Steelie
Meerkat from outer space
I finally got off my rear and played Ring Racers. I wrote down most of my thoughts in the community Discord, but it'd be nicer to have a concise article in a more available forum than scattered sentences across a chatroom.
I played through the tutorial and the first two GPs. To be brutally honest, I really didn't enjoy it. The presentation, graphics, music and the little tutorial dialogue are all A+, exceptionally professionally made. The main hurdle of the game is unfortunately the meat on the bone, its gameplay. I don't necessarily want to spin the same criticisms that have been spoken a thousand times so I'll try to talk about what I feel are the most important and jarring decisions holding this game down (at least in my opinion).
To start with, the drifting. I personally consider myself a fairly decent player when it comes to Kart-styled games. I played both Transformed and TSR on Expert and have around 10.1k VR on Mario Kart 8 DX online. Yet the drifting in this game gives me an unreasonably difficult time. It feels very unintuitive and the traction during drifts is nearly non-existant. Way too often did it happen that what looked like fairly normal turns either flung me into off-road shortly after I started a drift or made me turn so sharply I hit a wall on the inside of the turn.
In comparison to the official games, both TSR and MK8DX make the drifting feel satisfying, as just the intuition when twisting the joystick around to compensate for the various turns is extremely responsive, and rarely does it feel like it wasn't my fault when I screw up on a sharp (or sometimes even shallow) turn. I imagine this is a hurdle that I could eventually overcome if I kept to the game, if not for the rest of the issues I have with it.
Personally I don't really like the rings mechanic and the item system in general. First thing I did was making the item roulette random as I was pretty darn sure that keeping an eye on the track, rivals and items in front of me would keep me occupied enough and I didn't need another distraction. Unfortunately the ring counter was already enough of one. Way too often did I spend all my rings trying to catch up to my rival without even realizing it because I was fully focused on the track and didn't stop to notice my ring counter.
I also fairly dislike that holding my item prevents me from using my rings, as those are essential in not losing speed AND spots driving up slopes. That was my biggest gripe with Storm Rig, where there was an item set right before a sloped turn that I had to spend immediately just to use my rings during which several CPUs always passed me which I couldn't do anything about. The items themselves are also a bit of a bummer. Like Majro mentioned several posts above, way too many of them have a redundant mine function, while some of them are not fun to use at all. The spinny top from Marble Garden is genuinely horrible to control (having to stop to change direction like the green spike vehicle in Kirby Air Ride) and the Grow powerup just feels wrong that it doesn't ignore off-road.
I lost a fair amount of races while playing the two GPs, and wasn't particularly thrilled that the game just forces me to restart a race just because I got 5th or worse. This really should be my own choice - not the game's - if I want to restart a race after a bad placement. Every time it happened and I lost a life it really felt like the game's just wasting my time. I know a similar lives system was in place all the way back in Super Mario Kart, but that's a 30-year-old game. 30 years ago Nintendo already established the system sucks, so why bring it back?
And now it brings me probably to the most contentious topic about this game - the dreaded CPUs. Frankly I thought people were overreacting a bit the first time I heard how extremely cheaty they are, but I can happily confirm, they are beyond insufferable. It's not just that the CPU rival just loves to come out of nowhere any time I'm doing particularly well, but also that whenever I actually do badly, it's near impossible for me to catch up. Racing against the CPUs in their current state is not fun and I vehemently disagree that making CPUs rubberband and cheat so the player doesn't just mop the floor with them is the correct path.
All of these issues together actively discouraged me from playing the game beyond the second GP, and I'll be hard-pressed to pick it up again if at least some of those problems aren't touched upon (the drifting, lives and cheating CPUs I found the most egregious). Of course I'm just one person and I don't expect changes to be made just to accommodate me. That would be a silly and entirely selfish line of thinking, but I have seen a lot of people having similar or exact same issues as I'm having, so I can dream, right?
All in all, this isn't a casual pick-and-play game that the Kart genre is best known for. Mario Kart 8, for example, I could enjoy with my partner without trouble even when it was my first time and I was garbage at the game. A lot of my concerns could potentially be solved if I pushed myself into actually learning and getting good at playing it, but if I have to pour hours and hours of attention into a game just so I can start enjoying it, is it really worth it? About a decade ago when I was in my teenage years without a day job and didn't have other hobbies to cultivate, I would more likely put that time and effort into it, but right now it doesn't feel reasonable to me.
TL;DR While the game is beautiful, the gameplay is not enjoyable. Drifting is clunky and unituitive. Rings and the item roulette are distracting. Items range from redundant to obnoxious. I don't believe lives should be a thing in a racing game. And CPUs cheat worse than MK64 bots and make GPs frustrating to play.
