r/kirbyairriders

…Which would it be and why? (Just for fun)

Seriously, I'm genuinely struggling to get over 4th place. No matter what I do, everyone just jets off MILES ahead of me and I can't catch up no matter what I do. And when I do get lucky an catch up using a Special or something, I'm IMMEDIATLY outsped and left in the dust again.

I do not consider myself a Pro at this game but holy shit, this is starting to feel like a Smash Bros lobby with how consistently I'm getting dunked on. My current combo is Star Man/ Paper Star and I'm playing at 8:31pm EST. Star Man is one of the powered up riders. Any advice is appreciated.

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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

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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

Everyone who loves this game should help the game grow by encouraging friends and family to play it, but also report any issues with the game in terms of finding matches to Nintendo.

This game has a low player count but also has a weird matchmaking system which makes it difficult to find matches sometimes, especially in the morning for many people.

I encourage anybody who has issues with matchmaking to contact Nintendo about it so they know that people in your region are having these issues finding matches, as the issue may pertain to the matchmaking system opposed to strictly a low player count.

Maybe the game needs a demo, or a price drop, or to be a game included in a bundle to boost players if matchmaking is not the issue.

This is a product you purchased and your feedback is necessary to improve the player experience.

Please no toxicity on this post, if you don’t want to help out just ignore this.