I got an itch to replay Brothership for the first time since in launched a couple years ago, and when I started up a new file I noticed the entire opening cutscenr is just completely skipped. Instead of opening with the Bros getting sucked into the portal that brings them to Concordia, the game starts with Mario waking up on the starting island alone

After a month and a half of real world time, and just over 100 hours in game time, Ive finally completed Echoes of Aincrad. Didn't Platinum or 100% it, but Im fairly certain I completed very Quest in the game, including the post-game superboss. Its been quite the journey, so I figured Id lay out my full thoughts on the game since its fairly contentious

Im also tacking on my thoughts on the Unanswered//butterfly movie at the end, since it's part of this overall EoA series push thing

Spoilers for both the game and movie

Story & Characters

EoA's story is, serviceable. To be honest its hard to really make a definitive judgment on it since its objectively incomplete. The basic premise of needing to collect legendary weapons of lore to defeat a god is cool, but this plotline just kinda never resolves. I also think its just far too grand to near exclusively take place on Floor 2. If I were in charge I wouldve made each weapon be obtained on a new floor, from 2-7. Perhaps thats a predictable structure, but I think it wouldve been a nice mirror to the Progressive storyline from the novels

The game original cast has an equal air of “ok-ness” to them. I dont think any of them are particularly poorly written, but they're nothing spectacular either. They're fairly competent and likeable, but thats about it

I will say though, the way the actual main playable character wasnt handled very well. I think they actually received pretty decent physical characterization in the fully animated cinematics, but they're just absolute nothing burgers in cutscenes, just largely standing around for the most part and only ever being given yes/no ‘dialogue options’. Silent protagonists can and gave been done remarkably well before, but EoA's is just a half-assed attempt. Iori winds up being the real true proper protagonist, and while I dont have any qualm with that on principle, I wish our avatar got actual proper effort in as well

In all, whether it be the upcoming DLC or a potential sequel, I hope to see these aspects get a proper fleshing out. For what its worth though I do think the main series cast were served very well in this game. For the first time in SAO game history, everyone present actually remained true to their canon selves and didnt receive so much as a hint of flanderization, you love to see it

Gameplay

EoA's core gameplay element is ultimately quite fun. Mostly. In theory

In execution however… its not secret that EoA has a major add problem during boss fights. Really the thing is I dont think adds are necessarily an issue on their own if they're just trash mobs, but EoA loves to throw in not just Elites, but even sometimes mini-bosses and main bosses into the mix, and thats when it becomes truly egregious. Throughout the whole game, Illfang is pretty bad with this. Not only to you have to fight Illfang himself, obviously, but he also spawns in a ton of Kobold minions, as well as multiple Kobold Champions. This attribute often leads to his encounters feeling overstuffed, overwhelming, and just plain unfair for a majority of the game. It's really only bearable if you have good crowd control skills

But the single worst instance of EoA's add problem is the Tyrant Golem fight at the end of the Yellow Augite Warped Dungeon. In just the first phase, you're expected to fight a minimum of four Golems; Tyrant Golem, two Golem Elites, and a Defender Golem, which has a gimmick in where it's invulnerable to damage unless you destroy its surrounding crystals. I won't mince words, this is just bad boss design, just pure artificial difficulty. The “challenge” here has nothing to do with memorizing, reacting to, and dodging attack patterns, but rather just being overwhelmed by a metric fuck ton of hard hitting, tanky enemies with giant range you simply cant match

And I think the most frustrating part about EoA's adds is that the game genuinely does not need them. On their own the majority of bosses are actually designed extremely well, Tyrant Golem included! The most fun I had during my playthrough was when I was facing down a boss that was solo, whether it be cause I dispatched all the adds or simply cause the boss or phase didnt have any innately. Ive found that boss attacks, in isolation, hit the sweet spot of being readable and simple to to counter-act, yet being appropriately punishing if you fail to do so. Of course, theres still some stinkers, like bears and the spider, but I think the good boss designs far outweigh the bad

