Super Smash Bros. Ultimate for Nintendo Switch features a single-player mode called World of Light, which is all about collecting “spirits” to power up your roster of characters. The mode amounts to a series of challenges that reward you with spirits so you can, in turn, collect more spirits that can be upgraded and help you conquer bigger and tougher challenges. It’s an admittedly addictive system filled to the brim with delightful fan service, and while I didn’t finish my playtime thinking this will be the mode I pour the most hours into, it was a fun way to test my skills as a Smash player.

How Challenges Work

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Adventure Mode

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Spirit Board

Classic Mode Bosses from Super Smash Bros. Ultimate 3 IMAGES

Final Thoughts

Challenges are primarily how you collect spirits, so completing Challenges will be what you spend most of your time doing in World of Light. Difficulty can vary wildly, so to give yourself the best shot at success you’re encouraged to read the prep screen and go in with the proper spirits equipped. (See us take on five Challenges in the video below.)Given the daunting number of spirits in my collection, I leaned heavily on the Autopick button that automatically equips your most appropriate spirits for that particular challenge. I didn’t spend enough time in World of Light to be able to tell if Autopick was doing its job well, but I generally had success and it at least made me feel like I wasn’t going into challenges woefully ill-equipped. You’ll often want to use the best spirit for the job for any given challenge, so you aren’t always able to use your favorite spirits from your collection, which was a bit of a bummer. Why did I just spend all that time leveling up my Dr. Wily spirit if it can’t help me beat Rabbid Kong?!World of Light features two modes, Adventure Mode and Spirit Board. Here's what they're all about.If you were traumatized by the World of Light opening cinematic showing all of your favorite video game characters turned into dust, Thanos style, then you’ll want to dive into Adventure Mode to see what happens next. (Check out the video below for the first five minutes of Adventure Mode.)Note that this isn’t Subspace Emissary 2.0 -- there are no side-scrolling levels and there’s less story connecting everything.Instead, Adventure Mode starts you as lone-survivor Kirby on an overworld map filled with numerous branching pathways that lead to challenges, treasure chests, and fighter unlocks, meaning there’s not a predetermined way to tackle the map. A three-way fork presented me with the choice of unlocking one of three characters and sending me in one of three directions, and after I made my choice, the other two characters and paths became blocked off, leaving me to wonder if I’d ever get the chance to obtain those characters or explore in those other directions. Either way, it was clear that Adventure Mode forces you to make choices that affect how you progress through the game.If you just want to collect spirits, then you can dive right into Spirit Board, which simply displays a random assortment of challenges to try your hand at. Beating a challenge earns a chance to claim the spirit by playing a mini-game where you need to shoot it with a laser gun, which feels like an extra obstacle was added for the sake of it. Losing the challenge or the minigame causes the spirit prize go away, which made entering into a challenge more tense and exciting because failure meant possibly losing a powerful spirit.After spending about an hour with World of Light and getting to know the spirit system, I was intrigued by how it took some novel modes from past Smash games, namely Event Mode and Custom Smash, and built them into a fleshed out progression system. The Spirit Board seems like it’ll have you returning again and again for a shot to nab powerful spirits, and Adventure Mode’s expansive map has many avenues to explore to keep things interesting. The sheer amount of spirits is a bit daunting, and the whole system does feel like it encourages grinding, but it achieves its goal in bringing together numerous video game characters and testing your Smash skills with its many challenges.

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For more footage from IGN's preview time with the game, check out this eight-player battle using only new characters:

Joshua is Senior Editor of IGN Comics. If Pokemon, Green Lantern, or Game of Thrones are frequently used words in your vocabulary, you’ll want to follow him on Twitter @JoshuaYehl and IGN