Owlflame

This game goes on for far too long. By the time I've finally met the villain I'd been playing for 8 hours of non-stop bickering between 5 dudes who REFUSE to endear themselves to the player. You get into a combat encounter where everyone spouts the same 3 lines perpetually. Then you run through mostly empty corridors while everyone complains about each other. Rinse repeat until all you want is for everyone to shut up. They never will, by the way. They'll just talk and whine and bicker and complain about everything FOR HOURS. The little moments are great where you have nicely written dialogues getting to know the characters. Then you go right back to the endless bickering. I can't do it anymore. I WON'T do it anymore. This is a game that's technically fine but still uncomeatable to me. If I have to hear one more snide comment about literally anything I do I'm going to put a controller through my screen. I'm simply done.

With the newest patch introducing ranked mode and balancing the game the best it's been since launch, I think this game is finally exactly where it needs to be. It's VERY solid. While I can't justify the lackluster (if incredibly exhaustive) story mode. I can at least say that the gameplay has never been more fun. It's a genuinely hard game to putdown now.

Underneath is my original 6 out of 10 review. However, after the most recent patch I'm sorry. I'm so angry and the online **** so much now that I can't justify any score. this game needs to be hurt (until they fix it) and this is the only method by which to hurt this game. I want to preface this review by pointing out that I got the Switch 2 MKW bundle that came with the game at essentially a $30 discount. I got the game for $50 and not $80. If I bought this game for $80 I'd be giving it a 5 out of 10. First, I'd like to go over all the things I like and I feel I may as well present this in a list format. 1. The courses are incredible. I've run every Grand Prix and every individual course as a race and as a time trial and these are some of the best courses Mario Kart has ever known. 2. The new movement and open feel of the racing means I'm constantly keeping my eyes open for ways to get an edge. Looking for shortcuts or going through paths that no one else is taking are veryfun. 3. In a vacuum or in Knockout tour the "intermissions" as the game calls them are very fun. Often times a little empty compared to normal courses but they're not inherently unwelcome for what they are and provide. 4. Knockout tour is amazing and super addicting. I can just race that for days and days. It's fun, but I like the middle to last parts of a knockout tour run where everything is starting to calm down and it becomes mostly about racing. 5. All the NPC characters and costumes are great. That's... unfortunately it for the positives in this 80 dollar game. I wish I could be even more positive but this game has a bad habit of pairing almost everything I like about it with a negative. So let me list those negatives real quick. 1. The character select screen is A MESS. Characters having different amounts of costumes means sometimes they wind up stretching their options off the page and you need to page forward like we're playing Samurai Showdown again. Character Select screens should all be one page. This is an absurd way to handle it. 2. The open world is SUPER empty. I don't find it very fun to explore. I haven't found a single P switch mini game I like as you can do almost all of them by just having basic Mario Kart driving awareness. 3. Intermissions, while fun, are NOT as fun as driving 3 laps on a course. Be it in Grand Prix or online races, they're ever present and unavoidable (almost) and I find that extremely annoying. They have the best courses in Mario Kart history and you only get ONE lap on them against real players before you're all picking your next track that'll probably be 2/3rds intermission again. There isn't much skill to intermissions. It's mostly item luck and seeing when the best time to use one of your hundreds of gold mushrooms is (usually right at the end of the lap.) It's so frustrating because I want so badly to just race tracks like we used to but I can't other than picking random and hoping a random pick wins. 4. There's no way to track your progress in the overworld other than Peach coins and Question Mark Panels not respawning. As well as P Switches you've already done just being gray forever. If you want to do and get everything you just gotta drive around blindly and remember what you've done and where you've been before. While that's actually it for negatives, at least off the top of my head. I do find those to be particularly egregious. This is an$80 and there's almost no options for customizing your experience. This is unacceptable for the first $80 product. They got the core game down and they got all the content right (for the most part.) But then they fumbled it in not allowing players to optimize their experience and play how they want. I mostly play online. I want to race real people. But if I'm going to do intermissions anyway I'm probably just going to do knockout tour. So I'm hoping they fix the options. I'm hoping they fix the character select. I'm hoping they make the open world feel less empty and pointless. Until they do that? I think a 6 out of 10 on the world's first $80 is perfectly fair.