Pretty much exactly what I would call a fun but not good game.

If you love to grind like there is no tomorrow (literally and figuratively) then I’m sure you love this. If you’re a huge X-Games fan I’m sure you love this. If you swear by live service games I’m sure you love this.

Personally, I am indifferent to all those categories, so I see it as a fun play while on deep sale, but not a completionism game by any means.

Rider's Republic is a collection of fun extreme sports gameplay flavors that is tied together in a somewhat bland, cheesy, and overly complicated package.

Once you get through its slow tutorial, filled with Ubisoft's trademark try hard out-of-touch writing, you can tackle some of the sport offerings like biking and skiing, and unlocking more sport disciplines as you progress.

The open world exploration is nothing special, but the racing events and other kind of objective based gameplay are pretty great. These events feel handcrafted and showcase the most exciting parts of the open world. Other highlights include stunts (basically checkpoint based obstacle/traversal challenges) and the multiplayer events. Thankfully you can get around the map pretty quick with fast travel, or fly around with a literal rocket on your back, so you can just do the things you want without wasting too much time. Plus, you can just focus on the sport discipline that interests you the most, you don't have to do everything to progress.

For the most part, the controls of each sport discipline feels good. It doesn't have the most accurate feel, I know I have messed a few of my biking events because my bike didn't quite respond in a way that I expected, but you can get used to it, and there's ways to minimize accuracy-leaning situations, like braking early. I mostly enjoy biking, especially the downhill races where the first person mode truly shines. The high speed feel of this mode is incredibly gratifying, it's easily the best part of the game for me.

Playing the game can feel cumbersome and unintuitive, as the menus and interface are too bloated, and many of the peripheral game systems (stuff like keeping track of your progression) seems unnecessarily complex. While these aren't the most important aspects of the game, it does make me feel dissuaded from taking the game more seriously, and investing more of my time into it to unlock the game's various rewards. In other words, I don't see much staying power here after I blast through the sport events that I'm interested in.

Overall, RR is more than fun enough to enjoy casually, despite its colorful flaws. It's nice to see a big publisher filling out the extreme sports void, and I'm pretty sure Ubisoft will support this game for a while.

Fuck the ubisoft launcher, im not givin a single ubisoft game a good review til they remove this shit. Cant even play the game now cause the launcher broke after an update. Constantly checks if ur online, takes 10 years to launch since you gotta login and it just seems to forget to save your login info. Fuck this launcher and fuck ubisoft, eat my actual ass.

It’s almost like the ubisoft launcher is preventing u from playing what is already a dog shit live-service login-required privacy policy fest.

When this game was in beta, I absolutely no-lifed it, and got like 1500 stars before the beta ended. I played this game alot when college was online because of covid, I'd be playing it in the background while listening to lectures. Now in that beta/newly released time, I really really liked this game, especially since I got bored of steep and was craving more because I liked the concept. The issue with the game is that it's legit play to win, the more you play the more advantage you have in multiplayer. Without fail, mass races are always dominated by people with like 20k stars because they have the most juiced out equipment you just don't have. On-top of the mass races being blatantly unfair for people who don't play the game 24/7, the other multiplayer modes are unplayable because the player count is in the shitter. I did play around 240 hours of game (I'd guess 200 of those were solo races), so there being no way to play online enjoyably sucks (and it was like that soon after launch fyi). Sidenote: Fuck the Veni... achievement.

having liked steep very very much i was expecting way more from this game. first off the intro is way too long and way too cringy, just shut up and let me play ffs. then with skiing and snowboarding being my favorites sports irl i was very disappointed, why couldnt they just port the same gameplay mecanics and controls from steep it was just 100x better. if you liked those sports in steep you wont recognize them in riders republic.
then the progression system might be the worst, i know steep is a smaller game but the progression was way smoother in it, you got a gold medal you got a new pair of skis or something, but the worst is that in riders every gear have different stats, i hate that, i feel like theres no personality any more you cant have a favorite snowboard or pair of skis you just pick the best even if its ugly. Something else that i hate is this punk aesthetic, i guess some people are fans but not me, i liked the silly costumes on steep cause thats something you might see on the slopes but to an extend, i feel like in riders it represents the fortitization of video games if that makes any sense...
the game is also just too arcady but not in a good way like ssx. i feel like this game is a mountain bike first and foremost, this they did nail, i think bmx is my favorite.
something else that might be skill issues though is the fact that i found this game way more difficult then steep, like i got all the gold medals in steep in every event, some were sure more difficult then others but i got them all in the end, but in riders i struggle to even get bronze even in the beginning. i dont know if its because of the new stat system and like you have to return later to an event with better gear to get gold but i hate that tbh.
i think i played this game for like 2 days before giving up. one thing i must say though is that the map is way better then steep with way more variety but its pretty obvious why.

HUGE EDIT ON MY LAST REVIEW WHICH WAS 2 STARS

After spending over 25 hours with this game and purchasing the BMX DLC I kind of changed my mind on it.

Essentially I thought the core gameplay was good and this hasn't changed. Doing crazy air tricks on a bike or snowboard feels amazing! Although I think they could go more arcade and make it even more awesome, this becomes apparent when you play the BMX career which allows you to link tricks with manuals. This gives you the opportunity to make HUGE 100k+ combos.

The second big YES for Riders Republic is it's locations. As a fan of extreme sports you're constantly bombarded with awesome looking snow parks, slopes and other cool stuff. I was blown away seeing the BMX Skatepark or the VANS park. CAN'T WAIT what locations they will introduce with the new Skateboard DLC.

Another nice addition are the multiplayer features, I enjoyed most of the mass races and other trick based activities. Makes the game playability even longer.

Let's look at the cons. One BIG BIG con for me are the air events. Maybe because I sucked at them but I can't remember Air events being this annoying in Steep. I didn't even finish the air career, that's how infuriating it was. Being forced to "backtrack" after bailing, sometimes making me get stuck on the ground that way because I couldn't correct my course even after backtracking was a HUGE pain in the ass. Just drop me off mid flight near next checkpoint and let me play! The only time I used jetpack was to fly to events that were further away.

Other con for me is very little customization options. I felt like Steep was waaay ahead on this feature. A lot of micro transaction stuff but very little unlockable content. Also with the addition of bikes I feel like they should let you modify your gear a LOT MORE. I mean one major component of extreme / gear based sports IS your gear and how you make it your own. It would be cool if you could modify your bike with different parts and colors for example. In this game the gear doesn't matter this much you just use the one with the best stats.

All in all Riders Republic is a fun game and I see myself playing it from time to time with addition of the new seasons. I mean skateboard DLC is coming in september!! Hyped for that!