El DLC del Mario+Rabbids. No soy muy fan de los DLC, pero en este caso, hace cosa de unas dos semanas lo pusieron rebajado a 5€ y ya en su momento me llamo bastante y con los puntos se me quedo como a euro y medio y madremía siento que les he timado.

De por sí el juego base ya es bastante bueno con sus puzles, combates, progresión y desarrollo mediante árbol de habilidades (editable en cualquier momento) y un muy buen sentido del humor.

Pues este DLC expande más la experiencia con tres personajes que casan super bien y alargando la vida del título base bastante. Ya no solo por el tema de la historia en sí, que es quizá lo más flojito en cuanto a dificultad, sino con los desafíos posteriores. Al punto que ha habido más de uno que no he podido completar y que no descarto volver a él en cuanto me vuelva a dar el "mono" (xd).

Me parece un absoluto regalo si te mola el juego base e indispensable, como DLC, se corona con un 10 de manual.

Normally I would not be logging DLC expansions on this site. Unless it's something like Torna ~ The Golden Country, which has enough content to stand on it's own (which it does, you can literally buy it standalone), i would just add the DLC to the game itself.

Donkey Kong Adventure, despite not being standalone, feels like it meets those requirements. It's pretty damn meaty for an expansion and it's genuinely such an improvement over the main game that i feel it deserves it's own log. The roster in this game is limited to DK, Rabbid Cranky and Rabbid Peach but it makes up for that limitation with a lot of variety and a shorter campaign that makes me realize "wait Mario+Rabbids was kinda too long".

The lack of varied victory conditions from the main game is fixed here, as you have several maps with different conditions. Like i was genuinely surprised when i encountered a "defend location" map. Even when a map is "defeat all enemies", there's usually a gimmick in place that prevents it from feeling stale like in the main game. The limited roster allowed the developers to really craft each of the character's niches in combat. Donkey Kong himself is easily the best character in the game, including the base, due to his insane mobility options and unique pick-up gimmick that allows for strategies you would not be able to do anywhere else.

The campaign's shorter length does wonders for it. Each world is about half the length of a world in the main game and this prevents everything from feeling repetitious. There's still Challenge Battles if you want more as well. Honestly, this expansion reminds me of Spider-Man: Miles Morales where it's better than the original game because it focused on quality over quantity, removing the little bits that added up to repetition. I honestly don't have anything really negative to say about this game and here's hoping Sparks of Hope takes the lessons learned from Donkey Kong.

The developers clearly never played Super Smash Bros. because Donkey Kong is very OP.

Gameplay:
Mario + Rabbids Kingdom Battle: The Donkey Kong Adventure is a DLC for the base game, but in many respects, it is more of a mini-sequel. While it does not differ from the base game in too many notable respects, it still has a few things that set it apart, most notably in the gameplay department. The basics are all the same, mostly: the game is a strategy game in the same vein as XCOM, where the player controls their team by moving them along a grid-based map. While the enemy side will have a number of opponents that must be defeated, the player only has three characters. In the DLC, the total roster is only three characters, so there is no option to switch around who is in the party. The three members are Rabbid Peach (who remains more-or-less identical to how she was in the base game), the titular Donkey Kong, and Rabbid Cranky Kong. The latter two are both new, and each has a good number of interesting abilities. While Rabbid Cranky Kong mostly takes his various tools from different characters in the base game, Donkey Kong sports two entirely new weapons, and a number of other powerful abilities. Not only can he pick up and throw allies and enemies alike, but he also has access to incredibly powerful DK tiles, which allow him to travel across large portions of the map instantly. They are sort of like the pipes that allow for easy crossing of the map, except that only he can use them, and he can also climb up ledges as well. Although he does feel rather overpowered, and the DLC is nowhere near as difficult as the base game, I do think that the developers were able to account for that decently well. DK’s high mobility and health encourage the player to send him deeper into enemy lines than the other two, often without assistance. It adds another layer of risk-and-reward to a game already brimming with it, and on the whole I think the DLC is about as fun as the base game was. The upgrade system and weapons shop are pretty much the same as they were before, just faster to progress through, and aside from that, there is not much else to be said. The core gameplay of Mario + Rabbids is loads of fun, and the Donkey Kong Adventure manages to retain that.

Outside of combat, there is also some overworld exploration. It’s nothing crazy, but I did think it was fairly fun in both the base game and DLC, and the puzzles, while mostly simple, are also fun to play through.

Story:
This probably doesn’t come as a surprise, but this game doesn’t exactly have a masterpiece of a story. The rabbids were surprisingly mildly amusing in the base game (as opposed to being insufferable, which is what I’d anticipated), and as I have said about a lot of things in this review, it’s more of the same. I remember the base game being a little bit more charming, but it has been over a year since I last played it, so I could be misremembering on that front. Otherwise, there is not a lot to be said here; this DLC (and the main game as well) is 100% to be played for the gameplay.

Presentation:
The graphics and art style of this game are generally pretty good. The resolution, while not noticeably good, was certainly never terrible either (though I played the whole game in docked mode, so handheld may be another story). The art style leans more towards Super Mario 3D World, and I would say that it looks nice in general. Sometimes I wish it was a little less plastic-y, but I would be lying if I said I did not like it most of the time. I also want to call out the final battle in specific for looking rather stunning.

The music is also rather good. I would not say it is among the greatest game soundtracks ever made, but it always fits well, and there are some standout tunes. My biggest complaint with the music was in the final battle, where for some reason it only plays during the enemy turn. I think they were trying to go for something a bit more cinematic there, but it did not work well for me.

Conclusion:
If you liked Mario + Rabbids, I imagine you will enjoy the Donkey Kong Adventure, and vice versa. I liked it well enough myself; the gameplay was always engaging, and the presentation was quite solid as well. Really, I do not have any major complaints. If anything, the DLC’s biggest weakness (which applies to the main game as well) is that it isn’t quite amazing at anything. It is absolutely worth checking out if you enjoy strategy/tactics games, but it will not be a revelation.

Score: 80/100

All story chapters completed, all challenges completed (including 'ultimate' challenges), all collectibles obtained. This is a very full-featured expansion, being about half the length of the base game - while there's only one world, it's split into four parts, with a total of 18 battles (of which four are boss/mini-boss fights), a good number of puzzles (with an overall difficulty level a little higher than the base game), then 12 post-story challenges (and a few 'ultimate challenges' beyond that) and a full suite of collectibles. The new world has just as much non-core detail as those in the base game, if not more, with lots of those small 'scenes' of rabbids in humorous scenarios scattered throughout - and without the reliance on toilet humour that was quite prevalent in the base game. Everything ties together really nicely and feels highly polished - particular mention once again has to go to Grant Kirkhope's fantastic soundtrack, with just the right amount of nostalgia while still feeling fresh.

Surpasses the original Kingdom Battle by the tacit assertion that this scale and these mechanics make better bedfellows. It’s such a nice pairing, having learnt from the original and pared the components down, Donkey Kong Adventure meanwhile opens up the strategy and movement around fields, albeit overpowering its central characters, proving out through a new campaign and even harder challenges that less is most certainly more. There are more of the iffy puzzles, like the original, but the non skippable ones are joyous and painless, and the kind that always seemed to halt progress in the original, now feel like extra work for extra rewards, a suitable compromise. The game also just looks great — the Mario + Rabbids style even more at home in the Donkey Kong world than in the Mushroom Kingdom. Perhaps one of the finest DLCs for a Non-Nintendo developed game on a Nintendo system, this is an essential have on the Switch, ironically even more so than the original game. It ought to be sold separately.