Chocobo GP Review: A Mario Kart style game in the world of Final Fantasy

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chocobo gp review
chocobo gp review

Square Enix returns to the charge with a kart racer dedicated to the world of Final Fantasy: a nice game but unfortunately not completely successful.

Anyone who decides to try their hand at developing a kart racing video game must necessarily deal with the fact that that specific slice of the market has always been firmly in the hands of Mario Kart (here is the review of Mario Kart 8 Deluxe). It is not just a question of numbers: Mario Kart sells mainly because it is consistently the top of the range when it comes to kart racers, and there have rarely been similar video games able to stand up to it. The then SquareSoft, in ’99, tried it with Chocobo Racing , which attempted to collect a good number of characters from Final Fantasy within one of the most unusual arcade driving games ever seen.

The real merit of Chocobo Racing, in addition to its countless oddities, was precisely that while remaining within the limits of the genre, it tried in every way not to pass for a Square clone of Mario Kart. After 23 years, Square Enix is ​​trying again with Chocobo GP , yet another video game in a very long series of spin-off titles dedicated to the adorable birds of Final Fantasy, which finally returns to try its hand with a racing title dedicated to karting after what looks like a ‘ eternity.

A kart game with a story to tell

Unlike the vast majority of congeners, Chocobo GP has a story mode , inherited from the first chapter released on PlayStation. Let’s be clear: Chocobo GP is a video game aimed at a huge audience that mainly includes the youngest users of the Nintendo laptop, so you shouldn’t expect a narrative who knows how deep or layered.

We will follow the adventures of an increasingly large group of characters linked to the Final Fantasy franchise, which makes its way towards a legendary race in which the prize at stake is the realization of the winner’s greatest desire. All while in the background various enemies alternate eager to put a spoke in the wheel for Chocobo and his friends.

It is an extremely simple plot brought to the screen by short dialogues that act as an interlude between one competition and another , in which the writing certainly does not shine for originality and often ends up entrenching itself behind an all too childish and repetitive humor. There is also some nice breaking of the fourth wall, in moments in which the characters are disinterested for a few moments in the events in which they are entangled to indulge in sarcastic comments on the possible reception of the product by the public.

Again nothing transcendental, but at least these moments rekindle the interest enough on the progression of the plot. The story mode is the most important of all Chocobo GP, at least in the early stages of the game: by progressing inside it will in fact be possible to unlock new circuits and earn tickets that can be spent in the shop in order to obtain new characters, new colors for the vehicles and various customizations.

Still talking about the story mode, it should also be noted that each race can be tackled with two possible levels of “difficulty” . The quotes are due to the fact that the difference between the beginner and the professional mode does not lie in the actual driving ability of the opponents, but only in the maximum speed of the karts, including the one driven by the player. The increase in difficulty is therefore only due to the greater frenzy of the individual races, which at the beginner level are rather slow and tedious and which become actually enjoyable only when you choose to compete as a professional .

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The racing battle royale according to Square Enix

If it is true that the fulcrum of the experience is its story mode, it is also undoubted that to make everything as long-lived and replayable as possible Square Enix has inserted an homonymous and unprecedented online mode in which 64 players are called to challenge each other in a elimination tournament .

The operation is very simple: it starts in 64, divided into eight different groups of eight players each, and the top four finishers of each race proceed to the next phase. The other four, on the other hand, are eliminated, and the formula is thus repeated until the final event is reached, in which the eight best players of the tournament collide in the final race that thus crowns the fastest and most skilled of the 64 entrants. A sort of battle royale to encounters , which contrasts with the classic setting of online multiplayer and which aims to become the fulcrum of the entire Chocobo GP network experience.

Once you have completed the story and unlocked all the available characters (24 in all), the best thing to do is just to test the characteristics of each against other human opponents. Immediately after the launch, however, the online will be enriched with the contents of the seasons, which will periodically introduce new characters to the roster, weekly events and further customization elements. During the review phase there was no possibility to verify its functioning, but in the game there is an in-game currency that will most likely be used for the purchase of the contents ; estimates that it will be possible to buy with real money through the eShop – but at the moment neither the exact costs nor the exact implementation are known.

A good presentation …

Perhaps the most surprising aspect of Chocobo GP is its technical performance on Switch: the hardware of the small Nintendo console has in fact begun to show signs of fatigue more and more evident over the years, often forcing developers to give up more or less. impacting. Chocobo GP, for its part, shows a great solidity from a purely technical point of view , which in the face of a not excellent resolution (especially evident in docked mode) responds with a very convincing fluidity, without slowdowns of any kind even in the most excited passages. .

