ok the one piece fans were right though it literally does get good 27 hours in

seriously a combination of patch 2.2 and improving my skill over the course of the last while has turned this from a game i was really mixed on to a game i can’t put down, it’s a crazy turnaround. i still can’t say my old review was wrong, though. it’s a real criticism that the experience as a beginner is so rough, and while i got stockholmed into sticking with it, i can completely understand why others would just give up after a few cups, ESPECIALLY on earlier versions. if you did, though… maybe try again? special stages are much easier to get into and much fairer, cpu rubber banding is nerfed, slopes don’t drag you down as much without rings, and the weirder challenges are finally starting to get well documented alongside the game itself making them easier to skip.

…balloon park still exists, though, so it’s not all good news. oh well.

Still not done with this one, but with the type of game this is, I don’t know when I will be, so I might as well write my thoughts now before a patch comes and forces me to rethink everything.

As of now (version 2.1) it is an incredibly fun but deeply flawed kart racer, one of the best of its genre yet incredibly polarizing and difficult to recommend.

It does indeed bring more skill to the standard Mario Kart-type gameplay, however it seems these applications of mechanical depth are often misplaced, as you’re given ample tutorials and tools for obscure things like aerial falling speed, braking in regard to stage hazards, etc., yet nothing to combat rampant CPU rubber-banding, and in the case of your rival, direct cheating. In this sense, the infamous tutorial is less a problem of “information overload” and moreso a problem of focusing on the wrong information entirely.

The core ring system really is fun and strategic, and adds a lot, but it’s hindered significantly by the team’s apparent hesitance to let it stand by itself, with its crutches coming in the form of extremely heavy slope nerfs and a frustrating “last ditch maneuver” that always ends up screwing the player over accidentally by getting them into debt or ignoring items when they didn’t intend to use the thing at all. Plus, the decision to have items override your ring button is just… awful, and discourages the usage of items in the first place.

Collectibles and unlocks can be quite fun, but clearly suffered scope-creep over the course of development, with many spray cans being either ridiculously difficult or mind-numbingly easy to collect, and many challenges being insultingly vague, with the Chao key system certainly helping to mitigate things, but far from remedying them entirely, especially with the rude decision to make one or two big challenges non-optional by using a blank tile around their perimeter.

Character selection is… good, I think? I’ve never seen a game with this many characters that takes so long to unlock them. It really should’ve been tied to cup completion, or something.

Honestly, the only thing I can praise without a caveat is the track design, the choices of Sonic locales and general theming are hit after hit with no shortage of memorability. (Besides Balloon Park, fuck Balloon Park, what the hell was Balloon Park doing.)

I think with patches and mods, this game will get much, much better, and I really do look forward to it. So please, do give it a shot, but if you choose to wait a few months, even years… I can’t say I blame you.