What I can never fault Ring Racers for is its ambition. Its environments are lovely, well realized, and expand on familiar Sonic zones and trappings in a way that accentuates every single track. It's a mechanically rich game with a bunch of different systems to compensate for every idea it has. It loads you with objectives and a glut of content that is mind boggling to begin to tackle. In all senses, it is a love letter to the legacy of Sonic and the fan game community that has sprung up around him, and takes every opportunity to remind you of its fan game status that it absolutely relishes. As a celebration and collection, Ring Racers is absolutely sublime.

Getting there tends to be the trickier issue. Much has been said about the game's intro, and while I find the dialogue and overall presentation of the tutorial very charming, I do find it a very misguided intro to the game. The mechanics taught in the tutorial are often used very sparingly across the actual races, and even those used often like drifting are used in different, shorter-form contexts than the tutorial would imply. It practically posits Ring Racers as an entirely different game and experience compared to what it actually is, and it goes on doing that for quite a while!

The actual races themselves vary in quality drastically depending on the track layout. Ring Racers can be absolutely vicious with its track designs, with hazards feeling devastating as they can easily combo into other hazards or items that toss you around like a pinball. This can be DEVASTATING on slopes, which require Sonic's vaunted momentum to get up and are aided by the ring system, letting you increase your speed a little bit per ring used. This should present some level of risk/reward; do you use your rings on straightaways to burst ahead, or save them for slopes as a means of recovery to maintain position? Unfortunately, rings are plentiful to a fault, and computer opponents (ESPECIALLY your rival character) are want to use them whenever possible to ludicrous speed increases, so rings become less strategic unless you're specifically saving them for chaos emerald bonuses in Grand Prix standings and more "I hope this part of the track also has rings". And when it doesn't... well you have the spin dash to get you out of the worst of things, but it feels pretty rough.

Drifting is also highly committal compared to rings, meaning that all alternate forms of speed are just kinda secondary to the immediate allure of the rings, which do not have enough risk to them to make the immediate reward not always a pull. This is compounded by items, which use the same button as using rings and, thus, often get in the way of progress more often than they help, especially considering how avoidable most offensive items tend to be as they struggle to interact with the steep sloped terrain of Ring Racers! I feel that individual race courses struggle to decide if they want to play nice with Ring Racers' systems or want to struggle against them, and very few of them are properly in line with the expectations set by the tutorial. It makes for a very uneven experience where a single bad spill on the last lap is both really debilitating and could not be entirely your fault, with means of consistent recovery not entirely present as opponents can keep padding their lead with rings and the comeback items are either unweildy to use, especially in a bad headspace, or inaccurate.

There are moments where Ring Racers does put everything together. Zones like Emerald Coast, Withering Chateau, Opulence, Regal Ruin, and Joypolis show DRRR at its best, with a consistent sense of flow, opportunities to best use shortcuts, and a great feel for combining the drift and ring mechanics. But for every one of them, there's a Marble Garden just asking for the player to try and break it in two before it breaks them. It lacks the kindness of kart racers like Mario, fails to commit to its individual mechanics like F-Zero, and does not string its systems together in nearly as seamless away as Crash, Diddy Kong, or even other Sonic racing titles manage. Ring Racers is its own, unforgiving beast that I can't say I had a bad time with, but it feels a bit overtuned for all it wants to strive for; a love letter that needed an editor, but how do you say "turn down the passion?" I like and respect it, I'll come back to keep pecking away at its wide breadth of content. But man I STILL haven't unlocked Whisper and don't even have a clue on how to get her, and I sincerely hope she's in the character class I like otherwise I'm gonna be real sad.

I'm so distraught with how mixed my feelings are for this game. There is so much effort and time put into this kart racer that is very visibly there; However there are certain big decisions in how it presents itself to the player and the track design that I DO NOT BLAME people for steering clear after the first few cups.

For some ODD reason, Ring Racers' tracks bounce from good to genuinely appalling. Me and some buddies have been doing Grand Prix for a good while and let me tell you, for every good designed track that actually feels like it accommodates for the controls, there is a slap in the face track that is either narrow, steep sloped, or a nightmare to face the CPUs on.

Oh yeah, the CPUs, you know that Rival that the game has for you? They always have access to frantic items, they get a bigger boost from rings than you do, their top speed is higher then yours, crazy rubberbanding, etc. If you were wondering if you were going crazy and bots always seemed to catch up to you at the worst possible moments, that is why.

I want to love this game. I really do, but this needed so much more PUBLIC testing. It is insane to me that they want folks to unlock and go after emeralds when some of these tracks make it their mission to stop you in your tracks and crit hit you into positions you will not come back from.

[UPDATE: 2.0 came out earlier today, and I've played more of the game. As such, I'm adding a few notes as I promised - the original review will be present below for the sake of posterity.]

