HOW IS THIS THE MOST POLARIZING GAME ON ALL OF BACKLOGGD AHAHAHAHAHA LOOK AT THAT RATING DISTRIBUTION

It's a maximalist kart racer which throws anything and everything in because the developers are as talented and prolific as they are sadomasochistic. Or more charitably, they knew people typically played SRB2K with heavily modded servers, and sought to kill two birds with one stone by making their sequel filled with an intimidating amount of content. While plenty of new mechanics are introduced, the game's namesake helps balance out the grid in a highly volatile but ultimately successful way. Chugging rings and speed-gating shortcuts might seem as baffling as... Well, everything else in DRRR (what an acronym) but it's sensible in the same madcap way every other goddamn thing here is. Hell, even the positioning system before a race starts helps even the field more than first impression would suggest.

At first I was perturbed by everything being locked behind a Brawl / Kirby Air Ride style checklist (or most, as of v2.1) but it's so endearing. Consider it a hot take but what a blessing in disguise that Kart Krew felt committed to making you commit to playing their game to an unhealthy degree. That kind of cocky energy is so rare these days, especially given that the passwords are included in the game folder to tempt the player constantly. "Oh, what's wrong, too many spray cans for you, hmmm?"

If you're still on the fence, play for at least another hour, because it will click. I don't see this replacing SRB2K whatsoever but it's an utter monolith of a game. I HATE BALLOON PARK I HATE BALLOON PARK I HATE BALLOON PARK I HATE BALLOON PARK I HATE BALLOON PARK I HATE BALLOON PARK I HATE BALLOON PARK

I can sympathise with the casual crowd that was alienated by this, I understand SRB2 Kart was largely famous for being a game that people can quickly pick up and stream, and mod to have any character they like, so I understand that brutally difficult Kart racer was probably not something they had any interest in, but man, this pushes all the right buttons for me.

Is it flawed? Undeniably. I'm sure you've already read that the tutorial is dogshit, and the items and CPUs can definitely be a bit much to handle. But in my opinion, it's super compelling. Substantial and fun singleplayer content, countless secrets, incredibly engaging races (NONE of them feel like autopiloting which is what I find a lot of Kart racers fall into) all compliment an incredibly fun to control driving system that, while yes is poorly taught to you, clicks faster than you'd think.

If you are a casual who just wants this game to be Mario Kart but with any character then you've probably already made up your mind and that's fair, I get why that's a desirable experience. For anyone else who has perhaps grown a bit tired of modern kart racing offerings feeling samey I implore you to give this a shot. Try to do at least the first few cups. I honestly kind of wanted to put this down after the first cup but I absolutely got hooked after I tried another cup and things started to click. Also, don't be afraid of the easy mode, it's there for a reason!

Long-winded shitty tutorial for non-gamers makes the game sound more complicated than it actually is while simultaneously not teaching you mechanics you will interact with in your very first race, creating a dangerously fake skill filter and leaving a disastrous first impression.

As an example - the tutorial spends like 10 minutes teaching you about your backup emergency attack that you can use while out of rings, while spending 5 seconds to tell you rings are a boost/health meter akin to F-Zero that you should be spending constantly. Another example - the closest thing to a race track you drive on in the entire tutorial is a drifting track that requires you to hit maximum level drift boosts, when the actual race tracks in the game are designed around drifting for short periods of time outside of extremely wide turns.

Anyways there's a THE iDOLM@STER stage that doubles as Honey the Cat's home stage

A lot of the whining this game gets mainly comes from people who treat games like these as fun little timewasters instead of full fledged games, this was never meant to be a replacement for SRB2K like so many people keep insisting (the devs have said that the master server for SRB2K will be kept up) if you wanna play a fun basic MK-Like kart racer then SRB2K is still right there! This game is NOT SRB2K however.

I don't think gating online behind completing (you don't even have to beat it!) a cup is unreasonable at all and the whole "you need 80 spray cans to unlock time trials" is straight up a lie, all you need to do is beat all first page cups with a bronze medal minimum (completely reasonable since you can get all unlocks on any difficulty unless its specified otherwise)
The tutorial WAS pretty terrible since it emphazises too much on mechanics you won't use normally during a race (unless im wrong none of the first page levels have any shortcuts involving the switches, only secrets) and it completely glosses over important mechanics unique to this game like the start position change, tether system, and the drift you can do after hitting a boost panel. I did like the way it was presented though and the interactions between tails and eggman were cute and well written.
There are also some problems with the AI being WAY too rubberbandy, I understand its needed for games like this but sometimes due to the tether system your "rival" in second place can sometimes get an invincibility powerup and theres not really anything you can do to stop them from passing you.
The presentation of EVERYTHING in this game is gorgeous and the amount of love this game has for everything Sonic and SEGA related is incredible (there are entire zones based on levels from fangames!) Just an incredible looking game.

Overall I think with a few tweaks this could easily be one of the greatest kart racers of all time, just hope the devs don't over correct due to all of the mostly misplaced negative feedback.