About a month ago, a day or two after its release, I wrote a review for Dr. Robotnik's Ring Racers. Quite frankly I feel that's too early to review almost any piece of media, but I did it for two reasons. One, I wanted to record my first impressions. Second, many people, spanning multiple websites, were giving very short, no-nuance takes akin to "it's dogshit, don't play it." This sort of upset me, because while the game was far from perfect, there was definitely something special here. I didn't get into specifics but I more wanted to tackle why people, myself included, were a bit disappointed. You can read my previous review here, but to save time, it boils down to this: there's a world of difference between Sonic Robo Blast 2 Kart (the previous entry) and Ring Racers. SRB2Kart plays more along the lines of Mario Kart while Ring Racers is an entirely different beast on its own. Additionally, SRB2Kart's notoriety for being a game you can quickly boot up and play any character on any course with friends was initially thrown out the window in Ring Racers' release, leading people to be a bit aggravated before they even hit the track. Once they completed the hour-long tutorial, finally hit the track, and saw how merciless the CPUs were, it was a whole new story. Many people were immediately turned away and I don't quite blame them.
However, after letting it sit for a bit and letting the developers tweak it, Ring Racers as of v2.2 has reached a state where I would say it's actually playable. Rather than write out improvements in a big paragraph, I feel it would be easier to list them:
- CPUs cheat significantly less. I'll touch more upon this later.
- Online Mode, Mods, and Time Attack can be unlocked significantly earlier.
- You can exit the tutorial much earlier.
- An "Auto-Ring" feature that manages your rings during races so you don't have to worry as much about them.
- Slope gravity has been reduced, making pretty much every course generally easier to race on.
- Spin-dash has been buffed, making it a more viable option during races.
- Trick jumps now require 2 inputs so that you don't accidentally send yourself off a cliff before you realize you're in a trick sequence.
- Unlocking things has become easier, as they award a Chao Key every 5 races instead of 14.
With all of these changes, Ring Racers is more accessible to the average player than it was before. Although, I feel I would be dishonest if I labeled this game as "accessible" as a main descriptor. It definitely feels like the developers are a little adamant about ensuring Ring Racers stays as difficult as they can get away with. It still remains the most technical and possibly the most difficult kart racer you'll ever play. Whether that's good or bad is entirely up to you, but I can say with a fair amount of certainty that Ring Racers is an acquired taste. Similar to above, below is a list of personal gripes I still have with it:
- CPUs still literally cheat. They are able to attain speeds that human players will never experience for themselves. At points, it feels more RNG-based than Mario Kart; you can play a perfect race and still lose because a CPU randomly got a burst of speed or was randomly given an invincibility power up at the last second. They've toned it down significantly since launch, but it still feels kinda bad at times. Playing online with other players is much more satisfying, because at least the chaos there is natural.
- The bonus stages are brutally trial-and-error and you only have a few tries. If you lose, you have to play a prix cup from the beginning to try again. This can be aggravating, as you'll have to play a game of chance and see if the CPUs behave enough for you to get a good score.
- There are a lot of tracks in this game that just don't feel very good to play on or are poorly designed in general, to a point where it can feel like a joke. Some rely on annoying gimmicks, some are too small, some are too long, some aren't very readable in terms of direction, some require extreme precision and so on.
- The drifting still feels a bit off. The arc of each drift always ends up being waaay tighter than you think it'll be.
Despite all of this, Ring Racers still has a lot of great aspects. I love wacky kart racers, so thankfully for me, this game checks a lot of boxes and brings even more to the table to keep the experience interesting:
- The menus are super sleek, stylish, readable, functional and tie the whole game together in a way that makes it feel like a complete package. It’s a huge step up from SRB2Kart.
- The artwork in general is great. Every track is memorable just through the aesthetics alone.
- Characters are a big part of a kart racer for me personally. With over 60 characters, there's a lot of cool, silly, and fun picks and they all look great. There are a few questionable roster-drops (Omega, Gamma, Vector, Miku, etc.) but supposedly more are on the way from what I've heard.
- The way unlockables are implemented is really fun. The unlock system is identical to that of Kirby Air Ride and Super Smash Bros, which makes it fun to chip away at. Not only that, but while many of the unlockables are obtained via standard methods, there are a ton of unlockables that are playground-rumor-level of obtuse to figure out, which can turn the whole game into a neat scavenger hunt.
- The entire soundtrack is great, as they included strange yet fitting choices from games such as Touhou, Rayman 3, and even Looney Tunes: Sheep Raider. There's also tons well-known Sonic tracks and even lots of fan remixes used with permission.
- Capturing gifs, video, and replays are all built-in. You can even spectate time trial ghosts to see how they pull off certain stunts.
- To top it all off, this game still allows mods, much like SRB2Kart. This means you can still have goofy races, like racing as King Harkinian on Waluigi Pinball. The only drawback is that SRB2Kart mods are not compatible with Ring Racers, so someone still has to make them.