I played through the tutorial and the first two GPs. To be brutally honest, I really didn't enjoy it. The presentation, graphics, music and the little tutorial dialogue are all A+, exceptionally professionally made. The main hurdle of the game is unfortunately the meat on the bone, its gameplay. I don't necessarily want to spin the same criticisms that have been spoken a thousand times so I'll try to talk about what I feel are the most important and jarring decisions holding this game down (at least in my opinion).
To start with, the drifting. I personally consider myself a fairly decent player when it comes to Kart-styled games. I played both Transformed and TSR on Expert and have around 10.1k VR on Mario Kart 8 DX online. Yet the drifting in this game gives me an unreasonably difficult time. It feels very unintuitive and the traction during drifts is nearly non-existant. Way too often did it happen that what looked like fairly normal turns either flung me into off-road shortly after I started a drift or made me turn so sharply I hit a wall on the inside of the turn.
In comparison to the official games, both TSR and MK8DX make the drifting feel satisfying, as just the intuition when twisting the joystick around to compensate for the various turns is extremely responsive, and rarely does it feel like it wasn't my fault when I screw up on a sharp (or sometimes even shallow) turn. I imagine this is a hurdle that I could eventually overcome if I kept to the game, if not for the rest of the issues I have with it.
Personally I don't really like the rings mechanic and the item system in general. First thing I did was making the item roulette random as I was pretty darn sure that keeping an eye on the track, rivals and items in front of me would keep me occupied enough and I didn't need another distraction. Unfortunately the ring counter was already enough of one. Way too often did I spend all my rings trying to catch up to my rival without even realizing it because I was fully focused on the track and didn't stop to notice my ring counter.
I also fairly dislike that holding my item prevents me from using my rings, as those are essential in not losing speed AND spots driving up slopes. That was my biggest gripe with Storm Rig, where there was an item set right before a sloped turn that I had to spend immediately just to use my rings during which several CPUs always passed me which I couldn't do anything about. The items themselves are also a bit of a bummer. Like Majro mentioned several posts above, way too many of them have a redundant mine function, while some of them are not fun to use at all. The spinny top from Marble Garden is genuinely horrible to control (having to stop to change direction like the green spike vehicle in Kirby Air Ride) and the Grow powerup just feels wrong that it doesn't ignore off-road.
I lost a fair amount of races while playing the two GPs, and wasn't particularly thrilled that the game just forces me to restart a race just because I got 5th or worse. This really should be my own choice - not the game's - if I want to restart a race after a bad placement. Every time it happened and I lost a life it really felt like the game's just wasting my time. I know a similar lives system was in place all the way back in Super Mario Kart, but that's a 30-year-old game. 30 years ago Nintendo already established the system sucks, so why bring it back?
And now it brings me probably to the most contentious topic about this game - the dreaded CPUs. Frankly I thought people were overreacting a bit the first time I heard how extremely cheaty they are, but I can happily confirm, they are beyond insufferable. It's not just that the CPU rival just loves to come out of nowhere any time I'm doing particularly well, but also that whenever I actually do badly, it's near impossible for me to catch up. Racing against the CPUs in their current state is not fun and I vehemently disagree that making CPUs rubberband and cheat so the player doesn't just mop the floor with them is the correct path.
All of these issues together actively discouraged me from playing the game beyond the second GP, and I'll be hard-pressed to pick it up again if at least some of those problems aren't touched upon (the drifting, lives and cheating CPUs I found the most egregious). Of course I'm just one person and I don't expect changes to be made just to accommodate me. That would be a silly and entirely selfish line of thinking, but I have seen a lot of people having similar or exact same issues as I'm having, so I can dream, right?
All in all, this isn't a casual pick-and-play game that the Kart genre is best known for. Mario Kart 8, for example, I could enjoy with my partner without trouble even when it was my first time and I was garbage at the game. A lot of my concerns could potentially be solved if I pushed myself into actually learning and getting good at playing it, but if I have to pour hours and hours of attention into a game just so I can start enjoying it, is it really worth it? About a decade ago when I was in my teenage years without a day job and didn't have other hobbies to cultivate, I would more likely put that time and effort into it, but right now it doesn't feel reasonable to me.
TL;DR While the game is beautiful, the gameplay is not enjoyable. Drifting is clunky and unituitive. Rings and the item roulette are distracting. Items range from redundant to obnoxious. I don't believe lives should be a thing in a racing game. And CPUs cheat worse than MK64 bots and make GPs frustrating to play.