Remember when Mario had a crossover with the Rabbids and with XCOM gameplay? Really take a moment to let that statement sink in again. And how it got a sequel. And Peach had a shotgun.

So Synthesis comes in with how there's a Rabbid named Spawny who has a device stuck to their head that combines things which leads to Rabbid versions of everything, from the Mario characters having Rabbid versions of themselves as allies to enemies like Pirabbid Plant and Rabbid Kong. Also the whole combining the two franchises with XCOM thing.

I've just completed the main campaign which took at least 25 hours according to the Switch profile, and for the sake of the remaining 3 days, I'll leave the challenges cleanup and DLC Campaign with DK til after the event's over (and after the Next Fest which is the spiritual opposite of the backlog burner). There's a total of 4 worlds with a new character joining at the midpoint of each world along with weapon tiers going up by 1 at the midpoint and end of each world. I'm not really into the base building aspect of XCOM-style games so I appreciate that it's a series of skirmishes with minor exploration and puzzles between the battles. Skill points are granted after each battle and the skill trees for each character are freely refundable so there's no fear of screwing up a build.

Some main gameplay stuff:

• Chance to hit is either 0% against full cover, 50% against partial cover, and 100% against no cover/flanked units. This does a lot to reduce the XCOM salt of 10% shots landing or 95% shots missing.
• There is a lot of mobility which is important since everyone has a free dash attack (with Rabbids getting multiple dash attacks) and flanking/getting flanked is a frequent occurance.
  • Characters get unlimited movement within their tile range which for example, lets them dash attack an enemy on one side before leaping off an ally on the opposite side.
  • Entering a pipe basically gives a smaller movement reset and chaining pipes is entirely possible for high mobility or hit-and-runs.
  • Allies can jump off of each other to extend their range (and cleanse status effects as an upgrade) with the Mario characters getting special jump effects and incentivizing them to stay in range of allies.
• Mario characters have an Overwatch and team buff as their bonus actions while Rabbids get a barrier and enemy manipulation (sans Rabbid Peach who has a team heal instead).
• The player team is 3 characters from the 8 available. Mario is always in the party and there must be at least one Rabbid as well.
• Missions are ranked based on turns taken and if anyone was KO'd. This just provides bonus gold for upgrading everyone's weapons (and the ranking of course). The win objectives basically boil down to either defeating enough/all enemies, reaching the target zone, or escorting Toad/Toadette to the target zone.
• World bosses are generally big which makes them immune to dash attacks and status effects.
• No ammo reloads!

As can be expected for an XCOM style game, bursting down enemies as quickly and efficiently as possible to minimize the enemy action economy and get good ranks is the way to go. This is especially necessary for the Smasher enemies, which move 4 tiles and melee attack whenever they're hit with a weapon, and Buckler enemies, which have an unbreakable shield from the front, a shotgun for AoE, a team buff for guaranteed crits and status effects, and they apply Honey which roots characters in place. Both of these guys are the worst of the common enemies.

Overall yeah, this was nice to have my brain enjoy solving XCOM-style gameplay with a Mario skin. My weird complaints would be how the game doesn't really incentivize swapping around characters which gets worse with the negative of needing to pay up money to upgrade primary and secondary weapons for each new tier; at that point it's smarter to just stick with the main team you like out of the fear of not having enough for future upgrades. My other weird complaint is how the first 2 worlds have specialized cutscenes for the party since it's still small and all but guaranteed who you have. World 3 and on though, it seems like they stopped since the party has expanded too much with too many potential combinations?