Disney Speedstorm is a great kart racer trapped behind every mobile game trope. Needing character shards to get/rank up characters, needing extraneous upgrade materials to level characters up (increases stats), loot boxes, THREE different kinds of currency, crew members akin to Smash Bro Spirits; its all there.
Gonna say this first and foremost, this game is goated enough that you can play this game locally with NO mobile bullshit. You get access to all characters and they are all level 15. So if you wanna have some normal cart racer fun, you actually still can surprisingly. Im not sure if you can set up a friend lobby online with those rules.
Let's get to the actual game stuff first. There are 4 classes of racers: speedster, brawler, defender, and trickster. The differences I can tell are probably their statlines, and how they attain boost meter. Speedsters get boost by hitting boost pads (boost pads speed anyone up, but speedsters get some meter too), brawlers by attacking opponents either with items or side bashing into them, defenders by staying in opponent's drafts (behind them), and trickters i think by using items(??) idk really i couldnt find the info in game.
Every series in the game has a track, and all tracks have multiple configurations. They are all fun and they all look good. Each configuration has its own music track, and the music in this game fucking rules. They are usually remixes of songs from whatever series the track is. The Toon Village has a remix of the Mickey Mouse Club from fucking 1960, the fucking chant is so good. Or this fucking Bear Necessities, god the chorus is implemented so FUCKING WELL. There is usually at least 2 remixes of a song, like they use Gaston at least twice in the Beauty and the Beast castle. Yeah im just gonna post some more highlights now. Monsters Inc. theme, Hercules, even the main menu.
Also its got some character picks I fuck with. Celia Mae from Monster's Inc, Gantu and Angel (pink Stitch) from Lilo and Stitch (I fucking wish Pleakley was playable), Meg from Hercules.
You have to collect 10 character shards (mainly through loot boxes) to unlock a character, then the amount needed increases ever time you want to increase their rank. Every character has a unique item box power, but you can't get them until you get rank 2; further ranks upgrade how strong your item box powers are and allow for more crew members. Leveling up your characters is pretty easy at first, but as their get higher, you need rarer materials and every character (maybe its every series) also has unique epic materials so good luck getting that. Also you are level gated by character ranks, i.e. a rank 1 character cant go past level 15, rank 2 25. Every season you get a free character from whatever series they add to the game; the season I started was Alladdin so you get Jasmine for free. They give you enough materials and shards to get her to rank 2, and to level her up to the required levels to play the single player stuff. They don't really provide you with stuff to get her past rank 2.
The season passes are cool cause you get a long single player campaign over 3 months i think? There are multiple chapters (they unlock weekly) and within each chapter is a little path that leads to races and loot chests. Each race has 3 objectives to do for medals, medals can block paths and also get you battle pass points. Like I said last paragraph, you get a free character from the season and are provided with enough materials to finish the main path of the season. Eventually, however, you will not be able to do side paths if you don't have other characters leveled. There are some races that require you to have characters from a series you may not have, OR those characters may not meat the required level and you will not be able to out skill the npc's, they are just faster. You can't do those races, you miss out on medals and rewards, and then slowly more and more paths are locked from lack of medals. The AI naturally just gets tougher, as they also start getting their unique abilities from boxes and it kind of becomes and annoying item clusterfuck sometimes. Some characters just have really annoying abilities, like Gantu just sends a spaceship forward that drops goo on the ground that makes you hard spin out.
One of the currencies is season specific, and you get it from the battle pass or from loot boxes in the single player. You can buy some daily stuff from the store (usually inconsequential) or some lootboxes. There are lootboxes for every series, but those cost real money currency.
I played some online ranked to get a fuller understanding. Each character has a different rank, and their own battle pass progression through the ranks. Usually resulting in loot that is for that character (shards, upgrade materials, cosmetics), but there are also multiplayer points, the third currency. There wasn't a whole lot I could see to buy with them. So yeah, ranked is a progression bar and not really like a rank you can loose. The higher places in races, the more points to fill out the bar. Side bashing opponents always gives you a shield to protect from dangers in this mode for some reason so its always good to do that.
