Kirby Air Riders (2025)

This will probably be in my playing section for awhile. I'm still acclimating to City Trial but it's been a blast regardless. In every way it's better than the gamecube game, which is probably saying a lot because I put so many hours into the original game.

I've been making my way through NG+ for road trip, but this time I've been playing on super hard. Highly recommend to anyone who thought road trip was missing something! It was missing the super hard difficulty! I'm not usually one for high difficulty stuff but this is how road trip was meant to be played, since it adds real stakes to your run and forces you to actually strategize how you play.

Aluksi tuntui hyvin kummalliselta, että Nintendo julkisti Mario Kart Worldin jälkeen toisen autopelin saman vuoden aikana. Nyt kun peliin on upotettu muutama kymmenen tuntia, niin voin sanoa, ettei se enää olekaan niin kummallista. Tässä kyllä ajetaan (tai oikeastaan liidetään) erinäköisillä ajokeilla, mutta siihen yhtäläisyydet Mario Karttiin jääkin.

Perus Air Ride kisat muistuttavat eniten perus Mario Karttia, mutta ajaminen tuntuu hyvin erilaiselta. Pääperiaate on, että ajokit kulkee automaattisesti etiäpäin, ja painamalla jarrua hidastetaan mutkiin/driftataan ja mutkista lähdetään boostaamalla liikkeelle. Ajamisen lisäksi kisan aikana saa lyötyä kanssakuskeja, imutella muina Kirbyinä kentällä olevia NPC-hahmoja, joilta saa kopioitua erilaisia kykyjä yms ja käytettyä hahmojen erilaisia erikoiskykyjä. Vauhti on yleensä aika kova ja peli on jännä yhdistelmä tiettyä helppoutta, mutta parhaat pelaajat erottuvat vielä enemmän kuin Mario Kartissa.

Pelin parasta antia on ehdottomasti City Trial pelimuoto, jossa 5 minuutin aikana kerätään kentästä ensin oma ajokki ja sen jälkeen erilaisia upgreidejä ajokkiin. Trialin jälkeen osallistutaan kehitetyllä ajokilla yhteen moninaisista minipeleistä (esim korkeushyppy, nopeuskisa, romuralli, bossitappelu tai perus air ride kisa). Minipelin voittaja voittaa koko pelin. City Trialista löytyy myös tiimipelimuoto, joka on ollut moninpelinä mahtavaa menoa.

Yhtenä nostona vielä Road Trip -yksinpelimuoto, joka tarjoaa pientä tarinaa ja vähän ehkä huvittavankin totisia cut scenejä. Yksinpeli tarjoaa mielenkiintoisella tavalla hyvän pidennetyn "tutoriaalin" moninpeliä varten, ja se on jotain mitä jäin kaipaamaan Mario Kart Worldistä.

Pelistä löytyy hirveä määrä pienempiäkin ominaisuuksia, mutta en niitä lähde erikseen listaamaan. Kaiken kaikkiaan peli on hyvin Sakuramainen pieteetillä toteutettu laadukas kokonaisuus, joka tarjoaa hyvin omanlaisensa kokemuksen. Tämä tulee varmasti tarjoamaan vielä monia tunteja moninpelihupia, mutta jo tälläisenään sanoisin, että tämä ylitti kokonaisuutena Mario Kart Worldin.

Hyvä 3/5

I worried a bit after I played Kirby Air Riders 1 recently, because despite liking a lot of it, I found it unwieldy, a bit empty, and not engaging for more than a couple hours... But the sequel swat all that out of the way.

It's a blast to play, every vehicle feels like playing a different racing game, the sense of speed is unreal, and there's a lot of different things to try your hand at.

I do find the design rests a bit too much in the randomness of modes/stats/etc. and wish it had a few more just racing tracks and racing focused things, but it's hard to argue with such a well crafted, exhilarating box of toys. Flying never gets old.

When I saw the announcement of Kirby Air Riders, I was cynical. Slowly, by seeing the directs and excited previews of the game, I grew interested and decided to give the game a shot. I'm glad I did.

