Me: 'Mario + Rabbids' Needs a Hard Mode! (Narrator Voice: It Doesn't)

Ever do that thing with a controller, where you're super frustrated and want to express that frustration, but instead of yelling, you squeeze the controller really hard until you realize how expensive controllers are these days, and quietly swear to yourself? I did that with a Switch because of this:

I've been in no rush to finish Mario & Rabbids: Kingdom Battle; this was no reason to end the charming, surprisingly adept strategy game sooner than was needed. This was fueled, in part, by how fast I was pushing through the game's battles. Granted, every once and awhile, I'd run into a roadblock, but by and large, Kingdom Battle wasn't putting up a serious fight, outside of the game's difficult (and optional) challenge missions. Then, I hit world four. God.

Kingdom Battle is divided into four worlds, and each world is made up of nine chapters, including a secret, super hard chapter that can only be found after you've cleared the world. If you're familiar with games like Fire Emblem and XCOM, the first two worlds shouldn't put up much of a fight, while the third, filled with pumpkins and spirits, finally introduces the kinds of nasty tricks likely to give even a veteran strategy player pause. (Especially anyone who's trying to finish the game with only "perfect" ratings, which I promptly gave up in world three.)

And while ghosts who could warp your characters across the map a whim were, indeed, a frustrating delight, they've proved nothing, compared to the gauntlet that is the final world.

Lemme set up the monstrosity Kingdom Battle put in front of me this week.

One of the more common mission variants is being asked to sprint from one end of the map to the other, and victory comes merely by getting a single character (one!) into a specific area. Complicating matters, of course, is how the game continues to spawn enemies into the map, so even if you decide to play it safe, eventually the enemies will overwhelm you or, at the very least, prevent you from a better rating. Your best bet is to move forward with urgency.

The way Kingdom Battle handles health is two-fold. You can find mushrooms hidden along the path between battles, but there aren't many of them, and they don't completely heal you. (Mario, the only character required to be in every fight, can upgrade how much it heals him.) Thus, as the game's difficulty ratchets up, it presents you with a tough option: yes, you can go into the first fight of a new chapter with your best team, but if you come out bruised, they aren't going to be much use in the next one. (Health completely refills between chapters.)

This never became much of an issue prior to world four. In world four, it very much was, and I'd accidentally used my best movement characters, the ones capable of getting across the map quickly, in the previous battle. I was now forced into less capable, second-tier fighters. I didn't have the energy to try that one again.

In the previous fight, I'd barely escaped alive, thanks to a map filled with the game's toughest enemies. One of the trickier foes to deal with are huge rabbids stumbling around with slabs of rock. They can only move a few spaces, but if you attack them, they get a free movement turn, which means firing on them requires giving yourself enough space to avoid being hit; if they connect, you're going to get wrecked. The ones on this map are harder, healthier variants of an already hard enemy, and the map starts you in a place where you're surrounded by them.

(Here's a look at the battles I'm talking about, courtesy of YouTube creator kwingletsplays.)

Of course, that wasn't enough for Kingdom Battle. Now, it had to flip the script.

The enemies on the second and final map of chapter 4-2 aren't tough, but their lack of health is easily made up by the sheer numbers pre-spawned into the mission. The moment you find time to clear them out, chances are another crop of them are beginning to head into battle, which means your objective becomes a tense balance of two steps forward, one step back.

On two different attempts, I'd smuggled a character to the end of the map, a mere one square away from being able to declare victory, but in each instance, a brutal critical attack—one that stopped me from moving, another that bounced me off the map—stopped me short. Since the other characters were too far away, meant to provide cover and fire for the character sneaking to the exit, it was a lost cause.

On my third try, the situation was eerily similar. Despite things swinging my way early, with the map nearly cleared of enemies and a path to the exit in sight, I needed one last turn to actually pull it off. Unfortunately, it managed to all go wrong, leaving my Rabbid Luigi with close to little health. And though he was a single square away from putting this away, one enemy had set up a reaction shot, meaning they'd be able to fire if Rabbid Luigi started to move. (In Kingdom Battle, reaction shots never miss. They're always guaranteed to land damage.) For whatever reason, I decided to move Rabbid Luigi anyway. The reaction shot kicked into gear, a critical attack landed, and Rabbid Luigi bounced several squares away.

However.

Rabbid Luigi ended up bouncing into the victory area. I couldn't help but chuckle morbidly at Rabbid Luigi's death taking place in the same spot that would have reversed his fortunes, but prepared to set the Switch down and take a break for the night. Instead, the game roared to life, declaring the round over— in my favor.

Did it feel like cheating? Yes. Did I give a shit? No. Did the creative director behind Kingdom Battle drag me on Twitter for suggesting a hard mode? Yes.

I'm dreading the next chapter, and no, Kingdom Battle does not need a hard mode.

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