Ready. Set. Chocobo?
Start your engines and get set for a new racing experience, featuring a roster of dozens of your favourite Chocobo characters, complete with their own unique abilities and variants. Equip Magicites and take out the competition as you drift through various familiar courses in online and offline multiplayer modes. Compete in tournaments and become the reigning champion of GP!
When you think of the Switch and it’s racing games, Mario Kart 8 Deluxe instantly springs to mind. Having said that, there are still some decent alternatives out there…but can Chocobo GP be one of them?
Chocobo GP lets you race as the Final Fantasy creatures, but also as other characters from the franchise. It has a story mode, and you can race either offline with friends or online in knockout tournaments to gather in-game XP and currency to unlock other racers and skins.etc
Chocobo GP has a lite mode which is free-to-play, but if you want the full experience then you’ll need to shell out roughly £40 for the full version and then there’s microtransactions that are kind of shoved in your face a bit, especially if you want to play as the likes of Cloud. It’s a shame that even a full priced game like this still needs to rely heavily on microtransactions, because for all its flaws, Chocobo GP isn’t that bad of a racing game. It’s not going to win any awards for originality, but it does have its moments.
If you are feeling the need to give Chocobo GP a try, I would definitely recommend the Lite version to begin with since you do get a lot of the experience here, which does work in its favour. It’s just the microtransactions that ultimately make it a turn off for most, especially those who shelled out for the full version.
The visuals are cute, and the tracks are nicely designed. The framerate is consistent throughout and I’ve only had a few network issues during online play, but there is still work to be done and hopefully will come in the form of future updates. The music itself in the menu is perhaps the worst offender though and will grate on you very quickly.
The Verdict
Chocobo GP has some good ideas mixed with some bad ones in the form of microtransactions, but the Lite version does give players a chance to try it before deciding if they want to shell out for additional content.