This review contains spoilers
This game is radical.
While the first game slowly lost the "snow" part of snowboarding until it became racing on grassy hills, this game pretty much takes off the mask straight away. Level 1 is your typical snow level, but level two goes off the rails and sticks you underwater. Level 3 is weirdly another snow level, with a light Christmas theme. And after that it's just new theme after new theme. Castles, haunted mansions and outer space!
Whether you like this or not will really prefer if you prefer a more down to Earth snowboarding game where the levels with sand and grass are kinda extras to enjoy after the "realistic" levels (and those are still relatively simple compared to what we have here), or if you just enjoy devs going balls to the walls with ideas and throwing you on a snowboard regardless.
The actual level design seems to have taken a hit. The first game had a nicely progressive difficulty scale, where the latter tracks were genuinely hard to stick on at all times. This game goes for a more Mario Kart approach where tracks are either very easy, or easy. Much less sharp turns, and more long straight sections. I assume the latter is to compliment the games new defensive features. When an item is about to hit you it will now flash when it's close, so you can jump over it (which was technically possible in the first game, but without the flashing it was impossible to time properly). You can also deflect items now too, by doing a small trick while you jump, to add some extra risk vs reward. These would have been pretty much impossible in the game game because jumping requires a straight path as you can't turn while doing so, and SBK1 had very few straight paths.
So it's not really a step forward or backwards. It's more of a replacement. They replaced more complex course layouts for a more complex defensive system, while compensating by making the course themes more interesting.
There's also an attempt at a story mode now. It's just a little cutscene after and before each race. They're kinda cute, but I wouldn't miss them if they weren't there. Also we get 3 bosses now ala Diddy Kong Racing. Some people hate them - I didn't mind them.
We lose the secret character from the original game, but a brand new character is added to the starting roster, while everyone else gets a redesign. This game adds 3 more unlockable characters of its own, and they definitely have that feeling of wacky 90's unlockables - a dog, a penguin and a little goblin thing.
Only a few new items were added, most of which are just variants of existing ones - the rocket is just a faster fan, the ghost item now has a version that hits everyone etc. But the wing item is new and ties with the rock as being the worst item in the game. It just makes you floatier to stay in the air longer, which is almost always worse than just landing so you can pick up speed again.
Unique trick inputs for each character are replaced with a skill-less "keep pressing A to keep doing the same trick" to get more cash. So boards now cost much more to keep up with the fact the player will earn much more money...despite items in-races still costing the exact same, so you never really end up in a situation where you can't get an item. They even buffed being poor because going through an item box without the cash won't cause you to crash anymore, you go through it like normal and just don't get an item. I just wish that if they were gonna throw all the money at us they could do something like let you hold items so when you go through the next box you pay more to upgrade the weapon. Having boards to buy with excess money is nice and all, but in the heat of the race earning 5000 coins with no advantage for them kinda sucks.
When you beat story mode you unlock expert mode, which lets the AI be more competent overall. Doing the levels again in expert will unlock a new board for each level beaten, so it's a nice incentive to replay. It isn't too hard, they just manage to deflect an item or two so it might take more to hit them. Overall still easier than Snowboard Kids 1 cheating SOBs.
The bosses on expert are another story. The snowman ain't too hard, but the dinosaur requires pretty perfect play. The last boss is just the most unhinged, demented load of BS ever programmed into a game. It literally just spams items at you non-stop. You can't deflect them, and they come too fast to jump over more than 1. The only reason I ended up beating it is because one of the boards you unlock through expert mode is the ninja board which gives permanent invisibility (which makes you invincible) in exchange for being very slow, which isn't an issue for this boss. That makes the boss TOO easy, so like... that can't be the intended method right? But I can't see how human beings could possibly win against cracked up Terminator, so is the only answer really to just make the boss a non-fight?
While the first game slowly lost the "snow" part of snowboarding until it became racing on grassy hills, this game pretty much takes off the mask straight away. Level 1 is your typical snow level, but level two goes off the rails and sticks you underwater. Level 3 is weirdly another snow level, with a light Christmas theme. And after that it's just new theme after new theme. Castles, haunted mansions and outer space!
Whether you like this or not will really prefer if you prefer a more down to Earth snowboarding game where the levels with sand and grass are kinda extras to enjoy after the "realistic" levels (and those are still relatively simple compared to what we have here), or if you just enjoy devs going balls to the walls with ideas and throwing you on a snowboard regardless.
The actual level design seems to have taken a hit. The first game had a nicely progressive difficulty scale, where the latter tracks were genuinely hard to stick on at all times. This game goes for a more Mario Kart approach where tracks are either very easy, or easy. Much less sharp turns, and more long straight sections. I assume the latter is to compliment the games new defensive features. When an item is about to hit you it will now flash when it's close, so you can jump over it (which was technically possible in the first game, but without the flashing it was impossible to time properly). You can also deflect items now too, by doing a small trick while you jump, to add some extra risk vs reward. These would have been pretty much impossible in the game game because jumping requires a straight path as you can't turn while doing so, and SBK1 had very few straight paths.
So it's not really a step forward or backwards. It's more of a replacement. They replaced more complex course layouts for a more complex defensive system, while compensating by making the course themes more interesting.
There's also an attempt at a story mode now. It's just a little cutscene after and before each race. They're kinda cute, but I wouldn't miss them if they weren't there. Also we get 3 bosses now ala Diddy Kong Racing. Some people hate them - I didn't mind them.
We lose the secret character from the original game, but a brand new character is added to the starting roster, while everyone else gets a redesign. This game adds 3 more unlockable characters of its own, and they definitely have that feeling of wacky 90's unlockables - a dog, a penguin and a little goblin thing.
Only a few new items were added, most of which are just variants of existing ones - the rocket is just a faster fan, the ghost item now has a version that hits everyone etc. But the wing item is new and ties with the rock as being the worst item in the game. It just makes you floatier to stay in the air longer, which is almost always worse than just landing so you can pick up speed again.
Unique trick inputs for each character are replaced with a skill-less "keep pressing A to keep doing the same trick" to get more cash. So boards now cost much more to keep up with the fact the player will earn much more money...despite items in-races still costing the exact same, so you never really end up in a situation where you can't get an item. They even buffed being poor because going through an item box without the cash won't cause you to crash anymore, you go through it like normal and just don't get an item. I just wish that if they were gonna throw all the money at us they could do something like let you hold items so when you go through the next box you pay more to upgrade the weapon. Having boards to buy with excess money is nice and all, but in the heat of the race earning 5000 coins with no advantage for them kinda sucks.
When you beat story mode you unlock expert mode, which lets the AI be more competent overall. Doing the levels again in expert will unlock a new board for each level beaten, so it's a nice incentive to replay. It isn't too hard, they just manage to deflect an item or two so it might take more to hit them. Overall still easier than Snowboard Kids 1 cheating SOBs.
The bosses on expert are another story. The snowman ain't too hard, but the dinosaur requires pretty perfect play. The last boss is just the most unhinged, demented load of BS ever programmed into a game. It literally just spams items at you non-stop. You can't deflect them, and they come too fast to jump over more than 1. The only reason I ended up beating it is because one of the boards you unlock through expert mode is the ninja board which gives permanent invisibility (which makes you invincible) in exchange for being very slow, which isn't an issue for this boss. That makes the boss TOO easy, so like... that can't be the intended method right? But I can't see how human beings could possibly win against cracked up Terminator, so is the only answer really to just make the boss a non-fight?