Shiva: Diamond Dust - One of Final Fantasy's most popular summons is back.It has been confirmed that Cloud and Squall are coming to Chocobo GP in the future as well, and they'll have their own unique abilities. The character abilities can be extremely powerful and many of them can be used to evade damage if activated when a magicite hits the kart, but they won't protect the player from falling off the track or from stopping when hitting a hazard. Each racer has three kart setups (two of which need to be unlocked per character), which change their stats, but the character abilities remain the same. The unique character abilities help the racers in Chocobo GP feel more distinct than those in the Mario Kart series. The character abilities can do things like increase the speed of the kart, strike other racers on the track with magical energy or grant temporary invincibility from damage. These work alongside the magicite spells in the game, which are similar in function to Mario Kart's item boxes, with players even able to store both charges at once. Fans might get a kick out of seeing comedic spins on summons like Ifrit and Shiva, and the dialogue is funny at times, but there’s way too much chatting for something so light and inconsequential – especially when each exchange culminates in another normal race on the same tracks.Chocobo GPgives all of its racers individual character abilities that can be unleashed once their meter is filled up. Along with the standard cup events over four tracks, there’s a story mode which stitches together races with fully voice-acted storybook style cut scenes. The problem is, these variations aren’t distinct enough to shake the feeling they’re cutting corners, with repetition quickly setting in when you’re seeing the same few environments repeated.Įven with a robust stack of modes and difficulty options, the small amount of tracks stretches them all too thinly. To milk the nicely designed backdrops, Chocobo GP has multiple variations of each course with slightly different routes and obstacles. There’s technically only nine worlds in total, ranging from Chocobo Farm, Big Bridge from Final Fantasy 5, and the town of Zozo from Final Fantasy 6.
This carries over to the surprisingly small pool of tracks. The biggest sin is the painfully long recovery times after being hit, which makes Chocobo GP feel like a relic next to modern standards. The best kart racers balance the madness by rewarding skilful driving, but the stiff manoeuvrability here isn’t tactile or fluid enough to counter the frustrations. There’s a charm to the chaos but the haphazard imbalance, especially in the character abilities, turns most races into a scrappy crawl to the finish. Tracks generally feel smaller in comparison to other karting games, so you’re often forced into a slapdash approach to succeed. Amid the chaos of a race, with so many items and specials firing back and forth, there’s little breathing room to engage with the magicite system in any deliberate, meaningful way. These translate into homing blasts of fire, multiple blasts of ice, and teleportation gates which will catapult you further depending on the item’s level.Ĭouple this with character-specific abilities (24 in total) and the amount of weapons at your disposal is surprisingly big… to an unnecessary extent. Collect a bronze and you’ll earn a low-level magicite, which, if held onto, can be upgraded by hitting a silver or gold. Unlike other kart racers, boxes are separated into classes between bronze, silver, and gold. The item system is inspired by magicites from Final Fantasy, with spells like Fire, Water, Aero, Blizzard, and Haste – which can be stacked if you hit certain item boxes. There are a few tricks unique to Chocobo GP’s arsenal. A track based on the Gold Saucer amusement park from Final Fantasy 7 is practically Rainbow Road by any other name – with coloured surfaces and devious corners without guardrails. The drifting is identical to Mario Kart, with three tiers of boosts, and crystals (like coins) are collected from the track to increase your speed even the turbo trick from the starting line is the same.
The racing is functional, if rigid, and borrows heavily from its slicker competitors. If you haven’t played a kart racer since 1999, you might find Chocobo GP endearing.
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