Kirby Air Riders is a weird game. It's somewhere between a kart racer and a vehicular combat game with the manic energy of Super Smash Bros. series. It's fast, it's crazy, it's fun. It's simple and it's complex. It feels retro in the sense that it is a complete game at launch with tons of stuff to do and unlock with zero DLCs and other modern shenanigans. It's good.

There's typical races with tracks, there's simple top-down races and then there's the utter madness of City Trial mode. There's also a nifty single player mode, Roadtrip, where you select challenges and different paths and level up you racer in this kind of roguelite-esque fashion. And there's very good vehicle customisation too!

Maybe the weirdness of Kirby Air Riders is its worst enemy: it's for sure harder to grasp and get a good feel of than Mario Kart World. But for those who give it a fair shake (like me), there is a lot to discover and like.

Masahiro Sakurai had a great moment earlier this year during one of his Kirby Air Riders directs where he wondered out loud why Nintendo would ask him to make a sequel to Kirby Air Ride.

"You might be asking yourself if it's basically Mario Kart. You race and battle with familiar characters around courses with different features, or so they say. OK, so it basically is like Mario Kart."

When introducing Kirby Air Riders to my friends and family, that is how I have been starting my pitch. It's like Mario Kart... At its heart, this is an arcadey racing game where you pick your favorites from a colorful roster of characters and vehicles, and partake in chaotic races in a curated list of tracks. Based on that description, anyone who bought into Mario Kart World's steep $80 asking price would be rightfully confused as to why they should ever consider this game.

But let me ask you this. Have you ever played Mario Kart and felt that its mechanics are too shallow? Mario Kart World features a gargantuan list of 50 playable characters that is superficially vast, but offers only very small variations in actual gameplay. Do you ever feel annoyed that Mario Kart's item system punishes you for being in first place? After all, it needs to make sure casual players have a chance to catch up to keep it as a viable party game. Do you ever feel like there isn't enough variety in what you actually do while playing the game? Once you get a feel for Mario Kart's drifting and boosting mechanics, you can kind of play the game on auto-pilot.

Well, friend, what if I told you it doesn't have to be like this! But let me take a step back and quickly set the stage for what Kirby Air Riders is.

Back in 2003, Kirby Air Ride offered an alternative vision for the kart racer. It deconstructed the genre and rebuilt it around the idea of tying every action to a single button. Kirby accelerates automatically, and a press of the A button serves both as your brake and how you charge your boosts. The resulting ruleset creates a constant tension. Since you have to slow down to boost, each turn forces you to decide if you want to gamble your position for a perfectly executed boost. It's the core idea that the game orbits around, and one of the reasons it feels so unique.

Layered on top of this is an involved combat system. Much like in the mainline Kirby titles, you can suck up NPC enemies and gain copy abilities. These abilities are used to damage and slow other players. This gives the game a more deliberate action flavor that Mario Kart only hints at with its randomized shells and bananas, forcing you to always keep positioning and timing at the front of your mind.

All of this came together into an incredibly memorable, if unorthodox package that showed the scars of its tumultuous development. Its one-button control scheme became a target of criticism, with many misinterpreting its simplicity as shallowness. And despite its variety of modes, Air Ride also felt like it had a paradoxical lack of content due to its small number of playable characters and tracks.

This is the foundation that Masahiro Sakurai's SORA Ltd. and Bandai Namco worked from when Nintendo made the unlikely decision to create a sequel to Air Ride. I run through all of that because Kirby Air Riders is simply the original game, luxuriously expanded in almost every way imaginable.

The first new feature here is the greatly expanded roster of playable characters. The original Air Ride offered Meta Knight and King Dedede as unlockable characters in addition to Kirby, but they felt more like playable cameos rather than actual competitive options. Air Riders gives us 21 playable characters, each with their own unique gimmicks. In addition to this, every character also has a Special skill that is charged over time and can be activated with the Y button. For example, King Dedede activates his Jet Hammer to rocket forward, Waddle Doo activates a beam rod to blast their enemies, and Taranza throws spiderwebs to slow down other riders. Kirby still gets special treatment, of course, and has four different specials depending on what color you pick.