I feel like it should also be noted that, despite these gripes, towards the end of my playthrough I was able to get through the aforementioned encounters with minimal issue, if any at all. I mained 2H Sword for the main story content, and would rotate between the other weapon types for side content, Naturally, as the game progressed, not only did my character get stronger, but so did my weapons and my resources. I can go back and return to these encounters and clear them no problem. However, that does not erasure the initial frustration

The second major gameplay component in EoA is mapping and navigation. Contrary to popular opinion, I actually dont think EoA not being an open world is an inherent flaw; I dont think a mission based structure with specific zones is bad at all. However, I do think EoA falters in its map presentation and design

Despite not actually being one, EoA loves to pretend its an open world game. This is particularly noticeable in its collectibles and side activities, which can often be seen on your map yet not actually accessed in that particular mission. The idea of a mission based game that has overlap in its maps and zones from level to level actually isnt a bad idea in theory, but in practice, yeah I can see why other games haven't done this before; it just leads to a lot of confusion and frustration

EoA's map design in general can be quite confusing and frustrating at times. Theres several Quests where the golden path to reach the next checkpoint is extremely unintuitive. Its very easy to get turned around since EoA neglects to properly distinguish between main roads that lead to your objective, and side paths that lead to side content. At one point I thought that the tell was that main roads were more built up and kept while side paths were more subtle (i.e a well packed dirt path that may even have some stone reinforcement vs one being overtaken by grass), however I came to the realization that this really wasnt the case

For this reason I actually ultimately preferred dungeon crawling towards the end of my playthrough. They're nowhere near as confusing. Well, all types expect the Labyrinth anyway; I dont like the Labyrinth at all, but the other dungeon types were fun to run through

Presentation

Something Ill give quite high praise to EoA for however is its presentation. The visuals are extremely pretty, the world design and UI perfectly adapt Aincrad from its source material, the voice acting was great across the board, and the soundtrack, though nothing particularly spectacular, was pretty good as well. 

I also really liked the animation style for the cinematics. Im not really sure what the animation technique is actually called, but there was a large emphasis on the characters holding strong poses in between actions, tho it wasnt animating on 2s like in the SpiderVerse films. Its hard to explain how the game is animated in writing, but regardless I really dig it

My only real issue with EoA's presentation are the dialogue cutscenes. Theyre incredibly stiff, flat, and just dull overall

Finale

>!Regarding the main game's finale, Im quite mixed. I think the fight against White Morrigan itself in isolation is actually quite good; its one of the few instances where adds are actually handled well in this game and just in general I really like the Griffin boss type. The third phase was a nice surprise, and Live to Survive kicking in was honestly kinda hype. Really, theres nothing wrong with the fight itself, but I think the narrative and emotional weight it couldve had was hampered a bit by the game's story not really having a proper conclusion

That said, the ending we did get was nice, all things considered. Its mostly character focused, and I think for what it actually is, it serves its purpose well. The game original cast coming together to form a guild, the Order of the Cherry Blossom, as a beacon of hope for the rest of Aincrad's player base is that usual SAO brand of wildly corny yet equally sincere. The symbolism of the cherry blossom itself, as well as the parallel with the game's opening, got to me quite good. It makes me excited to follow this crew again for the DLC!<

Post-Game

To start, I spent a good chunk of the post-game on clean up and weapon building. Not really much to go over there. I did a final sweep to pick up most of what I missed in every Quest, completed Side Quests I unlocked along the way, and farmed Golden Gates to make ultimate weapons for myself and Iori in order to tackle the Warped Dungeons

The Warped Dungeons themselves were quite fun to go through. I liked the roguelite elements introduced to them with Spheres and the upgrade shop. I never could really figure out if two of the same upgrade buffs stacked, but regardless doing a full sweep of the dungeon consistently gave me more than enough Spheres to buy every upgrade and heal myself at every checkpoint so its fine. The bosses of each dungeon were supped up variants of most of the game's core boss types, though in retrospect its kinda strange that there wasnt a Boar nor Ox/Bao boss in these, yet three Griffins. I feel like if two of the Griffins were swapped out with a Boar and Ox/Bao respectively, that wouldve been perfect; the Warped Dungeons wouldve actually represented every core boss type in the game and allow you experience every finisher animation, encompassing the rest of the game prior with essentially an elongated boss rush

