Sonic R but with anime girls...
I repeat: Sonic R but with anime girls!
[h2] Positives: [/h2]
[b]+[/b] Adorable idea that is well executed, Sonic R but with anime girls is a lovely idea.
[b]+[/b] Surprisingly solid dialogue and characters, villains motivations revealed at the end just 'click', you'll likely have a friend/know someone with/who had the same quirk. English translation also solid.
[b]+[/b] Runs well whilst looking pretty good, loading times especially the start-up boot are fast, my GTX 1070 gets 100 FPS utilising under 40% of the GPU and this is with my garbage tier CPU (i5 4460, 4 Cores @ 3.2 Ghz) not straining either.
[b]+[/b] Track design is great as a sort of hybrid of a platformer and arcade racing game, it is basic in terms of they are all extruded splines with no real split paths/terrain variety.
[b]+[/b] The reward for more completion is essentially new swimsuits and dance moves for the 5 lead girls, which actually is quite a nice thing to toy with and arrange the best-fitting dance moves and outfits for each girl in the Lounger area...
[b]+[/b] ... which is doubled up as a + with the games music being rather solid, especially the "Swing" theme (toy track theme), you can set any music track in the Lounge and have the girls jam to it - super adorable.
[b]+[/b] Complete lack of filler/RPG-like bloat, you just race and/or customise dancing girls, even the story mode has a quick pace but gets the point across well enough. Makes a nice change from 5-8-hours of content games bloated to 40 for some reason.
[b]+[/b] Rather solid controls that are easy to grasp but harder to master, I'd say only the drift controls need work (they are liable to going in the wrong direction a little too easily I'd say).
[b]+[/b] Solid set of options such as camera height, hiding the User Interface, auto acceleration turned on and volume sliders.
[h2] Neutrals: [/h2]
[b]~[/b] Story is a glorified tutorial mode, it can be 100%-ed in 90 minutes.
[b]~[/b] Bounty mode, unlocked after Story mode, has solid replay value but is also cheesable (your race position does not matter at ALL for progression). It also doesn't let you use unlocked outfits only DLC outfits.
[b]~[/b] Game modes in general are basic, despite a platforming-like track design there's no time trial mode or any mode where you can set your own parameters (single track, number of AI, multiplayer, if items on or not, if time trial or not, number of laps etc).
[b]~[/b] Not a huge number of tracks (9 tracks that have ~40 second lap times each) nor great variety within them structure wise, stage gimmicks like swinging hammers, gusts of wind and moving walls help add the needed variety.
[b]~[/b] Workshop support (on paper, only the developer has posted mods so not sure how open this is) with a couple of interesting mods such as playing as a tank.
[b]~[/b] Very easy 100% achievements (as your position does not matter in Bounty mode) but may have to 'kill time' at the end to pay off the bounty (I had 15% to go after 100%-ing everything else).
[h2] Negatives: [/h2]
[b]-[/b] AI opponents aggressively cheat, this is rubber banding incarnate especially beyond Bounty level 100 or so (of 240), you will catch them moving faster than you whilst standing still often, winning other than in the easy story mode is not required to progress so not as huge deal, but blatant.
[b]-[/b] Minor but some visual bugs, shadow draw distance is super close which is distracting in the Lounge if zoom out/in and sometimes loading into a stage some textures fail to load and display jet-black. Some UV maps are also iffy (how textures are applied to models, they can repeat/tile awkwardly).
[b]-[/b] Display options are bugged, when the game 1st booted it was full 16:9 1080p on my 1080p monitor but after changing this setting once it can never go back to 1080p, 16:9 900p is where it maxes out now (or 4:3 1080p of all things). It also seems to only run in windowed mode (not borderless).
[h2] DLC note and conclusion: [/h2]
The DLC outfits in this game offer slightly higher base-states per racer if you need to win races, but as this is not required for 100% completion wouldn't say this is 'pay to win'. Additionally the developer has offered more free model swaps in the Workshop that total DLC so I'd more view buying DLC as 'showing support' to the developer rather than them being cheeky.
To sum up this is an adorable idea done rather well, whether the game is worth full price if iffy as the main appeal is the unique concept rather than it's "content rich". This game for sure has potential left on the table to 'flesh it out' such as more options/modes but if for those of us who just want immediately fun games that don't pad the run-time this is a very solid effort. On paper this is probably a mid 6/10 game but due to the unique idea bump that up to 7-7.5/10 or so.
