Mario + Rabbids Sparks of Hope DLC 2: The Last Spark Hunter Review (Switch eShop)

To the surprise of pretty much everyone, the original Mario + Rabbids Kingdom Battle became one of the best tactics games on the Nintendo Switch. We loved its tight, puzzle-like missions and vibrant world that somehow presented Ubisoft’s Rabbids as less-than-annoying – even, dare we say, sometimes endearing. The sequel followed suit, impressing critics and fans alike with a handful of great planets to explore, though we preferred the tight gameplay of the first over the creative freedom of Mario + Rabbids Sparks of Hope.

One area where Kingdom Battle excelled was its Donkey Kong Adventure DLC. Completely separate from the campaign, it saw Rabbid Peach teaming up with Donkey and Cranky Kong to take on a Rabbid threat, resplendent with an overwhelming amount of nostalgic Donkey Kong Country references. To say we have high hopes for Sparks of Hope’s DLC is an understatement, and unfortunately, the first major DLC – following the season pass-exclusive update The Tower of Doooom – fails to reach the same heights despite being a fun little addition to the base game.

Titled The Last Spark Hunter, this DLC takes place just before Mario and friends descend on Cursa’s stronghold for the final battle, and adds an extra explorable world called Melody Gardens. Unfortunately, it is completely separate from the main adventure, meaning your builds and loadouts for all nine heroes do not carry over from the base game to the DLC.

It took us a few moments upon starting the DLC to remember how we liked our characters, fiddling about in the skill trees and Spark loadout menus. Fortunately, all Sparks were unlocked from the get-go and our heroes could level past the base game’s cap of 30, so there was progress to be made in Melody Gardens, but it still irked us we had to fiddle about in menus instead of our progress carrying over.

The setup here is exactly the same as the base game’s worlds: A Spark Hunter has descended onto a planet covered in Cursa’s darkmess. Mario and his team of heroes need to defeat the Spark Hunter and clear out the evil goo by taking part in plenty of battles with varying requirements for victory and solving simple puzzles throughout the overworld. There’s a Rabbid Warden to assist and learn about – this time around, it’s the tuning-fork-wielding Allegra – and the evil Spark Hunter Kanya to overcome.

It is, quite literally, more of the same, though it does add five extra Sparks to play around with and a new Golem enemy type, which requires you to dash or stomp them once defeated or else they’ll regenerate. The Golems add quite a bit of nuance to the battles, as you can’t hunker down and expect to come out on top when taking these on.

We found most of the battles quite challenging on the Average difficulty, even failing a couple as we re-learned the optimal strategies for victory. Yes, Luigi’s Steely Stare is still overpowered, and Peach’s Team Barrier goes a long way toward keeping the heroes alive. We enjoyed each and every encounter; much like the base game, the tactics battles here are delightful challenges. The Last Spark Hunter introduces Mecha King Bomb-Omb as a recurring boss, and the fights against this explosive robo-royal stood out as highlights where we barely scraped by using all the tools in our arsenal to achieve satisfying victories.

Melody Gardens itself, however, we found lacking compared to the five worlds from the base game. It's quite beautiful with forests filled with vibrant fauna and crystal blue waters covered in pastel pink algae, but instead of being a sprawling area to explore like Terra Flora or Pristine Peaks, Melody Gardens was instead broken up into smaller, denser sections, including a middle section that required a clunky boat to navigate. This specific area lacked a definitive feature, like a giant mountain, to orient us as we explored its beaches and rocky overhangs, leading to us getting lost and circling about a bit more than we’d like.

Bizarrely, as an area based on melodies, it also has very little in the way of music. Allega whispered in the background about the impending doom of the planet, and a few puzzles required us to play musical fauna, but overall it made for a quiet adventure. Thus, if we were to rank Melody Gardens with the other five worlds, we’d place it somewhere near the bottom.