When Kirby Air Riders was announced earlier this year, I was a bit confused. As much as I love the 2003 original, two Nintendo kart racing games in the same year felt odd–a fact that even game director Masahiro Sakurai candidly pointed out in a Nintendo Direct. It’s especially strange given how intentional Nintendo has been with its steady stream of Switch 2 first-party releases. However, to reduce Kirby Air Riders to another kart racer feels disingenuous. Yes, racing is at the center of the experience, but what makes Kirby Air Riders stand out is how it bends its foundational mechanics to create new game modes and refine older ones. The result is a terrific sequel packed with clever ideas, fun challenges, and a lot of charm.
Mechanically, Kirby Air Riders is simple. You accelerate automatically, so aside from steering your racing machine left and right, there are two inputs: Boost Charge and Special. Boost Charge is essentially a brake that charges a brief speed boost. When released, your machine launches forward. If timed around a corner, Boost Charge functions like drifting in Mario Kart. Meanwhile, Special unleashes an attack or ability unique to your rider. Aside from the Quick Spin, which can be performed by waggling the control stick, you can inhale enemies on the track to obtain copy abilities. These are either used automatically or tied to the same input as your Boost Charge.
This two-button scheme makes Kirby Air Riders easy to pick up, but it could have benefitted from using one more input. Because inhaling enemies and activating copy abilities are bound to the same button as Boost Charge, firing off attacks can slow down your machine if you don’t tap the Boost Charge input quick enough. While a tad annoying at first, this shortcoming is easy enough to overcome with practice.
Despite its simple control scheme, there’s a lot at play in any given match. Defeating enemies, tailing opponents, and clean landings give you a speed boost, while taking hits and running into walls slow you down. Winning, particularly in races, is about momentum. Well-timed Boost Charges, efficiently taking down groups of enemies, and careful landings can be the difference between first place and second.
While this may sound easy, Kirby Air Riders is fast. Really fast. The overall game speed has been bumped up from the original, and it’s immediately noticeable. Ripping past enemies, colorful effects, and flashing lights border on being overstimulating, but it also forces you to make quick decisions in rapid succession. In less than a second you might need to do a clean landing, inhale an enemy, and Boost Charge around the corner. Nailing the timing on one of those is easy, but hitting all three in quick succession without bashing into a wall requires precise timing. Each race consists of hundreds of little decisions that demand your full attention and lightning-fast reaction times. Because of this, completing a perfect lap is deeply satisfying.
Kirby Air Riders distinguishes itself from other kart racers with its machines. Aside from their stats, each machine has its own quirks and gimmicks that feed into different playstyles. Some even have their own bespoke mechanics. For example, the Formula Star can barely turn, but it has an incredible speed stat making it second to none on straightaways. Meanwhile, the new Transform Star can change forms mid-race to better suit the terrain making it one of the most versatile machines in the game. A lot of the depth comes from learning and mastering each machine. Some I love, while others I can’t stand, but those stark differences give so much character to the vehicle lineup. It makes unlocking new machines genuinely exciting because you never know what will click and what won’t.
While not as influential as the machines, the individual Riders add more depth to the equation than they did in the first game. Riders have their own stats and Special abilities that range from powerful attacks to considerable speed boosts–each one feels slightly different. Kirby chaotically swings a sword cutting down anything in his vicinity while Waddle-Dee turns gold and gets a substantial speed boost. Their usefulness varies depending on the mode, but none feel unfair or overpowered. While deploying a Special at the right time might help you close the gap between nearby Riders, they won’t always catapult you to the front like some pick-ups might in Mario Kart. My favorite character is Rick, the chubby, sneaker-wearing hamster. His Special ability lets him ditch his machine entirely and sprint through a course at breakneck speeds. It looks ridiculous, but after 30 hours I’m still not tired of seeing his little run.
City Trial is Kirby Air Riders’ party mode and consists of two phases. The first one sees riders scouring the map for machines and power-ups to increase their overall speed, flight time, handling, and combat capabilities. The second phase is a semi-randomized competition where players put their machines to the test. These competitions can be anything from flight challenges to destruction derbies. The key is to build a well-balanced machine that can succeed no matter the challenge. There are a lot of factors at play in any given match. What machines are available? How aggressive are your opponents? What power-ups are you finding? On top of these, there are a handful of random events that can occur, such as dynamic boss fights, rare item drops, and combat trials that add some flavor to the game mode. This mode debuted in the original Kirby Air Rider, and to this day, there is nothing quite like it. The randomized elements, fast-paced nature, and unpredictable events ensure that no two rounds are alike.