The game all culminates however with >!a lvl200 superboss against Tezca Death Wielder, a presumed acolyte of the God of Death. And it was, really fucking easy actually. Tezca had several attacks that just straight up didnt damage me at all, and I was fifty levels underleveled too. Ive fought him quite a few times afterwards (the finisher is cool), and so far in my like double digit runs Ive only died to Tezca once, and that was cause of the Insta Kill ailment rather than actually struggling with the attacks and managing my resources!<

Now, its possible this is only because I had the Red Augite equipped, which grants a percentage of Barrier relative to your max health. But even still, I was under the impression that Barrier was simply just overhealth and depleted on hit like HP. Seems that impression was wrong, though? In fact I ended up playing Seeking Hope again in order to get specific footage for something, and when I got to the Musoh duel I was actually soft locked since I had Barrier and thusly couldnt experience the scripted loss; none of his attacks could deal damage to me. This has been a bit of a tangent, but, do yall know how Barrier actually works? Cause now Im ridiculously confused lmao

&gt;!In any case, Tezca isnt a bad fight in isolation. I do think the pacing slows down a lot when you need to start running around and destroying the orbs, but whatever, the rest of it is fun. Also, ironically, this fight probably has the least problematic adds in the entire game. You can absolutely tear through them extremely easily, and Tezca infrequently howls so they're a complete non-issue!<

Conclusion

In all, EoA was quite the roller-coaster. The best way I can summarize my thoughts on the game is that its fun, yet flawed. Just about every major aspect in the game comes with a positive and a negative. The story is compelling, yet inconclusive. The characters are likeable and fun, but dont really grow. The combat is fun and engaging, yet adds during boss fights tend to be a massive problem. The world design is gorgeous and truly feels like Aincrad, yet map navigation can be remarkably frustrating and thusly makes exploration tedious. The visual presentation and animation style are really cool, but the dialogue cutscenes are flat and dull

Yet despite all that, I still walked away from the game with over 100 hours logged into my save. Clearly, I enjoyed it overall. Its not a perfect game by any stretch, I think Ive made myself very clear on my gripes with it, yet I still liked it overall. The team has the bones of something great here, they just need to be properly fleshed out on in a hopeful sequel

Regardless, I can say with decent confidence that this is the best SAO game from the ones Ive played, so take that for what you will

~

Unanswered//butterfly

The movie was aggressively mid

I dont know, I didnt really care for it. I found Emirun incredibly grating for the majority of the run time, and >!Rex as an antagonist!< was somehow worse than Sugou in his goals and motivations dude its actually impressive

We see the OCB a handful of times throughout the film, and Im not gonna lie I wouldve much rather the movie act as a proper direct sequel to the game. We got glimpses of the trust and reverence they've garnered with Aincrad's wider playerbase, and that juxtaposition against how people view Kirito and the other beta testers was really cool. I wish the movie focused more on that dichotomy rather than an annoying ass teenager that acts like a spoiled/entitled toddler and her weird predatory incel friend

I will say, the latter half was significantly better than the first. Im giving Emirun a lot of shit, but she did grow decently fine towards the end. The movie really started picking up during her confrontation with Kirito, and in general was at its best when core SAO cast members, or the game's cast, were on screen. The movie also had a lot of Progressive breadcrumbs for long time SAO fans to soyjack point at (i.e me)

I also liked the exchange between Musoh and Emirun when shes helping the OCB fight a boss

“Not bad, how old are you anyway?”

