This game has interested me for a while, but I just wasn't really buying new games much last year. It's taken me a while to really get to it, but I'm damn happy I did! This is a brilliant SRPG and is probably now my favorite in the genre. The writing, music, gameplay, design; everything is just so fantastically woven together for a fantastic whole. For the record, I completed every level and challenge, getting gold on nearly every level and never trying easy mode (also was never able to try out the co-op stages).
The conceit is certainly an odd one: Rabbids get meshed into the Mario universe and the ensuing mayhem needs to be cleaned up by a team of Mario-themed Rabbids and their Mario gang counterparts in a modern X-com-style gunplay bonanza. That said, this game had me giggling to myself all the time with how funny it makes the Rabbids in this context. As someone who never really cared for them in the past, this was a very pleasant surprise :)
The mechanics are really unlike any other SRPG I've played, but they allow for a lot of really clever stuff. Like an X-com, it has both full and partial cover your character can hop into, but the percentages are absolute. In full cover, you cannot be hit from behind it, while partial cover is a 50/50 chance, and no cover is a 100% hit. Of the 8 characters, each has a combination of abilities that makes then well suited for different play styles with an according skill tree you can use to upgrade or alter abilities in addition to new weapons you can find and buy. But even though I played through the game mostly never deviating from my team of Mario, Luigi, and one other (who eventually was permanently Rabbid Yoshi), I never felt cornered into a mission that felt like it required a certain character's ability set to complete it, even for the gold.
Each member of your 3-man team can do 3 moves a turn in their main fire (of which they have a standard gun which they can fire any time as well as an AOE-focused sub-weapon with a cooldown), movement (which can be used to both slide-dash enemies for an extra bit of damage as well as to team-jump on a team mate to get across the map), and a buff/debuff which both have cooldowns (such as drawing in or pushing away enemies, raising your team's power, or having that character go on overwatch (i.e. they fire when an enemy enters their line of sight) to name but a few). To add to this, while there is a movement allowance, they can move and do any number of things within that range. For example, if you want to dash-attack 3 enemies (if that player has that upgrade) all in opposite directions, then go a 4th direction to launch a team jump, that's totally okay. Given that many enemies have these same capabilities, it makes for a really tense atmosphere.
The biggest problems the game has are in player information and quality of life departments. A Fire Emblem-style toggle to show the maximum attack range of enemies would be REALLY nice compared to the existing system of hovering over one to see that individual enemy's maximum attack or movement range /from their current location/. Add on top of that the fact that where exactly tiles on the game-grid are is pretty difficult to suss out, and it's an immense chore, often totally impossible, to tell if you're going to be safe in a bit of cover you're about to move into.
Another big problem is the lack of an undo-button for movement. While the game does tell you if you have line of sight against enemies to the tile you're about to move to, for Luigi and Rabbid Peach's chasing, explosive sentry-bot (imo, the best weapon in the game), it doesn't. This leads to glass cannon Luigi often getting into places you think he can wipe out an enemy group from when in fact they are out of range of the sentry. This combined with how there is no movement confirmation can lead you often into mis-clicking the space next to where you wanted to go, placing you right in a line of fire. An undo-button would've been a god-send for this game, or at least the option for one. This said, these are but minor complaints on an otherwise fantastic game. With the addition of the easy mode, the stated problems won't be an issue for someone unless they're trying to complete EVERYTHING on the standard difficulty while trying for a gold-rank (as I did).
Verdict: Highly recommended. I'm not usually a fan of SRPG's, but this one is freaking brilliant. The small 3-man teams combined with the simple level-up trees and weapon upgrades make it very accessible to get into, but the very clever combat system makes it an easy-to-learn but tough-to-master game system that had me legitimately upset when the whole game was said and done. I basically never go back to games for DLC's, but when the new Donkey Kong-based story DLC comes out in a few months for this, I very well likely will come back to this fantastical adventure :D
The conceit is certainly an odd one: Rabbids get meshed into the Mario universe and the ensuing mayhem needs to be cleaned up by a team of Mario-themed Rabbids and their Mario gang counterparts in a modern X-com-style gunplay bonanza. That said, this game had me giggling to myself all the time with how funny it makes the Rabbids in this context. As someone who never really cared for them in the past, this was a very pleasant surprise :)
The mechanics are really unlike any other SRPG I've played, but they allow for a lot of really clever stuff. Like an X-com, it has both full and partial cover your character can hop into, but the percentages are absolute. In full cover, you cannot be hit from behind it, while partial cover is a 50/50 chance, and no cover is a 100% hit. Of the 8 characters, each has a combination of abilities that makes then well suited for different play styles with an according skill tree you can use to upgrade or alter abilities in addition to new weapons you can find and buy. But even though I played through the game mostly never deviating from my team of Mario, Luigi, and one other (who eventually was permanently Rabbid Yoshi), I never felt cornered into a mission that felt like it required a certain character's ability set to complete it, even for the gold.
Each member of your 3-man team can do 3 moves a turn in their main fire (of which they have a standard gun which they can fire any time as well as an AOE-focused sub-weapon with a cooldown), movement (which can be used to both slide-dash enemies for an extra bit of damage as well as to team-jump on a team mate to get across the map), and a buff/debuff which both have cooldowns (such as drawing in or pushing away enemies, raising your team's power, or having that character go on overwatch (i.e. they fire when an enemy enters their line of sight) to name but a few). To add to this, while there is a movement allowance, they can move and do any number of things within that range. For example, if you want to dash-attack 3 enemies (if that player has that upgrade) all in opposite directions, then go a 4th direction to launch a team jump, that's totally okay. Given that many enemies have these same capabilities, it makes for a really tense atmosphere.
The biggest problems the game has are in player information and quality of life departments. A Fire Emblem-style toggle to show the maximum attack range of enemies would be REALLY nice compared to the existing system of hovering over one to see that individual enemy's maximum attack or movement range /from their current location/. Add on top of that the fact that where exactly tiles on the game-grid are is pretty difficult to suss out, and it's an immense chore, often totally impossible, to tell if you're going to be safe in a bit of cover you're about to move into.
Another big problem is the lack of an undo-button for movement. While the game does tell you if you have line of sight against enemies to the tile you're about to move to, for Luigi and Rabbid Peach's chasing, explosive sentry-bot (imo, the best weapon in the game), it doesn't. This leads to glass cannon Luigi often getting into places you think he can wipe out an enemy group from when in fact they are out of range of the sentry. This combined with how there is no movement confirmation can lead you often into mis-clicking the space next to where you wanted to go, placing you right in a line of fire. An undo-button would've been a god-send for this game, or at least the option for one. This said, these are but minor complaints on an otherwise fantastic game. With the addition of the easy mode, the stated problems won't be an issue for someone unless they're trying to complete EVERYTHING on the standard difficulty while trying for a gold-rank (as I did).
Verdict: Highly recommended. I'm not usually a fan of SRPG's, but this one is freaking brilliant. The small 3-man teams combined with the simple level-up trees and weapon upgrades make it very accessible to get into, but the very clever combat system makes it an easy-to-learn but tough-to-master game system that had me legitimately upset when the whole game was said and done. I basically never go back to games for DLC's, but when the new Donkey Kong-based story DLC comes out in a few months for this, I very well likely will come back to this fantastical adventure :D