kingdom Battle

Mario + Rabbids Kingdom Battle is a 2017 action-adventure tactical role-playing game developed by Ubisoft Milan and Ubisoft Paris and published by Ubisoft for the Nintendo Switch. The game is a crossover between Nintendo‘s Mario and Ubisoft’s Rabbids franchises. Its story follows Mario, his friends and the Rabbids, who must save the Mushroom Kingdom from the latter’s invading brethren following their mishandling of an avid Mario fan’s powerful invention in their world. A young inventor and avid fan of the Mario franchise has invented a device known as the SupaMerge.

A headset that can merge any two objects into a single entity, with the help of her virtual robot assistant Beep-0; however, the device has an overheating problem that the inventor is trying to rectify. Upon testing it, it successfully merges two items, but overheats again. While the inventor is out of the room, the Rabbids arrive in their Time Washing Machine and begin to cause chaos as they play with her belongings, to Beep-0’s annoyance. One of them dons the SupaMerge and starts merging some of its fellow Rabbids with various items in the room. During this, the Time Washing Machine is then afflicted by the device and it malfunctions, sucking everything in the room into an interdimensional vortex.

A vortex-like anomaly in spacetime appears above the Mushroom Kingdom during the unveiling of a statue of Princess Peach and sucks everyone into it, including Mario and his allies. They and the Rabbids are thrown across the kingdom along with the now-enlarged objects from the room. Beep-0, now a physical entity with Rabbid-like attributes and an ability to speak, discovers that the SupaMerge has become part of the Rabbid wearing it, who uncontrollably transfigures more of its brethren. Beep-0 is nearly hit by the now-enlarged Time Washing Machine, but Mario saves him as it crash-lands near Peach’s castle.

While the recently transfigured Rabbids are hostile due to the SupaMerge’s power now becoming corrupted upon entering the Mario universe, a quartet of some of them akin to Mario and company are not. Aided by a mysterious email contact known only as F.B., who provides them with weapons, abilities and advice, the two groups join forces to put a stop to the chaos. Gameplay follows Mario and a cast of other Mario and Rabbids characters of the player’s choosing, including Luigi, Princess Peach, Yoshi and a quartet of Rabbids akin to the aforementioned Mario characters with exaggerated personalities. They are guided by a small robot named Beep-0. The campaign story mode is split up into four unique locations, or “worlds”, each of which has a linear path to completion.

In each world, some puzzles must be completed for progression, or give weapons and collectibles when solved. When a world is completed, Beep-0 learns a new ability to solve puzzles. Two unique weapons can be unlocked by connecting the console to any one of several Amiibo figurines. If the team comes across territory inhabited by enemy Rabbids, a battle will commence. While the goal of each battle is usually to defeat every enemy on the field, some levels have a fixed objective, such as escorting a Toad to the end of the stage. The level is completed if all enemies are defeated or the fixed objective is satisfied; the player loses when all characters run out of health or fail to meet their goal.

Before a battle, the player can choose to change their current selection of characters and weaponry; three out of eight playable characters can fight in a battle (Mario and at least one Rabbid being required), and each fighter can be equipped with weapons, each one dealing different amounts of damage or causing certain special effects that hinder the opponent. Battles are turn-based, and each character can perform up to three different options: they can move to a new location, with each character having a set distance they can travel; they can use a weapon, and have two choices of attack that vary per player; or they can use a special effect, with each character having different abilities that vary in function. 

If a player moves to a location where they are obscured to the enemy, the enemy’s accuracy changes based on the cover’s effectiveness. Characters also have movement abilities, where they can dash into an enemy to deal damage or be boosted by another character to travel a further distance. Some weapons have special effects; for example, the player can shoot a glob of honey at the enemy to restrict them from moving temporarily, or shoot an ignited bullet to burn an opponent and send them running around in a random direction in panic. Special effects also vary, such as a healing effect that restores some health to other characters, or a hypnosis effect that draws enemies towards the character that used it.