Some parts of Chocobo GP are really good. The actual racing is fun, though a bit weightless feeling, so it has the core part down. It has a ton of characters, each with their own unique vehicles which show off a ton of personality, and each racer also has their own "ultimate" move, which admittedly doesn't feel like they balanced them, but it's a kart racer so I don't care about one ability being a little better than another that much. The item system itself is great, using something that makes sense in-universe while also being a more complicated system than most kart racers. You can hold up to 3 tiers of an item to keep it boosted, so you're constantly figuring out whether the best play is to use your item now or wait and strengthen it up. Even the item boxes have some nuance to them as there's 3 types - copper is basically trash that just gives a random item, blue will give you +1 of whatever item you're currently holding, and gold will give you 2 items at once. So the best play is to get gold first then blue. But of course in the heat of the race it isn't always possible, and sometimes copper is all you can grab. It adds a whole layer to the racing and it's great.
Story mode is...fiiiine. The dialogue is super cheesy and cringey, but it also has its own little charm?
Online mode is interesting. It's a 64 person tournament where you need to play in the top 4 to move to the next round. It's fun, and adds a bit more strategy since other than the finals you might be more interested in making sure player #5 doesn't pass you than using your items to pass player #3. But it has a big problem - the lack of regular online races means this games online will be unplayable before long. Needing 64 players for one online game is not going to work well for a game that will likely struggle to hit those numbers in a couple of weeks.
But the whole game is let down by 2 big things. The first is of course the microtransactions. Literally everyone has spoke about them. The fact they exist in a paid game is just disgusting. They should have made it a free to play game if they wanted a battle pass system.
But the other big problem is the damn tracks. Now, they LOOK great (aesthetically anyway, visually they're fine but not gonna be noted for being good or bad), but there's a huge lack of them. There's 9 "themes" and then most themes have 2-3 variants. The problems with this is that most variants don't feel different enough, so it really does feel like there's only 9 tracks, but also every damn track is super short. There's one track that's just a circle, like baby park, but it sticks with the 3 laps. The variants of tracks tend to fall into (Short) and (Long). Short ones can tend to be finished in under a minute and long ones are lucky to last 2 minutes. It's such a huge disappointment because the tracks themselves are really good, but the fact there's so few of them, and the fact they're over so quick means the game looses a LOT of replayability as you go through its minimal content so many times in such a short span.
Boosting lap amounts to 4-6 depending on track length could have helped, but it'd still have felt low in variety.
Chocobo GP already had some balls to show up as an exclusive on the console with the behemoth that is Mario Kart, but it could still have at least been a niche title for Final Fantasy fans, or just kart racers who wanted something new. Instead feels like a huge waste of potential as you have so little to race on, and get so much locked behind paywalls.
Story mode is...fiiiine. The dialogue is super cheesy and cringey, but it also has its own little charm?
Online mode is interesting. It's a 64 person tournament where you need to play in the top 4 to move to the next round. It's fun, and adds a bit more strategy since other than the finals you might be more interested in making sure player #5 doesn't pass you than using your items to pass player #3. But it has a big problem - the lack of regular online races means this games online will be unplayable before long. Needing 64 players for one online game is not going to work well for a game that will likely struggle to hit those numbers in a couple of weeks.
But the whole game is let down by 2 big things. The first is of course the microtransactions. Literally everyone has spoke about them. The fact they exist in a paid game is just disgusting. They should have made it a free to play game if they wanted a battle pass system.
But the other big problem is the damn tracks. Now, they LOOK great (aesthetically anyway, visually they're fine but not gonna be noted for being good or bad), but there's a huge lack of them. There's 9 "themes" and then most themes have 2-3 variants. The problems with this is that most variants don't feel different enough, so it really does feel like there's only 9 tracks, but also every damn track is super short. There's one track that's just a circle, like baby park, but it sticks with the 3 laps. The variants of tracks tend to fall into (Short) and (Long). Short ones can tend to be finished in under a minute and long ones are lucky to last 2 minutes. It's such a huge disappointment because the tracks themselves are really good, but the fact there's so few of them, and the fact they're over so quick means the game looses a LOT of replayability as you go through its minimal content so many times in such a short span.
Boosting lap amounts to 4-6 depending on track length could have helped, but it'd still have felt low in variety.
Chocobo GP already had some balls to show up as an exclusive on the console with the behemoth that is Mario Kart, but it could still have at least been a niche title for Final Fantasy fans, or just kart racers who wanted something new. Instead feels like a huge waste of potential as you have so little to race on, and get so much locked behind paywalls.
Reviewed on Mar 13, 2022