It’s crazy to think that the Rabbids were introduced way back in 2006 as part of the Rayman franchise. Years later, they’re still extremely relevant and even managed to team up with Super Mario. The Rabbids are here to stay and to quench your thirst until the release of Mario + Rabbids Sparks of Hope, you can have some fun with Rabbids: Party of Legends. This game was a Chinese-exclusive party game that finally made it to the West. Is it worth playing? Let’s jump in!
A themed party
Rabbids: Party of Legends isn’t just a simple mini-games collection where you go through a couple of menus, selecting the rules and amount of games you’ll be playing. Instead, Ubisoft Chengdu created a story around the mini-games, it follows the events of the famous Journey to the West. It all happened quickly for the Rabbids, who were just chilling next to their powerful time-traveling washing machine. Just chilling is out of the question for our crazy little friends, the washing machine kicked in and transported the Rabbids to a world filled with classic 16th-century Chinese novel references. To fit the scene, the Rabbids received some fitting costumes, all mimicking famous characters of Journey to the West. It’s a rather loose premise but it still offers a welcomed change to the classic formula of just selecting the games and rules in a couple of menus. Thanks to the story, you can, for example, experience the mini-games on a Super Mario-like world map where you’ll go from one mini-game to another. It’s good to see that Ubisoft really invested some time and effort in the lore and world-building, every mini-games feels connected to the world and this makes it a lot more fun to play.
Fun mini-games
Although it’s fun to have a story that results in Adventure Mode, this isn’t a game you’re buying for its plot. If you’re buying this, you’re buying it for the mini-games, which offer a lot of fun for sure! All mini-games are played with a single Joy-Con, which makes it easy to play with friends. Before you play the mini-game, you’ll get a brief explanation of what to expect and how to control your Rabbid during the game. The variation in controls is what makes this game so much fun to play. You never really know what to expect and in true Rabbids fashion, some of the mini-games are truly unique and hilarious. It goes from pulling, to counting, to boss fights… The mini-games offer a lot of variation and will keep you hooked during gaming nights. It’s playable in singleplayer but you’ll have to most fun playing this with or against some of your friends.
Before you start the mini-games, which you can also time so you won’t be spending the entire evening playing these, you can choose if you’re playing with or against your friends. If you play together with one friend and set the CPU of the AI Rabbids to a higher difficulty, you’ll certainly have a blast trying to win the mini-games. It’s a shame the game only supports local multiplayer and doesn’t offer online multiplayer. It’s understandable because playing this on the same couch is part of the fun but an online multiplayer would have offered a decent alternative for the evenings you’re playing this on your own. It’s a bit of a setback but it doesn’t take away from the quality of the mini-games. You can easily compare the mini-games to some of the better ones of in the Mario Party franchise. The biggest plus is the way these mini-games utilize the Joy-Con controller and always challenge you with some new wacky rules.
It takes some time to party
The mini-games offer a lot of fun but you can’t play them all from the start. In order to unlock them, you’ll need to collect books, which will unlock new costumes and new mini-games. Not a bad concept but unlocking new mini-games for party mode is incredibly slow and perhaps the game’s biggest downfall. I don’t have problems grinding in games but in order to unlock everything, you’re replaying the same mini-games over and over again until you’re lucky enough to unlock something new. It’s a shame progression happens this slowly because all mini-games are fun and do offer a certain level of challenge in their own crazy ways. If Ubisoft would have found the right balance in unlocking and playing the mini-games, this one would easily be one of the best in the genre.
Conclusion:
Rabbids: Party of Legends is a fun mini-game collection and thanks to the story, it also offers a lot of fun for the solo player. The mini-games are fun to play and are most enjoyable in local multiplayer. The biggest downfall of the game is the fact that it simply takes too much time to unlock everything. That being said, if you’re looking for a fun party game on your Nintendo Switch, this one could easily be added to your list.