The expanded roster adds an additional layer of depth to the game, especially when combined with your choice of kart, or rather, "machine." All machines from Air Ride return, and there are some interesting new additions such as the Paper Star and Transform Star. Unlike in Mario Kart, the difference between how each machine handles is drastic. You have the Warp Star, which is the most balanced option, the Wing Star that favors being in the air, or the Wagon Star that trades the ability to boost for better handling and speed. Then there's the completely off-the-wall options, such as the Swerve Star, which has incredible speed, but forces you to make a complete stop in order to turn, or the Bulk Star which requires you to boost occasionally in order to "charge" it.

The variety on offer makes your selection feel more akin to picking a character in a fighting game, rather than the more aesthetic nature of picking your character in most other kart racers.

All three modes from the original game return, with Air Ride still being the primary racing mode. There have been a number of small tweaks that all add up to a greatly improved game feel. The overall speed of the game seems to have been increased, but not so much that it feels unreasonable to grasp. The drafting system has been overhauled, with every character leaving behind a visible trail of little stars that give you a boost when you drive over them. You also get a tiny boost when attacking other players, further incentivizing combat. It's better than ever, and it's got that addictive "just one more race" feeling that makes the hours just melt away.

City Trial also makes its triumphant return, and it works much the same as in the original game. You are dropped in a small city with 15 other players, and are let loose for 5 minutes while you scramble to find a machine and power up its stats with power-ups littered around the map. Once the time is up, you unleash your unholy creation on the other players via a Stadium match, random mini-games that include things such as short races, target flights and brawls. It's a deliciously chaotic party mode that can be enjoyed more casually than the primary racing modes.

Tying everything together is the new Road Trip single-player mode, which perfectly stitches together a grab-bag of bite-sized chunks of the other modes in a similar fashion to the single-player experiences you find in the Super Smash Bros. games. It presents the perfect opportunity to get a taste of all the mechanics and familiarize yourself with everything. Challenges also return, giving you a reason to branch out and play all the modes. Then, once you feel confident enough, you can take your skills online with the excellent online features. You can play every mode online (except Road Trip), and Air Riders potentially features the best online implementation of any Nintendo game I have played. Everything is snappy, smooth and seamless.

It's not all perfect; Kirby Air Riders still suffers a little bit from its overly-simplified control scheme. Sucking up enemies is still tied to your boost button, leading to some contextual wonkiness at times. Attacking by wiggling your stick still doesn't feel great. And while City Trial is an excellent party mode, I wish that the Stadium mini-game was revealed to players before the match rather than after, in order to encourage competition for specific power-up types rather than having it be an aimless free-for-all. Visually, it also looks like a pretty standard (albeit good-looking) Switch 1 game. It performs excellently, but I'm not quite sure why it is a Switch 2 exclusive.

While I think this is an excellent and complete package, I do feel a little sad that there is no DLC on its way, because this game is just begging for more courses and City Trial maps.

So, let me return to my initial thesis: Why would you consider this over Mario Kart? If all you are looking for is a casual and accessible racer you can easily play with family and friends, then look no further than Mario Kart World. I don't want to come across as a Mario Kart hater here, but that series has its time and place. But if you want a game with depth and an extremely high skill ceiling, then Kirby Air Riders is your pick.

While its simple control scheme is easy to pick up on paper, its ultra-fast pace and diverse set of characters and machines can be pretty difficult for the casual gamer to wrap their head around without practice. The systems in Air Riders are much more preoccupied with rewarding skill, offering a refreshing alternative to the randomness of Mario Kart's item system. And then there's just the fact that it's filled with so many innumerable little bells and whistles: you can customize your machines and share them online, buy little hats for your characters, save your replays, take part in time-limited exclusive modes... All of those great little details add up to a fantastic experience.