“Fourteen 😃”

“Ah, to be young again”

No particular reason really, I just find Musoh being an unc funny as fuck. This was the one moment in the entire movie where Emirun didn't make me wanna mute my TV

But yeah I just like, dont care for this movie man. I think its the single worst SAO anime project, and if Im being blunt the only part of the SAO anime I'll say is anything less than good. The first half was an incredibly frustrating watch with inconsistent writing and awful original characters, and though the second half was much better, that was really only because Kirito and Asuna became a focus and the writing taking itself a bit more seriously rather than anything regarding the movie original elements themselves improving

I keep farming and farming and farming and *NOTHING*

Ive easily spend at least a hundred Golden Crystals on 1H Sword Gates and I cant for the life of me get a Sword Skill Damage EX Mod to drop. Its the last thing I need to finish my 1H Sword build, but it just won't drop

Ive rolled it for literally every other weapon, including Maces. Does it just not drop for 1H Swords specifically? Is it tied to a specific Gate and Ive just been running the wrong one?

Im losing my mind man. *Literal* insanity

&gt;!Klein!< is the only Partner Im missing, but try as I might I cant trigger the rest of his questline

Ive already completed 'Bride-to-Be'. Based off what Im reading, 'Suspicion' should've automatically trigged upon completion of former. But it just never did

Am I missing something? As far as I know only 'Bride-to-Be' requires a hidden dungeon

Hey everyone. I just rolled credits on EoA finally and went through that whole sequence of >!discovering the Labyrinth underneath Black Iron Palace!<

Now, I know very little about EoA's post game. I know theres a super boss, a true ending, and something called Waystones, and thats about it. My initial plan to conquer the post game was to clean up all the extra goodies from Quest zones then fight the super boss, but the post game seems to have more story than I was anticipating so I have a handgul of questions

1. How does this new Labyrinth work? Ive read that EoA's post game has rouge-lite like elements, is that this or something else?

2. What are the Waystones? How many are there?

3. Ive been putting off doing Golden Gates til I reached max Cardinal Rank so I can get the best possible rewards. Does CR cap out at 6 or is there more? I should note that I haven't attempted a single Golden Gate so I have no real idea on how they work beyond what's said in the little tutorial blurb

4. Without actual narrative spoilers, how does the narrative progress for the post game? If I follow Iori into the Labyrinth will I be locked in into encountering that super boss? Should I go do my do my map clean ups first and prepare more? I want the super boss to be the *absolute last thing I do in this game before the DLC launches*, so I wanna complete *everything else*, and potentially even completely build out my weapons if possible, beforehand

Thats all I wish to know. I appreciate any and all help

I pre-ordered a physical Ultimate Edition for PS5, and while it came with a redeem code for the bonus contents app and starter packs, I dont have anything on the Proto Elucidator weapons

Im reading on other posts that they shouldve been added to my storage upon completing the prologue. I had played the demo when that launched, so Ive already cleared the prologue, and still nothing. My PS5 has a side bar to purchase them for $5, but I'd rather not resort to that if I can help it

❗️SPOILER WARNING❗️I go pretty in depth with just about everything I encountered during my playthrough here, both gameplay and story. If you wish to remain blind, this is your spoiler warning. If not, then continue on

~

I have very, mixed feelings about this game

Like a lot of people, I felt the perceived difficulty after the tutorial was quite rough. The game felt oppressively difficult, to a point where I was questioning the game's positive reception and prestige that game's with bring the most critically acclaimed game of the year (so far). The game was so frustrating that I ended up temporarily dropping it for a couple days

I, of course, eventually learned how to properly approach the game, and things got much better. The difficulty through the intended region order felt a lot more balanced and fair than I originally perceived the game to be

But, that doesn't make Mina a perfect game. I think it still has some notable flaws, particularly in its combat design. Enemies can very easily out maneuver, out range, and out damage you, especially later on in the adventure. I get its the final area, but during Radiant Manor the enemies felt straight up unfair, and I had maxed out stats.

