Like a food pairing that shouldn't work but does, Mario+Rabbids: Kingdom Battle overcame our scepticism and rewarded us with a supremely competent turn-based strategy game.

Mario + Rabbids Kingdom Battle is a turn-based tactical role-playing game by Ubisoft, which is available exclusively for the Nintendo Switch, featuring both single and co-op gameplay.

When I first heard about the game, I wasn't very interested, but after playing it for a while it's one of the best games the switch has to offer.

Mario + Rabbids defies the stigma the Rabbids bring to the table and delivers a solid tactics-based game.

Amazing soundtrack; solid tactical gameplay; great graphics and world variety

No way to rewind moves; difficulty spikes

- Excellent Combat - AMAZING music - actually well times and well executed comedy - XCOM but simpler, faster and with more heart

Baz enters a world that's the stuff of nightmares - one where a group of beloved pop culture icons has been mixed with a former plumber and his mates.

Fun combat with good character maneuverability; Unique character designs

Limited accuracy percentages; Puzzle design; Rabbids

When Mario + Rabbids Kingdom Battle was formally announced by Ubisoft at E3 earlier this year, the natural first reaction for many – including us – was: what are Rabbids? While most people on this planet have heard of Nintendo's red-and-blue jumper-wearing mascot, Ubisoft's two-legged rabbits – a...

Great art design; Well-explained basics; Infectious charm; Quite dense and complex; Playful animations; Specially designed co-op levels

Music lacks variety; Campaign restricted to single-player; Sudden rise in difficulty

It may look frivolous, but Mario + Rabbids Kingdom Battle's jokey exterior hides some rich gameplay.

Beautifully structured; Exercises your strategic muscles; Good Rabbids-Mario interplay; Nicely observed learning curve; Decent boss-battles; Builds to a strategic crescendo

Puzzles are too easy in the early stages

Videogame cross overs are nothing new in gaming but it is seldom that Nintendo opts in for an entire game built from the ground up revolving around two completely different franchises. Mario + Rabbids Kingdom Battle stars two very unlikely worlds that have collided into one awesome Switch game.

It's easy to imagine the surprise of people when it was announced back in the early 1990s that Mario would star in a game about racing on go-karts, or even that Mario would star in his very own RPG developed by none other than SquareSoft, then an absolute king of JRPG.