Rather than being able to carry one or two, here you can have up to three, and if you have two of the same item, then you elevate it to the next “tier” of potency. The “innovation” in Chocobo GP is the way items work. Everything that has become standard for the genre, from speed boosts from drifting to the ability to do tricks in the air after a jump for another speed boost, has been faithfully implemented into Chocobo GP, with tight controls and nicely designed courses making nailing the perfect racing line a thrill. The moment-to-moment kart racing is both excellent and familiar. Especially with season passes encouraging people to keep coming back. However, in concept, they are a great idea, and with that being a feature available on the free-to-play version, perhaps it will defy my expectations and you’ll be enjoying tense tournaments over the years to come. I will say that I’m not sure that Chocobo GP will maintain a community that large for those tournaments, given that it’s only the Chocobo fans that are going to persist in playing. The developers clearly wanted you to spend the bulk of your time playing online, however, with 64-racer tournaments being a major feature, to go with the more standard single race that you can organise online with buddies. Elsewhere there is a time trial mode, and shaving seconds off the time and trying to sneak past the ghosts is always a fun and rewarding process. Still, what is there is nicely varied and designed. It would have been nice for Chocobo GP to be a little more expansive in scope. People are going to be critical of the lack of content in this game as a result, and that is fair enough. On paper, this mode features a lot of cups, but that’s deceptive in a way since, across those cups, you’ll encounter a lot of variations of the same track, rather than a constant barrage of new tracks. Outside of the story mode, there is, of course, the single player GP. This is also a good progression system that drip-feeds you characters at a perfectly adequate rate. You’ll need to play the story mode to unlock all the characters, and while it’s not exactly Tolstoy in its storytelling quality, after so many massive and complex RPGs it has been downright refreshing to tap through bubbly, cutsey nonsense between races. Not only does that mean that there’s plenty of variety in the races themselves, but additionally, the story mode can be a sequence of nonsense interactions between a wide variety of beloved characters. But, most importantly, the developers have focused on putting an expansive range of characters into the game, and made sure that each character has their own personality on track (complete with fun taunt buttons). Wonderful remixes of iconic tunes will fill your ears as you zoom around levels that are clearly representative of the Final Fantasy heritage. So how well does Chocobo GP work as mascot delivery fan service experience? Incredibly well, is the answer. A far better point of comparison for Chocobo GP would actually be Chocobo Dungeon (also on Nintendo Switch) because that, too, is as much a delivery mechanism for Chocobo as much as it is anything else. In the eyes of the people that will be interested in this game, the value in it is how well it delivers the fan service, and not whether it’s comparable to another kart racing game with an entirely different bunch of characters. The people who are going to be interested in Chocobo GP are going to be interested in it not because it’s a kart racer, but because it features the Chocobo, the Moogle, and various other cutsey characters from Square Enix’s iconic roster of mascots. People are going to somehow overlook that, but it’s actually important. But do you know what Mario Kart doesn’t have? Chocobo. Mario Kart is going to come out on top in most people’s estimation because it has more tracks (especially with the big DLC drop coming up), and was built on the kind of budget that Nintendo throws at its most potent properties. They are, after all, both nominally kart racers, and Mario Kart is the sales and mindshare king of this genre. Of course, you’re going to see comparisons to Mario Kart when people talk about Chocobo GP. It’s a character mascot event, in other words, and it does that perfectly. It looks great, and plays well enough that the real appeal of the experience, the characters, can shine. As a bright and happy bit of fan service, Chocobo GP is wholesome, charming, cheerful and executed with precision. Sometimes a game comes along and just wants to be a bright, happy bit of fan service, and to criticise it for that, and not being something that it’s not, seems a bit silly.
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