I can really only put it this way: You've played a Sakurai game before, right? Imagine a frenetic kart racer made with the same outstanding level of depth and care as Super Smash Bros. Ultimate. That is Kirby Air Riders!

I don’t think I’m alone in being less familiar with the original Kirby Air Ride than a bunch of its mascot racing cousins, so it’s a welcome surprise in a year with a new Mario Kart and Sonic Racing that this has an argument to be the best new game in that genre. It impresses right away with vibrant visuals and easy-to-learn racing and combat mechanics that quickly reveal its chaotic appeal. The variety of distinct vehicles, character abilities, modes/variants, and customization options serve that energetic gameplay well and make this really feel worth it.

It may not be clear why someone should buy this instead of or in addition to Mario Kart World, and honestly you might just need to watch or try some of it somehow to see how different it is. I would mostly describe it as just a much more active and exciting game that has more emphasis on combat against other racers and NPC enemies on the track. Fighting gives you a direct speed boost, NPC enemies can give you powers, drafting trails are really long, tracks have interesting terrain and gimmicks, and the base-level drifting/boosting/flying stuff is pretty interesting, so there’s just a high level of engagement at any moment with all the systems interacting and blasting you off to the finish line.

Another unique thing you’ll hear about the gameplay is that it has a “one-button” control scheme. While not entirely accurate as special abilities are on a different button, it is mostly true that you pretty much just use the control stick and one button to contextually brake, drift, attack, get power-ups, quickly land from midair, and probably something else I’m forgetting. Like some other ultra-simplified control schemes, it can be a little awkward and remind you why we usually use more buttons, but it’s a somewhat interesting part of the game’s learning curve and does work.

This also has a much bigger variety of gameplay feels to offer you than many racing games through its unique vehicles, which can totally transform how you engage with the core mechanics and track designs and have situational value worth learning or experimenting with. Characters also vary by more than just stats thanks to their special abilities which offer some unique combat or racing advantage as well. Even if all that weren’t the case, the amount of modes and rule variants present here is pretty large, including a really well-done top-down racing mode that I enjoy a lot, more arena combat style things, and some more unique objectives that I’ll let you discover.

You will encounter a lot of those in the main structured single-player mode, a 2-hour fiesta of dozens of races, battles, and minigames which you usually select from 3 available options. Along the way you are constantly leveling and upgrading a bunch of stats one point at a time, eventually reaching Level >200. I had a great time with this mode at first thanks to that variety and fast pace, but after finishing it once I’m not sure how well it really works overall. The stat upgrades are so granular that I didn’t really “feel” them, and the structure just kinda goes on and on and on and gets old. I think this format would benefit from being shorter but with bigger upgrades like perks or huge batches of points, so you can try different builds and experience the branching paths more quickly. When playing single-player in the future, I think I'd generally gravitate to more bite-sized modes like the time trials and save this one for when I'm tired of that.

Luckily of course multiplayer is there to smooth over any reservations I have about just grinding out the single player, and while it takes kind of a long time to get into ranked online matches in my limited experience, the online is overall very smooth. A lot of care was put into this package to make sure you have stuff to do, and while I’m not really personally interested in chasing down the game’s hundreds of little challenges or collecting cosmetic things, it is fun having a constant stream of little achievement unlocks just from playing normally. That feeling of fun and player-friendly value seems to be all over this and makes it something that I don’t think many people would regret picking up. It’s not something I’ll be regularly playing for years to come, but it does seem like a dependable source of nice little bursts of colorful fun.

I played a little bit thanks to the Global Test Rider and it was fun.

I was afraid the gameplay would be confusing because in the trailers the gameplay looks FAST, but it is actually managable. The roads have enough space for you to think where you are going.

I would say it is easier to understand where you are supposed to go than on Mario Kart World lol

By the way, it looks stupidly similar to Super Smash Bros Ultimate, assuming they reused the engine and some assets. The menu is literally the Super Smash Bros menu with other options lmao.

Not sure if I am paying full price but I do think for co-op and multiplayer might be a strong one for the NS2.