In portable mode the game works surprisingly well, while on high resolution screens you have to come to terms with a more pronounced aliasing but all in all overflyable. It was not obvious, also because it often happens to find yourself in situations where many vehicles appear on the screen at the same time to which the effects of the special moves of each individual character are added. As already seen in almost all kart racers ever published, in fact, Chocobo GP includes the possibility of collecting objects arranged along the circuits , which can be used to hit opponents and slow down their pace.

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The system, however, takes up the nomenclature and dynamics of the spells of Final Fantasy: during the races it is possible to collect, for example, the Fire spell (which to be clear has the same function as the green shells of Mario Kart), but collecting more Magiliti you have the opportunity to alternatively obtain other additional spells or an enhancement of the one already in our possession, which from Fire can turn into Fira or Firaga.

Added to this is the fact that each character has a specific ability that can be activated by filling a specific bar . These specials allow access to exclusive moves that can increase speed or unleash attacks with the most diverse and difficult to avoid effects.

Still in relation to the Magilites, the abilities of the characters and their effects, however, it should be emphasized that they represent one of the main flaws of the game. While their variety is actually quite interesting, what is hard to ignore is the weight of their effects on every single race. If you are hit by an object or a special, in Chocobo GP, you run into one

excessively long stop, which requires the targeted player to remain inert in the middle of the track for a period of time so long that it becomes almost unnerving. To continue the parallel with Mario Kart, it is as if almost every weapon in Chocobo GP has the same effect as a blue shell on each of the affected participants. It is not a problem, not in itself, were it not that this aspect goes well with the short length of the circuits , so in some cases losing even a few seconds means almost automatically giving up the victory. In the game, among other things, the possibility of restarting the races from the pause menu has not been included, thus forcing the player to return to the main menu and reselect the event to avoid having to reach the finish line and try again.

… but an offer too thin

But let’s get to the real weakness of Chocobo GP: the tracks . One of the fundamental characteristics of a good kart racer resides in the variety of the offer, which frequently is closely linked to the number of scenarios and conformations of the circuits present in the game.

Being able to participate in always different races, on tracks that test the player’s skills in different ways, is often what determines the success, even in the long run, of such a title. Here, in this Chocobo GP it fails quite seriously: as much as it is nice to be able to review some historical settings such as the Alexandria of Final Fantasy IX or the Zozo of Final Fantasy VI, the circuits offered are few, short and, above all, have a extremely basic layout . It’s a problem that plagues every scenario, including those unlocked in the late game, and that undermines the entire experience.

It happens frequently to get bored especially during the story, which is divided into chapters consisting of two events – and therefore two races – which in the vast majority of cases must be played on the exact same circuit. The track designs are, as already mentioned, very basic, have few pitfalls able to balance competitions consistently, and do not include particular shortcuts able to test the talent of the most enterprising players.

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This scarcity of content, together with the aforementioned future introduction of the seasons which, presumably, will increase the variety of the offer, betrays the nature of Chocobo GP’s proto Live Service .

 

An aspect that will certainly be evaluated over time, but which for the moment is simply too lacking to allow the game to represent a really valid alternative to the competition. It is a shame, because Chocobo GP has characteristics that at least on paper could lead it to diversify, but which fail to emerge precisely because of the extreme limitation of the offer. And this is how even an important addition such as the online elimination irremediably loses its charm due to the extreme simplification of the available circuits, which in the long run becomes a cumbersome limit to fun.

Postponed to September

In conclusion, Chocobo GP does not deserve a resounding rejection but only an invitation to follow the summer remedial courses . There are other bad games, mind you, but the lack of attention paid to the contents included at launch is a problem that becomes increasingly evident as kilometers accumulate on the Square Enix branded karts. We are faced with a toy – and, it must be emphasized, toys have their own undeniable dignity – which however fails to turn into a fun and carefree pastime, capable of giving a few hours of pleasant unpretentious arcade driving.

The defects are too cumbersome and have too significant a weight on the overall experience to be ignored: of the irreverence of that Chocobo Racing that had little luck on PlayStation but which had a personality of its own, unfortunately, only the shadow remains . To put it in a nutshell: this spin-off would have the potential as well, but it doesn’t apply. Now all that remains is to see how much and how the title will be supported over time, it being understood that what we have seen so far does not leave room for good wishes for the future.

 

Chocobo GP Analyzed Version Nintendo Switch Chocobo GPtakes up the speech abandoned by SquareSoft in the late 90s and brings to light the official kart racer dedicated to the Final Fantasy franchise. It revives the concept of Story Mode, expands its roster of characters and makes some changes to the basic idea – introducing an interesting variation of online multiplayer. This, however, is not enough, because the real limits of Chocobo GP are the scarcity of its offer (which will expand in the future) and the sufficiency with which the available circuits have been created. It’s okay to be a title aimed primarily at an extremely young audience, but the few and boring tracks are an obvious obstacle to fun and cripple the personality of a game that, at least on paper, could have had its say.