That said, most of my ire resides in standard enemies. Bosses, on the other hand, were largely very fair and appropriate challenges. There were a handful I felt were poorly designed or ridiculously oppressive, which Ill get to later, but more often than not I generally enjoyed Mina's bosses

The healing system also got pretty annoying. On its face needing to attack enemies to regain Plasma is fine, but the fact that you lose Plasma to pit damage got very frustrating, more frustrating than it should have been. It made every tiny mistake during platforming a death sentence because it then meant you'll be easier to kill by enemies later on, since e in order to heal you need Plasma, and in order to get Plasma you need to attack enemies, and doing that while on low health is extremely reckless. I really would've much preferred it if pit damage only depleted health; as it is now it makes every failed jump disproportionately punishing

But those are where my biggest issue lie. Nearly everything else I really enjoyed.

Something I think the developers really nailed was level/world design. In that regard, this game is quite fantastic. Theres only one region I can say I actively disliked, everything else was superb. Rarely, if at all, did I struggle to read and room or traversal challenge; everything was clear and extremely well communicated

I also really enjoyed Mina's story and characters. Mina herself was a super well realized and likable protagonist, the NPCs were full of Yacht Club's charm, and I liked Lionel as an antagonist and Thorne as a rival turned friend (possibly more?). This game also had impeccable presentation; absolutely gorgeous pixel art that emulated the GBC/GBA era style extremely well

~

From this point on, I want to go over my thoughts on each Generator region and their respective story bosses. I feel this necessary given just how much my opinion of this game wavered during my playthrough

Loner's Landing

Superbly designed tutorial area. Teaches the core mechanics and geberal design language of the game flawlessly

Nether Kraken

Not much to say since its the first boss. I didn't defeat it during my playthrough, tho knowing YCG its likely possible

Thorne

For the majority of my playthrough this aactually reigned supreme as my favorite boss fight. This fight was the perfect blend of challenging, yet manageable; Thorne's patterns were very easy to read and react to

Queensbury Crypt

First Generator of the game and I gotta say it was a very good start. The puzzle design and traversal obstacles were communicated extremely well, making for a really compelling first 'dungeon'

The Duchess

Duchess was disproportionately difficult for when you're intended to first fight her. She's well designed, but felt extremely aggressive and like I wasn't given much time to breathe and heal between her constant bounding across the arena, activating arrow traps, and tentacles erupting from the ground. This is a prime example of Mina's somewhat inverted difficulty curve, especially since by this point you dont have Plasma Funnel and have to deal with the insanely long start up animation for healing

Nox's Bayou

Very solid area, though not anything too special in my opinion. It mostly just amounted to a bunch of platforming and not a whole lot of puzzle solving

Mock Moon

Amazing premise for a boss with great patterns and fun flow. Really dont have a lot to say here to be honest

Nox's Beast

This is one of those bosses where the game's hit boxes feel against you, particularly when beyond the boss. In general this game struggles to properly convey the attack range and clarity of large enemies. Its not bad as some other giant enemies, but still a little annoying

Septemburg

The one area I actively disliked

I enjoyed the lightning rod mechanic, but the wind and ESPECIALLY the Carving Man felt awful to deal with. It didnt help when the three were combined, genuinely who's idea was it to combine two gimmicks that force you to wait out cycles with a giant unkillable enemy gimmick that forces you to constantly be on the move. Theres zero synergy between the three and I hated every second that fuckass scarecrow was on my screen

Mad House

Despite my issues with large enemy hit boxes, Mad House was honestly just, really easy. Now, I'd rather an easy boss compared to a frustrating one, but Mad House just had really simple patterns. If memory serves, this was one of two bosses I didn't die to

Carving Man

Speaking of the Carving Man, he's also far and away my most hated boss fight, purely for the fact that the fight is BROKEN. I used Recall Disc as my Sidearm since its A) provided to you just before the fight, and B) counters Carving Man's sheer size as well as he blocks he spawns in really well, acting as a nice escape route for both. The issue here however is that if you're unlucky and a block drops onto your portal, you're just completely fucked. Nevermind the fact that these blocks can even land on the portals in the first place, but why are you unable to cancel your current portal and place another one??? This feels like such a ridiculous oversight, Im genuinely baffled its in this otherwise extremely polished game

