Developer: Arika
Publisher: Square Enix
Platform: Switch
Tested on: Switch
Chocobo GP – Review
Long gone are the days that every console had its own Mario Kart clone to lure in a certain audience. While we saw a few fun entries over the years, it’s mainly Nintendo’s Mario Kart series that has survived this long. Nonetheless, we see the genre getting more popular again, with entries such as the two Nickelodeon Kart Racers games, Crash Team Racing Nitro-Fueled, and more obscure entries such as All-Star Fruit Racing. Now, however, we get a sequel to 1999’s Chocobo Racing. This new entry in the series has been released for Nintendo’s Switch, and it relies heavily on online play, while also dropping loads of microtransactions upon the players. While the game has a solid foundation, it has many flaws that detract from the fun to be had.
Story
The story in Chocobo GP is quite simple, but it is presented in a very fun way. Chocobo GP will revolve around ‘Racing Hero X’ who is clearly up to something. The game then presents you with a lot of well-known Final Fantasy characters in an adorable chibi-esque form, only for them to join the party. During the story segments, you’ll get a lot of voiced dialogues that involve different characters. When playing through the story mode, you’ll still be able to pick the character(s) you fancy the most. We realize this is an extremely simple way of stating what the story is all about, but even though it was presented in a fun way, the story felt like a long tutorial to us, and also a way to unlock more characters.
Graphics
Graphically Chocobo GP is one of the most adorable Mario Kart clones out there. The character design is absolutely superbly done, and the chibi-versions of many popular Final Fantasy characters as fun to behold. The game also offers many different skins and karts for the different racers, which is also a nice plus. The track design, however, left us with some mixed feelings. Even though many of the tracks do have their own distinct theme and environment, they often felt a bit bland and uninspired.
Sound
The sound design is actually quite good. The game has a fun backdrop, and even though it loops quickly, it never truly gets old. Other than that, the story is completely voiced, which makes the child-friendly story quite appealing. The karts and power-ups all come with matching effects, but the SFX quality is nothing to write home about.
Gameplay
Chocobo GP is a simple arcade racing game that mainly relies on online play. While it is recommended to play through the Story Mode first to unlock many characters, the meat of the game can be found when playing online. The story serves as a fun tutorial to play through, but after clearing it once, there is little incentive to revisit it, safe to get a few more rewards you missed the first time around.
The controls are fairly decent, but some characters are distinctly better than others, and some are not even designed to make certain corners on a few tracks. The game has traditional power-ups, like the ones we see in the Mario Kart series, but you can actually level up the ones you pick up here, saving up for a stronger attack or boost. The game also has a shield, but we have used this many times before getting struck, only for it to do nothing. We are unsure if the shield only counts for certain attacks, but for us, it felt useless, even when having saved up for the most powerful version. Getting hit by enemy attacks halts your character completely, and it will take several seconds to get started again, which is somewhat absurd when tracks are often completed in under two or three minutes.
Even though the above already doesn’t sound too impressive, it gets worse when you look at the plethora of paid content that is available for an already full-priced game. The game tries to push its ‘Prize Pass’ on you on every possible occasion, promising you better rewards. Even when buying the cheapest Prize Pass, your progress is ridiculously slow if you want to unlock fun additional content. This is why the game also offers you a much pricier version that immediately skips to unlocking Cloud as a playable character, which normally only happens when reaching level 60. The game has different types of currencies, some you have to pay for, others you simply get by playing the game and/or leveling up. This means there is luckily also some free content to unlock.
For a game that relies heavily on its online content, it feels as if the developers themselves have never played an online game themselves. When playing the actual online GP mode, which is somewhat mandatory if you want to unlock Prize Pass content, we often found ourselves stuck after one or two races, as some players would disconnect, immediately punishing the other players by not being able to progress anymore. Due to this, we often saw our victory screen loop endlessly until we ourselves also quit the game. This is absolutely ludicrous that there is no timeout counter for players that disconnect. This alone will absolutely ruin your experience when you’re performing well in the different GP races. It gets even worse when you’re stuck on the victory screen and also have the ‘Leave Race’ function fail. Due to this, you’ll have to force shut down the game to actually be able to play again.
Conclusion
Chocobo GP can be an amazing game, if it undergoes a complete rehaul. We loved the fact that we could unlock content in a traditional way (by simply playing the game), but we disliked the many microtransactions, the bland tracks, the overpowered power-ups, and the horrible servers. The character and kart designs are on point, and so are the base mechanics, but it feels as if the game relies too much on trying to rob you of your money. At this current point in time, we can absolutely not recommend this title, as it simply was not ready to be released.
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