Hours Played: 33.5 hours
Somehow in 2017, the year the Switch launched filled with games like Breath of the Wild and Odyssey, the first Mario + Rabbids turned out to be one of my favorite games of the year. I even took the rare step of playing and beating all of the DLC content.
I was ravenous for more of the same when the sequel finally came out in 2022 but for some reason I bounced off it within the first 5 hours and failed to come back to it until September 2026. After the initial shock of trying to pick up in the middle of an old save file, I did manage to get back in the groove and mostly enjoy the X-Com + Mario mash up formula on offer. The change from grid-based action to free-range movement is one that works well. The other changes abound in the game mostly do not: there are many pointless battles within the map that added nothing but fluff, all the battles scale with your level regardless, the story is inane and annoying, and the game felt extremely sluggish at 30 FPS (and I am not someone who typically notices frame rate).
There are some really clever fight set ups and the characters felt sufficiently unique even if learning (9) skill sets by the end just felt mind-numbing. I barely played around with Spark setups outside of what I initially selected for each character beyond leveling them up.
I think what felt so fresh and snappy in 2017 just felt a little dated by 2022 and quite dated by 2026 when I finally came back to it.