This game is a spiritual successor to Sonic & Sega: All Stars Racing in my opinion, and NOT is sequel.
From the fan service to the deep cut refences, incredible character roaster, while not having an announcer with 6+ hours of dialog, the character interactions make up for it. Heck the announcer does still do a great job with his limited times he does speak, he puts his heart into saying Kraken Bay and Holoska!
The callbacks to past Sonic & Sega games is great too, Bingo Highway and Seaside Hill, while being basic choices, are great to see back in a reimagined way, Galactic Parade (while being a very frustrating track to race on) is very nice to see back from Transformed. As much as i have a sour taste for Transformed I WILL say, it did do great on its track design, my one hope is for Burning Depths to return later on, maybe if Burning Rangers somehow gets a character in as a racer.
The inclusion of Extreme Gear too is such a refresher, seeing as we haven't had a riders game since Free Riders. Being able to have any racer use ANY vehicle is such a nice change too. Though i do with in single player post launch characters would race along side you in Grand Prix and Race Park, not even Super Sonic joins the roaster for races.
Its not all good as i do have some problems with the game, most notably the currency problem. Now during a Festival tickets are quite easy to rack up, heck just from grinding the Samba De Amigo Festival I racked up 7.4k tickets, but when there Isn't a Festival going on? its a snails pace for tickets. maybe have double ticket weekends? Who knows.
DLC characters not having voices sucks a lot too, mods can fix this but for some characters like Amigo and the Creeper (Maracas and Hisses), who's voices are quite literally just sounds not being included is just odd.
I would like to see more tracks be added that aren't related to crossover DLC, even if they're paid i would still love some more variety, even though Crossworlds has REALLY GOOD track design, i think I've played enough to see all the tracks enough times? Who knows.
My biggest fear for this game, now this is a fear out of pure love, is they stop supporting this game. This game is leagues better than just about every other cart racer I've played since as mentioned previously S&SASR, and I don't want it to just randomly lose getting updates because Sega says something else is more important or some other weird reason.
TLDR:
If this game is under $50 at any point. GET IT IMMEDIETLY. it is 100% worth the money. it is optimized wonderfully, and you'll get addicted to it quickly. I personally picked up the deluxe edition when it was recently on sale for about $35. Worth every penny.
