if i played this as a kid it'd probably be one of my favorite games ever made, but discovering this as a 24 year old man sure made me feel like a kid

there is this amazing intersection of amazing controls, satisfying game design, and painstaking attention to detail of the source material that seems almost surreal given what you usually expect from these sorta licensed games and star wars games.

something always has to give somewhere. either is cool but the gameplay is kinda basic or its really fun but very limited or the whole thing is just sorta only good in retrospect. for some reason, this n64 racing game is that perfect intersection.

will gladly play this over mario kart 64 any day

feels kind of impossible to review this/assign a score because of how final fantasy xi works nowadays, so instead i'll just talk about it here.

the story and characters are of course very cool, and all the zones and dungeons to explore are beautiful. tavnazia is one of the most underrated and special locations in final fantasy ever. however, the way this story is presented and written does make me understand why xiv and its expansions insist on such meandering expository pacing. xi moves at a mile a minute and hardly gives you time to process and appreciate whatever is going on.

there are some really cool twists and turns in the narrative that would probably hit a lot better in a more well presented form, but it does a good job in having such a narrative at all.

al'taieu one of the coolest final areas in this franchise ever

boy oh boy the xiv content drought has me going on some interesting activities lol

fun stuff and very cool presentation but suffers from an extreme identity crisis.

not at all a flight sim, but not a cool arcade-y on rails star fox sorta game either. its fun flying around and shooting stuff, controls feel great, but it doesn't really hone in on a niche.

the story has some neat characters and fun interactions and some very fun set pieces but its basically just an elaborate tutorial for a dead pointless multiplayer mode.

what's here is cool for what it is but the whole product feels like such an afterthought