To call City Trial chaotic is an understatement. By the end of a match, if you’ve managed to collect a healthy amount of power-ups, your machine will slingshot across the map at blistering speeds, becoming nearly impossible to control. There is some strategy in not overleveling your machine, but it’s far more satisfying to see how fast or destructive you can make your machine in such a short amount of time. Depending on the rules, all riders are either thrown into one random competition or they can pick one of four randomly selected competitions. Either way, riders typically don’t know what competition is waiting for them in phase two. Sometimes your creation will fall flat, but other times you might build a machine perfectly suited for the final challenge. Is it balanced? Not really, but the unpredictable nature makes it a blast.
What ties all three of these modes together is Road Trip. This single-player story mode cherry picks different events and segments from the other three game types to create hundreds of micro challenges as you embark on a trip spanning multiple environments. Each encounter lets you pick one of three challenges, and completing one earns you a stat power-up. These are persistent across the entire run, giving the mode a satisfying sense of progression as your machine goes from a slow and clunky jalopy to finely tuned rig.
What really makes this mode so engaging though is the sheer amount of gameplay diversity on display in rapid succession. One encounter might have you take down a boss in City Trial, while another might pit you against other riders to see whose machine can fly the furthest. Using Air Ride, Top Ride, and City Trial as the foundation, this mode really showcases just how flexible Kirby Air Riders’ systems and mechanics are. There are a ton of different challenges: Gourmet Races that have you collect as much food as possible, drag races, combat trials, flight challenges, and many more. It manages to do so much with what appears to be so little.
Road Trip also has a lot of replay value. Each run takes roughly two to three hours to complete, and it’s impossible to see everything in one go. It took four playthroughs to see every area, and there are a ton of encounters I haven’t completed.
Aside from Splatoon 3, this might be Nintendo’s slickest implementation of multiplayer to date.
There are some minor annoyances in Road Trip, though. For example, after completing an encounter, you have a brief window to swap your machine. If you miss it, you might be stuck with a machine that doesn’t make sense for the next challenge. You can swap vehicles upon failure but on the tougher difficulties there is a penalty for failing or retrying. It feels unfair to get penalized for failing a combat challenge when your machine isn’t designed to deliver a beating. Additionally, once you select a character it’s impossible to switch unless you start a new game. If each run were shorter, this likely wouldn’t be an issue, but two to three hours is a long time to spend with a character you may not like.
Quite possibly Kirby Air Riders biggest surprise is its robust multiplayer. Aside from Splatoon 3, this might be Nintendo’s slickest implementation of multiplayer to date. Air Ride, Top Ride, and City Trial all have ranked and casual matchmaking, but the highlight is the Paddock. This is a small area where up to 32 players can hang out between races, listen to music, and show off their custom machines. Multiple races can be queued up at once and players can freely join any they’d like.
All of my online interactions took place in a controlled pre-release environment with Nintendo staffers at the helm, so things could get messier once it’s out in the wild, but what I experienced was all-around pleasant. I did encounter a bug that occurred in multiple City Trial matches where my game would lock up and eventually kick me every time I tried to swap machines. It eventually worked itself out, but it did happen three times back-to-back. That said, I could see myself spending a lot of time in the Paddock with friends.
All of these modes are fun on their own, but what keeps me coming back are the greatly expanded checklists. Each mode, including online play, has 150 challenges that are represented as small squares on a 10 by 15 grid. Completing these challenges can net you new machines, Riders, music, courses, and so much more. The near-constant drip feed of rewards makes every race feel worthwhile, while also pushing prospective completionists to experiment with different Riders and machines. Better yet, most challenges can be attempted right from the checklist menu by pushing the plus button–this spares you the hassle of setting up all the correct game rules. It doesn’t always set the most efficient parameters, such as setting it to the default lap count when it could be completed in one, but it makes chasing these challenges much easier.
Kirby Air Riders is an impressive package that makes the most of its deceivingly simple mechanics. Air Ride delivers a solid kart racing experience; Top Ride is a fun–albeit a bit straightforward–distraction; City Trial is chaotic in the best way possible; and Road Trip ties it all together with its creative encounters and satisfying progression. In the second Kirby Air Riders Direct, Masahiro Sakurai said he had no plans to continue the franchise or add any DLC. When I first heard this, I was a little disappointed, but now that I’ve spent countless hours exploring each mode, there’s not really anything else I could want. This feels like that initial concept from 2003 taken as far as it could possibly go, and I couldn’t be happier with the result.
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