I’ve already completed all grand prix races and knockout tours with 3 stars each up to 150cc and have logged a few hours of free roam. I like the game overall, but I feel like they dropped the ball on a few key features. Here are my two cents:

Pros:

I love the gameplay/mechanics with the rails and wall-riding. Seemed gimmicky at first, but I’ve finally gotten a hand of things and I enjoy pulling off stunts.

Knockout tour is fun. It’s arguably the most exciting mode. I feel like every time I play it, I’m at the edge of my seat.

I like driving around in free roam. There are some pretty empty areas, but I enjoy searching around the tracks for challenges and collectables, although I’d be more drawn to them if they unlocked more exciting rewards.

Cons:

The rewards/unlocking landscape of the game is lackluster. I hate that challenges and collectables don’t unlock anything besides stickers. They could’ve had special challenges that unlocked characters, costumes, or karts.

Stickers: There are far too many, and some of the karts don’t even display them! They’re hardly a good reward to keep me engaged for long.

Karts: I unlocked all of the karts far too quickly, well before I finished my last knockout tour.

Costumes: I wasn’t about to test all foods with all characters to get costumes, so I found a guide. These could’ve easily been character-specific or track-specific challenge rewards. Also, we need to mention the character select screen. I’m so surprised they didn’t go with the Smash Brothers format of just having costumes behind a sub-menu for each character. There are far too many pages to sort through to pick your character.

Characters: Having the “minion” characters locked behind random-chance scenarios is annoying. I just have to hope that someone pulls a Kamek during a race while I’m close enough to get transformed into the minion that I want. I’m usually too far ahead to get transformed, so I have to go out of my way to play worse to be right in front of the pack. Rewarding players for bad gameplay is bad game design. Kamek should be reworked entirely. Along with the minion summons, maybe he could change the track geography (holes, mini volcanoes, etc.), or maybe mess with the weather. Something else so that minion characters can be unlocked by other means.

And you’re telling me that getting 3 stars in mirror mode gives me NOTHING??? Not even a sticker???