Developer: Ubisoft Chengdu, Ubisoft, Ubisoft Shanghai
Publisher: Ubisoft
Platform: Switch, PS4, PS5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X/S
Tested on: Switch
Rabbids: Party of Legends – Review
Many years ago the party game genre was booming, and we saw many titles emulate the Mario Party experience. Nonetheless, the genre faded into the background and except for a few new Mario Party iterations, we didn’t see that many new party games anymore. That is, until 2016 when Overcooked took the world by storm. This new frantic cooking game put the genre back on the map, and we saw many other developers try their hand at developing a similar experience. Over the last few years, we have seen games such as Lumberhill, Moving Out, Tools Up, Catastronauts, and many more, trying to bank on the newfound success of the genre. Now, we have a go at Ubisoft’s latest outing with the Raving Rabbids in Rabbids: Party of Legends. This party game was originally a Chinese-exclusive game, but now Western gamers are also able to enjoy the wacky antics of these oddball goofballs.
Story
Rabbids: Party of Legends puts the Raving Rabbids amidst the story of Journey to the West, which is a Chinese novel from the 16th century. Of course, the game doesn’t follow the serious undertone of the book, but it places the Rabbids in this setting and scenario. Once again the long-eared miscreants have messed around with their time-traveling washing machine and are wreaking havoc in the 7th century setting of the novel. Because they have disturbed the balance, a deity is holding their time-traveling contraption hostage, until they achieve the goals laid out for them. The story is presented with a few short cutscenes and a fair few speech bubbles thrown in between the different mini-games.
Graphics
Graphically Rabbids: Party of Legends is a very pretty and colorful game. The title has very nice sceneries for each of its mini-game stages and we loved the overall character designs. The traditional Journey to the West theme looks amazing when it comes to the costumes that the Rabbids are wearing. It was quite fun to look forward to unlocking more characters, which is already a huge plus for a game. Of course, given the limited capabilities of the Switch, some rough edges were still visible, but the overall charm of the game made up for these.
Sound
The game has a fairly upbeat soundtrack and plays some of the sound effects you may have heard from other Rabbids titles. Other than that, the sound design is decently handled, but it’s nothing that will linger in your head after you’ve turned the game off. Sadly, some of the menu songs do get a bit too repetitive and even quite annoying.
Gameplay
Rabbids: Party of Legends is a party game similar to the Mario Party series, albeit without the board game component. This means you can basically just pick the duration you wish to play, pick the character you want, choose AI difficulty if you’re not playing with a full party of friends and family, and you’re good to go. Of course, Adventure Mode does have story components and a few random events, but these don’t really change the overall gameplay. The game offers fifty mini-games, and some are a bit similar to others, but as a whole, you’re getting a reasonable number of games at your disposal. Sadly, for some reason, Ubisoft forces you to connect your account to the game, as otherwise, you won’t be able to actually play the game.
Party of Legends does reward you for simply playing the game. As you play more and more, you’ll unlock new characters and new mini-games to play. This is quite enjoyable, as you have a proper goal to work towards. We did find, however, that unlocking everything feels very grindy and slow. It would have perhaps been better to unlock new things a bit quicker. That being said, we did always have something to look forward to when playing a couple of matches.
Having motion controls can be somewhat of a double-edged blade. It’s silly and fun having to wave around your Joy-Con or even having to precisely aim at your TV to draw shapes or shoot objects. However, as once again became painstakingly clear, Nintendo’s Joy-Con controllers are rubbish. We often struggled with the precision-based controls, and we also noticed that the game just simply doesn’t play that well with these motion controls. We would have loved to play certain games with a Pro Controller rather than the tiny and uncomfortable Joy-Con controllers. It also doesn’t help that certain mini-games with motion controls simply don’t work as intended. For example, the dancing game, where you have to point in the right direction, doesn’t register your moves properly and you’re better off shaking the Joy-Con up and down when the game shows you the next command. By doing the latter, you’ll almost always get a ‘perfect’ score, compared to trying to play this mini-game as intended.
Conclusion
Rabbids: Party of Legends is an amusing party game with a very appealing setting. The game is best enjoyed with friends, and the quality of the mini-games is quite decent. We did struggle a bit with the wonky controls and we would have loved it if we could unlock new mini-games and new characters at a slightly faster pace. That being said, the game proves to be fun for young and old, and if you like other games in the Raving Rabbids series, you can’t really go wrong with this one.
No Comments