Kirby Air riders (review)

Kirby Air Riders is clearly a passion project. Honestly, wow. It doesn’t even really feel like a racing game. It’s closer to a Smash Bros–style experience with a Kirby skin, packed with ideas that feel like Sakurai threw everything he had into one concoction and somehow made it work.

I felt comfortable right away. The UI is instantly recognizable and hasn’t really changed in decades, which makes it feel familiar in the best way. I always knew where everything was, no clutter, no mess just a clean simple interface.

The production values are surprisingly high for a game like this. It genuinely feels like Sakurai has earned a lot of trust from Nintendo’s higher-ups. Kirby Air Riders isn’t the kind of game you’d expect to sell millions, yet it still feels polished, confident, and made with a lot of care. That is something that can’t necessarily be said for the other kart racer Nintendo released this year.

That confidence shows most clearly in Road Trip mode. It’s a fairly traditional single-player experience, but it feels like an evolution of Smash’s Classic Mode. Stages can be as short as a bite-sized WarioWare minigame, and the mode introduces light roguelike elements through vehicle upgrades, all tied together with cutscenes. Short and sweet, addictively replayable and getting the true ending feels rewarding.

Then there’s City Trial, which is complete chaos, in a good way. It’s five minutes of nonstop madness. When I first tried it in the beta, and even when I went back to the original Air Ride, it didn’t really click with me. It felt overwhelming and hard to process. At some point, though, I stopped trying to understand everything and just embraced it.

Even when I don’t fully know what’s happening or whether I’ve built the “right” setup for the final event, I’m smiling the whole time. I’ve also come around on the final challenge being a personal choice instead of a majority vote. There’s no real overall winner, but that honestly doesn’t matter, when it’s this much fun.

Air Riders is simple enough to pick up and have immediate fun with, but deep enough in its mechanics to reward players who want to dig deeper. My brother mentioned liking how falling behind in races isn’t as punishing as in something like Mario Kart. Knowing the track layouts, enemy placements, and how to follow star trails gives experienced players meaningful advantages without feeling unfair.

I didn’t recognize over half the cast of Air Riders, mostly because I’m just not that big of a Kirby fan. It gave me flashbacks to first playing Smash Melee and not knowing who Ness or Marth were. What surprised me more was the variety in the karts. Each one controls differently, with strengths suited to different challenges. Some excel in flying events, while others are built for pure speed.

Even now, I don’t have a single go-to kart, but that feels intentional. No choice ever feels wrong—more like an expression of how you want to play. The only time I feel there’s a real difference, and real importance, to your load-out vehicle is in Air Ride mode, where certain karts are better suited to specific tracks. But this isn’t a negative, rather, it’s a good way of encouraging variety.

While I instantly clicked with everything Air Riders threw my way, the one mode I didn’t immediately vibe with was Top Ride. At first, I was fighting the controls more than enjoying what was there. It wasn’t until I played a couple of sessions online that I got a feel for the movement.

Nintendo has gotta have an entire team dedicated to music at this point. Between Mario Kart World and this, both games feature huge track lists of reimagined Kirby staples alongside a few nods to Smash. It feels like a celebration of the series as a whole.

Like other Sakurai games, the unlocks and checklist boards are weirdly addictive. I found myself going out of my way to complete challenges just to tick them off. The progression system makes even small goals feel rewarding. Even after reaching the true ending of the story, I don’t see myself slowing down. That goes for both multiplayer and finishing off the remaining boards.

I’ve always loved games that don’t fit neatly into a single genre. Smash Bros. gets labeled as a fighting game, yet it’s often dismissed as a party game because it doesn’t conform to traditional competitive standards. Kirby Air Riders feels similar. Calling it just a racing game doesn’t do it justice. It’s doing its own thing, and that’s what makes it special. At the end of the day, that’s why we play video games: because they’re fun. And Kirby Air Riders is a whole lotta that.

Pros:

• Effective UI

• Boatloads of content

• Simple yet hard to master

• Fun from the get go

Cons:

• Top ride takes some getting used to

Score: 9/10