Bone Beach

The juxtaposition of going from the region i hated to my favorite is honestly crazy

I absolutely loved Bone Beach. The way it was structured and paced felt a lot like a traditional 2D Zelda dungeon, with a heavy focus on traversal and puzzle solving. What a fantastic area

Major Miner

Probably the most forgettable boss in the game for me. He's not particularly great nor particularly bad; just aggressively average with nothing that really stood out to me

Mined Mind

This fight felt like a lot on first attempt, but once I realized you could destroy the bone spires it became much easier to handle. Pretty cool boss with good challenge I'd say

Coltrane Peak

I'll fully admit, I used the Steady Soles for this region. That said, I liked it quite a bit. I found the puzzle solving, traversal, and platforming to be really fun. I'm a huge sucker for rail related stuff, so this was a pretty satisfying entry in the rail dungeon archetype

Unfortunately though, this is where the game started getting really annoying with its enemies. Theres giant mice with the throwing stars, as well as the long ass wolves which are only vulnerable on the head. Not only are they annoying in a vacuum, but they were placed in extremely tight platforming sections, which got really frustrating really quick. I dont want to dock the fun level design for annoying enemy design though

Thorne 2

Still a fun boss, but its fundamentally worst than the first since he's airborne now and this game really struggles with aerial combat

Frozen Horror

Largely okay miniboss but that final desperation attack after killing it was so bull. I didn't die to it, but its the principal of the matter

Locomotress Agnes

Not the hardest, but easily the most tedious boss in the game. Her constant floating made the fight such a slog to get through since you'd have barely any time to attack. Her attacks aren't even hard to dodge once you get the pattern down, its just that your attack window is tiny for 75% of the battle

Astral Orrery

Just barely misses being my favorite area in the game. A massive puzzle gauntlet yet an extremely fun one; the team decided to get really crazy with the puzzle mechanics here, befitting for the otherworldly location. My one issue with it is that the heavily reliance on platforming makes Plasma quite sparse in this region, which in turn makes healing more limited

Lumenarks

Just an overall really tedious fight for me. I have no idea if I was just doing something wrong, but the fight felt like it went on forever

The Congealed

Fantastic fight with adequate challenge. The surprise third phase got my ass good on first attempt lmao

Radiant Manor

Really fantastic puzzles and traversal that remixes all the unique mechanics from throughout the game in a tightly designed and super fun final dungeon. This one specifically reminded me of Lorule Castle in that regard, which is high praise from me cause that's probably my favorite 2D Zelda dungeon

But...

The enemies here SUCK bro. I was at MAX STATS and they still out maneuvered, out ranged, and out damaged me like crazy. Specifically the guys in the ballroom were really annoying, and the two mimics in the basement. I kept falling into a negative feedback loop with these assholes; every time I returned to hub and popped into the Underlab to refresh my resources, Id then have to deal with these fuckers in the foyer and potentially waste more resources on just them before I could actually continue with the dungeon. These guys were absurdly tanky and hard hittding for no good reason, AND THAT ASSHOLE LION KNIGHT WOULD CAMP THE SHIT OUT OF ME TOO. And OF COURSE I couldn't close the gap because the floor is fucking glass and you cant burrow on glass. God I fucking HATE this one room so much, near killed my enjoyment of the endgame singlehandedly

Thorne???

The most heartbreaking boss in the game. A really fun evolution of Thorne's prior two fights, but fighting this mutated Thorne was genuinely so sad

Furgus

Alright miniboss. His reach was a bit absurd but besides that it was fine

Barron Lionel

Far and away my favorite boss in the game. Everything about it was absolutely incredible. Just a no bullshit straight duel with perfect difficulty and amazing narrative weight and atmosphere

Radiant Lionel

Thorne swooping in to save Mina was fucking CINEMA dude holy FUCK what an incredible finale. The fight can feel like a bit much at points, but man I dont care that shit was awesome

And now a quick lightning round for optional bosses

Midden

He stinky p u

Armad

Cool that you had to weaken him with lava flow

Erva the Undying

Bullshit ass boss I hate you why the FUCK do you deal 66% of my health on a single hit and why the FUCK do you spawn in so many enemies