So yeah, I think this is a fun kart racer, and it is only hindered by stupid mobile shit. Its fun to play, it looks good, its got some great character picks, and the music is so so good.
Gonna say this first and foremost, this game is goated enough that you can play this game locally with NO mobile bullshit. You get access to all characters and they are all level 15. So if you wanna have some normal cart racer fun, you actually still can surprisingly. Im not sure if you can set up a friend lobby online with those rules.
Let's get to the actual game stuff first. There are 4 classes of racers: speedster, brawler, defender, and trickster. The differences I can tell are probably their statlines, and how they attain boost meter. Speedsters get boost by hitting boost pads (boost pads speed anyone up, but speedsters get some meter too), brawlers by attacking opponents either with items or side bashing into them, defenders by staying in opponent's drafts (behind them), and trickters i think by using items(??) idk really i couldnt find the info in game.
Every series in the game has a track, and all tracks have multiple configurations. They are all fun and they all look good. Each configuration has its own music track, and the music in this game fucking rules. They are usually remixes of songs from whatever series the track is. The Toon Village has a remix of the Mickey Mouse Club from fucking 1960, the fucking chant is so good. Or this fucking Bear Necessities, god the chorus is implemented so FUCKING WELL. There is usually at least 2 remixes of a song, like they use Gaston at least twice in the Beauty and the Beast castle. Yeah im just gonna post some more highlights now. Monsters Inc. theme, Hercules, even the main menu.
Also its got some character picks I fuck with. Celia Mae from Monster's Inc, Gantu and Angel (pink Stitch) from Lilo and Stitch (I fucking wish Pleakley was playable), Meg from Hercules.
You have to collect 10 character shards (mainly through loot boxes) to unlock a character, then the amount needed increases ever time you want to increase their rank. Every character has a unique item box power, but you can't get them until you get rank 2; further ranks upgrade how strong your item box powers are and allow for more crew members. Leveling up your characters is pretty easy at first, but as their get higher, you need rarer materials and every character (maybe its every series) also has unique epic materials so good luck getting that. Also you are level gated by character ranks, i.e. a rank 1 character cant go past level 15, rank 2 25. Every season you get a free character from whatever series they add to the game; the season I started was Alladdin so you get Jasmine for free. They give you enough materials and shards to get her to rank 2, and to level her up to the required levels to play the single player stuff. They don't really provide you with stuff to get her past rank 2.
The season passes are cool cause you get a long single player campaign over 3 months i think? There are multiple chapters (they unlock weekly) and within each chapter is a little path that leads to races and loot chests. Each race has 3 objectives to do for medals, medals can block paths and also get you battle pass points. Like I said last paragraph, you get a free character from the season and are provided with enough materials to finish the main path of the season. Eventually, however, you will not be able to do side paths if you don't have other characters leveled. There are some races that require you to have characters from a series you may not have, OR those characters may not meat the required level and you will not be able to out skill the npc's, they are just faster. You can't do those races, you miss out on medals and rewards, and then slowly more and more paths are locked from lack of medals. The AI naturally just gets tougher, as they also start getting their unique abilities from boxes and it kind of becomes and annoying item clusterfuck sometimes. Some characters just have really annoying abilities, like Gantu just sends a spaceship forward that drops goo on the ground that makes you hard spin out.
One of the currencies is season specific, and you get it from the battle pass or from loot boxes in the single player. You can buy some daily stuff from the store (usually inconsequential) or some lootboxes. There are lootboxes for every series, but those cost real money currency.
I played some online ranked to get a fuller understanding. Each character has a different rank, and their own battle pass progression through the ranks. Usually resulting in loot that is for that character (shards, upgrade materials, cosmetics), but there are also multiplayer points, the third currency. There wasn't a whole lot I could see to buy with them. So yeah, ranked is a progression bar and not really like a rank you can loose. The higher places in races, the more points to fill out the bar. Side bashing opponents always gives you a shield to protect from dangers in this mode for some reason so its always good to do that.
So yeah, I think this is a fun kart racer, and it is only hindered by stupid mobile shit. Its fun to play, it looks good, its got some great character picks, and the music is so so good.