When you put aside some of the glaring flaws, there’s a phenomenal kart racer here, which is what originally kept me going through the rough launch. I'm still greatly enjoying my time with Ring Racers. Even with all of the changes though, it can still be a hard sell to friends due to the amount of mechanics and the difficulty of the CPUs. With some more tweaks, this could easily stand among the best kart racers of all time, which is really saying something considering it’s completely free. If you haven't played it and turned off by the all of the issues people were talking about, I really recommend giving it a try before dropping it; you really don't have much to lose.
However, after letting it sit for a bit and letting the developers tweak it, Ring Racers as of v2.2 has reached a state where I would say it's actually playable. Rather than write out improvements in a big paragraph, I feel it would be easier to list them:
- CPUs cheat significantly less. I'll touch more upon this later.
- Online Mode, Mods, and Time Attack can be unlocked significantly earlier.
- You can exit the tutorial much earlier.
- An "Auto-Ring" feature that manages your rings during races so you don't have to worry as much about them.
- Slope gravity has been reduced, making pretty much every course generally easier to race on.
- Spin-dash has been buffed, making it a more viable option during races.
- Trick jumps now require 2 inputs so that you don't accidentally send yourself off a cliff before you realize you're in a trick sequence.
- Unlocking things has become easier, as they award a Chao Key every 5 races instead of 14.
With all of these changes, Ring Racers is more accessible to the average player than it was before. Although, I feel I would be dishonest if I labeled this game as "accessible" as a main descriptor. It definitely feels like the developers are a little adamant about ensuring Ring Racers stays as difficult as they can get away with. It still remains the most technical and possibly the most difficult kart racer you'll ever play. Whether that's good or bad is entirely up to you, but I can say with a fair amount of certainty that Ring Racers is an acquired taste. Similar to above, below is a list of personal gripes I still have with it:
- CPUs still literally cheat. They are able to attain speeds that human players will never experience for themselves. At points, it feels more RNG-based than Mario Kart; you can play a perfect race and still lose because a CPU randomly got a burst of speed or was randomly given an invincibility power up at the last second. They've toned it down significantly since launch, but it still feels kinda bad at times. Playing online with other players is much more satisfying, because at least the chaos there is natural.
- The bonus stages are brutally trial-and-error and you only have a few tries. If you lose, you have to play a prix cup from the beginning to try again. This can be aggravating, as you'll have to play a game of chance and see if the CPUs behave enough for you to get a good score.
- There are a lot of tracks in this game that just don't feel very good to play on or are poorly designed in general, to a point where it can feel like a joke. Some rely on annoying gimmicks, some are too small, some are too long, some aren't very readable in terms of direction, some require extreme precision and so on.
- The drifting still feels a bit off. The arc of each drift always ends up being waaay tighter than you think it'll be.
Despite all of this, Ring Racers still has a lot of great aspects. I love wacky kart racers, so thankfully for me, this game checks a lot of boxes and brings even more to the table to keep the experience interesting:
- The menus are super sleek, stylish, readable, functional and tie the whole game together in a way that makes it feel like a complete package. It’s a huge step up from SRB2Kart.
- The artwork in general is great. Every track is memorable just through the aesthetics alone.
- Characters are a big part of a kart racer for me personally. With over 60 characters, there's a lot of cool, silly, and fun picks and they all look great. There are a few questionable roster-drops (Omega, Gamma, Vector, Miku, etc.) but supposedly more are on the way from what I've heard.
- The way unlockables are implemented is really fun. The unlock system is identical to that of Kirby Air Ride and Super Smash Bros, which makes it fun to chip away at. Not only that, but while many of the unlockables are obtained via standard methods, there are a ton of unlockables that are playground-rumor-level of obtuse to figure out, which can turn the whole game into a neat scavenger hunt.
- The entire soundtrack is great, as they included strange yet fitting choices from games such as Touhou, Rayman 3, and even Looney Tunes: Sheep Raider. There's also tons well-known Sonic tracks and even lots of fan remixes used with permission.
- Capturing gifs, video, and replays are all built-in. You can even spectate time trial ghosts to see how they pull off certain stunts.
- To top it all off, this game still allows mods, much like SRB2Kart. This means you can still have goofy races, like racing as King Harkinian on Waluigi Pinball. The only drawback is that SRB2Kart mods are not compatible with Ring Racers, so someone still has to make them.
When you put aside some of the glaring flaws, there’s a phenomenal kart racer here, which is what originally kept me going through the rough launch. I'm still greatly enjoying my time with Ring Racers. Even with all of the changes though, it can still be a hard sell to friends due to the amount of mechanics and the difficulty of the CPUs. With some more tweaks, this could easily stand among the best kart racers of all time, which is really saying something considering it’s completely free. If you haven't played it and turned off by the all of the issues people were talking about, I really recommend giving it a try before dropping it; you really don't have much to lose.