Mirren

I one tried it lmao

~

Rankings

Generators

1. Bone Beach

2. Astral Orrery

3. Radiant Manor

4. Coltrane Peak

5. Queensbury Crypt

6. Nox's Bayou

7. Septemburg

Bosses

1. Barron Lionel

2. Radiant Lionel

3. Thorne???

4. Thorne 1

5. Mock Moon

6. Thorne 2

7. The Congealed

8. Furgus

9. The Duchess

10. Mined Mind

11. Nox's Beast

12. Mirren

13. Major Miner

14. Armad

15. Mad House

16. Maxi

17. Midden

18. Frozen Horror

19. Locomotress Agnes

20. Lumenarks

21. Erva the Undying

22. Carving Man

~

In all, I generally really enjoyed my time with Mina the Hollower. Its not a bad game at all. But, its fairly flawed, particularly in how it presents its difficulty, and as such I didnt quite love it as much as I wish I did

I hope future playthroughs, particularly through NG+, I have a smoother time and as such can grow to truly love this game

I dont have a microSD Express card yet so I cant save my Replays right now. My game's still on 1.3.2 but I dont know if updating to 1.3.3 will kill them

Does it happem after *every* update, or only major version changes (1.1, 1.2, 1.3, etc)? If I update to 1.3.3 will my Replays remain intact or will I losr them

~

I'm sure this'll be moot on this sub, but still just in case some of yall haven't completed it already I want to give a spoiler warning for Road Trip, as I touch upon both endings and its big reward

I also wanna warn yall about the absolute yap that is this post

~

I got Air Riders about a week ago and have been making my way through the game and trying to get acquainted with it

I never had the opportunity to play the original release on GameCube, but I knew how beloved it was so I always wanted to. I was extremely excited when the sequel was announced in the big Switch 2 Direct and followed the pre-release marketing pretty closely. I didn't get Air Riders at launch, Age of Imprisonment took priority for me that month and since then I have been working on my backlog, but I found a gap in my 'schedule' so I decided to pick up Air Riders. All this to say that I was extremely hyped for the game and wanted to love it

After some tutorials, I jumped straight into Road Trip, since I knew that was the story mode of the game. I cant say I enjoyed it very much. Maybe it was just a really bad first impression, but for the entirety of the playthrough I just could not click with the game. It felt like in Sakurai's effort to make a 'simple' racing game, he made a needlessly complex, chaotic, and unintuitive one. Air Riders felt like it was trying too hard to be like Smash, a party-fighter, but didn't really succeed at being both that and a racing game. The only part I had really enjoyed on a gameplay front was that final race against Noir Dedede; it felt like the game was actually allowing me to breathe

My main issue with Road Trip really were the minigame like stages. Anything that required me to go head to head with the CPUs felt awful and borderline rigged against the player. The Button Rush, non-linear Gourmet Races, box/pillar breaking, and arena battles felt awful. The controls just feel way too imprecise and I found myself struggling to actually properly plan a route, adapt to the CPU behavior, and, well, control my character. I used Kirby/Warp Star for most of the run too, so I could get as much of a vanilla experience as possible.

For the arena battles in particular, specifically against proper drivers, it felt like they were given ridiculous attack priority. I had to rely purely on projectile Copy Abilities for the Meta Knight fight in Farthest Reach because Sword, Needle, and Fighter literally would not come out regardless of my distance and Meta Knight always got to attack first

For what its worth tho, I quite enjoyed the story itself. I found Zorah's tale to be pretty compelling and the way the twist completely reframed the narrative near single-handedly gave me the resolve to see Road Trip through to the end just so I could see how the story concluded

Overall though, I came off Road Trip really down on the game as a whole. That Noir Dedede race was a highlight, but I didnt really enjoy my time with Air Riders up to that point much at all