- The AI has been tuned to be less rubberbandy. Good change, and I hope they touch up the items next; some of them feel absurdly overtuned. The shrink rays last way too long, cover way too much of the track, and have a deceptive hitbox (the sparks appear to be just for aesthetic purpose, but actually hit you), tops can hit you twice, and bumpers are way too punishing.
- Track design is a mixed bag. There's a lot of fun ones here, but Marble Garden Zone and Balloon Park Zone are some of the worst tracks I've ever seen in the genre and I'm genuinely baffled they were let through. In general, it appears the game has a thing for track design that forces you to slow down if you don't play absolutely perfectly (a good example being the crates in chokepoints in City Escape), whereas in better kart racers every hazard can be dealt with without slowing down simply by knowing the map and playing well. Not even the AI can navigate some of these decently!
- The fast falling button isn't as useful as I thought, since it makes your kart bounce when you land, which makes it far less useful in tighter tracks.
- The tutorial, while still obligatory, can be skipped earlier. I'm still not keen on that - just make the tutorial optional and have a prompt asking if they'd like to play the tutorial when entering Grand Prix or Online for the first time. Time Attack is also unlocked after completing your first race (instead of requiring 82 spray cans, what the hell?!), and, thinking about it, it's absurd it wasn't like this from the get go.
- Online is still locked behind five cups, albeit the optional tutorial race can unlock it instantly now. Just have it unlocked from the get-go! I think the devs' heart is in the right place (it's a hard game and they probably don't want players jumping online immediately and getting discouraged), but this is still oddly restrictive - again, just add a prompt asking if they'd like to learn the mechanics when they start the game or try to go into Grand Prix or Online right away. Mods are also unlocked at the same time.

I'm feeling more positive about this game, albeit there's still some changes to be made before I consider it "pretty good". Personally, I'd do some more balance changes to make items less overtuned and retool tracks so that you aren't forced to slow down at all, and then by making the tutorial optional but heavily recommended.

Again, the devs' heart is in the right place and there's a lot of promise here - the game just needs to move past those aches.

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[ORIGINAL REVIEW - Based on day 1 thoughts.]

I’m learning I’m more tolerant of a lot more bullshit than most people on this site.

A lot of the complaints here are valid. To get it out of the way, yes, the tutorial is needlessly bullshit long. I get it there are many new mechanics here, and I think the presentation for it (and the setup screens before it) is charming and ooze passion from every pore, but the tutorial did not need to be 30-60 minutes long! The vast majority of what’s instructed here could be delivered in 10 minutes, tops.

I’m not too keen on some of the mechanics either; specifically the new currency system and the melee attack attached. You can have up to 20 rings, and that makes you faster (like the coins in Mario Kart and the Wumpa Fruit in Crash Team Racing), but you can spend those rings to charge up a melee attack that hits everyone around you. I don’t really see the point, because the items feel strong already (some maybe a bit too strong), and, y’know, it’s a racing game. Faster options are preferable.

Another I don’t really get is the trick system. I think the idea is fine, but there’s a few gripes I have with it - the UI element for timing a perfect trick (which covers more distance) is needlessly convoluted, and I don’t quite get the need to even have a “perfect” trick mechanic anyway given there’s a fast fall button now. Tricks are also only accessible through trick springs, which I rarely saw within the first seven cups, so it feels like an underused mechanic as well.

Unlike SRB2 Kart, this has a big singleplayer offering - I’m more of a singleplayer type, so that works great for me. What doesn’t is the AI; it feels absurdly aggressive and fucking LOVES to rubber band. It’s not uncommon for you to be doing well and the AI suddenly sails past you while cutting several corners. Maybe I just suck, I dunno, but I haven’t played another kart racing game with this level of bullshittery. There’s a bunch more singleplayer modes from what I gather, but I haven’t unlocked them yet, so… no comment.

However, the dumbest decision here is, by far, the one to lock mods behind completing five cups. The cups here are pretty big for kart racer standards, and considering just how important mods are to the scene that spawned this game… yeah, stupid ass decision. I get wanting to have players familiarize themselves with the game before modding the hell out of it, but this is, at minimum, a questionable approach to that.

Locking online behind completing a cup first is also something that got a lot irritated, and although I am a singleplayer gal first and foremost as I mentioned earlier, I completely understand the frustration - you can’t just hop on with friends online right out of the box. Couple that with the long ass tutorial, and you have a dealbreaker for many.

Another complaint I share is with color customization being locked behind finding spray cans in each map, instead of simply selecting it from the menu like in SBR2 Kart. I don’t mind the idea of having special unlockables hidden in the tracks (Crash Team Racing: Nitro Fueled did something similar with the unlockable metal box in its last update) but color customization feels like something too significant to make the target of a goose chase like that. Getting to the spray cans themselves can be very annoying too, with the few ones I’ve gone after so far being needlessly precise.

Moving on to the positives, this game is gorgeous and sounds great. The menu presentation and general artstyle feels ripped straight out of the Sega Saturn era, and it has a pretty excellent soundtrack, at least from what I’ve heard. The tracks look gorgeous as well, and the sheer number of them is insane. 200+! There appears to be a ridiculous number of SEGA characters, (crossing my fingers that a Yakuza character made the cut) and it’s just got generally really good fanservice.

And… honestly? Behind all the weird decisions here, there’s a really fun racing game here. It’s exhilarating to pull off a powerful drift and keep the speed going, and when the AI isn’t being a total jerk, it provides a really fun challenge! It can be a bit much visually and the game does a bad job explaining items and the new race start mechanic (ironic, given the tutorial’s length), but all in all, when it hits, it hits pretty well. It’s fun.

I absolutely do not blame anyone who decides to go back to SBR2K. Locking online, mods, and customization behind completing singleplayer stuff and that long ass tutorial can be a total dealbreaker if you’re just looking for something to fuck around in with your friends. But… I often just play singleplayer anyway. It works out in my favor here.

There’s a lot of love for the series on display here, and it’s obvious the devs are very passionate - it just needs to hold the player’s hand less.