I still wanted to stick with the game tho and see if hopefully things will actually start clicking, so I decided to just do some standard Air Ride races, still with Kirby/Warp Star. And it was actually incredibly fun. Standard races are much less chaotic than in Road Trip and it felt like I was actually acclimating with the game's central gimmicks and course design. CPUs also felt more fair, even on higher levels. I still feel like they're a tad bit overturned, some courses it feels like a complete shot in the dark on if I'll be able to beat 7-9s, but overall they felt way less aggressive and prioritized than in Road Trip

That said, I don't think a few of the 'retro' courses fare well, or I guess 'Nostalgic' will be Air Riders's equivalent. Fantasy Meadows feels like it's *way* too much of a frontrunner track, so much to the point that catching up feels borderline impossible. Even with lvl1 CPUs, I struggled to catch up because I was left with absolutely nothing; no enemies to defeat for speed boosts and no Copy Abilities to obtain. I only managed to actually pull ahead cause I popped my Special at an opportune moment. But then on the flip side you have courses like Frozen Hillside and Sky Sands, which had brief segments of turns that felt really awkward and like they don't fit the game's controls and physics well. Nebula Belt is also quite boring and barren.

But I did enjoy just about every 'nitro' track for what it's worth, and the Nostalgic courses I didnt mention it don't have much issue with

I also played everything in Top Ride, especially since I wanted to unlock Starman. Not much to say here tho to be honest. I also did them with Kirby/Warp Star and completely blew past even lvl9s. When I first encountered Top Ride via Road Trip I found the controls to feel a bit slippery and imprecise but Ive gotten used to them by now

After a couple days of just running Air Ride on loop (highkey got addicted), I decided to do NG+ on Road Trip and get the true ending so I could see the full conclusion to the story and unlock Noir Dedede. I dont know what it was this time around, but my second Road Trip run was actually incredibly fun. Theres still a couple isolated challenges I took some issue with for one reason or another, but the majority of my NG+ run was a blast

The finale was quite incredible too. I'm a bit sad that we skip over that final race with Noir, but the boss rush was super fun and Noir actively teaming up with Kirby to take down Galactic Nova was genuinely hype. The actual fight against Galactic Nova himself wasn't anything too special, but thats alright

Also, I'd be remiss to not bring up Air Rider's presentation. This game is absolutely gorgeous man. The visuals, UI, and style are all stellar, and the soundtrack is quite great as well. The Sakurais and their team cooked a delicious five star gourmet meal here

For as much as Ive come around on Air Riders, I don't think its without fault. I still have minor issues with the controls, namely the Quick Spin input. I really dislike that it *requires* flicking the stick and that there's no option to assign it to a button input. My hands are fairly shaky, and as such I'd keep accidentally inputting Quick Spin when simply just trying to swerve because of how high the sensitivity is normally. Ive since decreased it to Hard, but now there's a new problem in that Quick Spinning in a multi-lane rail is a hassle since I'll end up switching rails before the spin registers. I'd much rather that than constantly slowing down on standard road, but still, *both* issues could be very easily eliminated if we could just assign it to a button

All that said, that's about where I'm at with Air Riders. Since unlocking Noir, Ive genuinely soul mained him with Wheelie Bike, even made a custom variant of the latter in My Machine to match my favorite rider. I also have Meta Knight/Transform Star and Starman/Warp Star as seconsaries for when I feel like mixing things up, but Noir/Wheelie handles perfectly for me, even with the inability to take glide paths, and looks so sick that I'm perfectly content with just using him lmao

I haven't tried out City Trial proper yet. I'll give it a couple runs some time in the future but to honest Air Ride is much more my vibe

I started off thinking Air Riders was my least favorite of the big three 2025 kart racers, honestly the only one I had more negative feelings for than posotive, but by this point I think it might actually have my favorite moment to moment gameplay. Each of the three scratch different itches for me, but in Air Riders's case Ive grown to love how involved it feels, how nearly every action you take rewards you in the race by giving you a burst of speed. There was a bit of steep learning curve but once everything started clicking its been impossible to put the game down because of how addicting that core feedback loop is