As verified Final Fantasy obsessive, I always have a bit of a soft spot for Chocobo Racing, the PS1 Kart Racer which is basically a lightweight series mash-up. I was saddened when an announced Chocobo Racing Revival never appeared for Nintendo 3DS despite being announced – so I was naturally thrilled when Square Enix unveiled Chocobo GP, a new FF Racing title for the Switch. But, after only days of play, I’m done. I’m out.
Chocobo GP is one kick ass Map Racer. Really. It’s not Mario Kart, of course, but I would definitely pop his core mechanics and feel in that top tier of Kart Racer alongside things like Sega & Sonic All-Stars Racing and Crash Nitro Kart. But … for some reason this game is, like, a mobile game?
I have to be clear here. Chocobo GP is a more or less full-price game. It’s at the ‘budget’ end of modern prices at $ 50 / £ 40, but I consider that a full game. So why on earth do I have direct opportunities to buy Mythril, a currency in play, for real money? Once you boot it, it feels like one of Square Enix’s gacha-driven mobile titles like FF Brave Exvius or Record Keeper, up to the time limit for how long you can keep currency, login bonuses, and all that stuff.
In some cases, things that fans really want are locked behind this thing. FF7’s Cloud Strife and FF8’s Squall Leonhart – popular protagonists – are only available in their lovely rendered chibi forms as playable characters when you pony up for the game’s first season pass, which costs 800 Mythril – a bit shy of $ 10.
You can earn Mythril, and launching promotions means that basically anyone is able to sign up for Season 1 for free – but you can see where this goes in the long run. Nickel, Ten. Players are treated like ATMs.
Of course, many of these elements are just part of the modern game. We now live in a post-fortnite world where the season passes and constant, rolling updates are associated with regular costs par for the course. But I’m just incredibly surprised by the sheer amount of these Chocobo GP levels in you from the moment you first start the game – as far as I can see the evidence is positive that Square Enix has plans to aggressively push these things in Future seasons. The intent is to get you used to desensitizing from the start. It’s creepy.
Square Enix has already started walking some of this back. There is talk of relaxation and adjusting how much grinding is required to open things up. Such things. But the core system feels broken enough that only minor tweaks to the revenue model go that far.
And so here I am; I’m out. I refuse to do it. I have my share of Gacha addition; I pumped hundreds of pounds into Final Fantasy: Record Keeper to play over the course of my few years, and I had fun with it. But something about this format feels wrong – and more than anything, wrong.
Chocobo GP is not something you probably boot every day. It’s not something you spend time on your phone in bed or on the toilet. It’s a console game. Sure, that console is portable – but if I boot a kart racer, it’s probably because I want to play a bit of multiplayer or whatever.
I would have happily bought a DLC season pass for additional characters and stages on the line, but for this game to knock me out of this word with this free-to-play BS … it does not sit well. It’s a fake fire, and it’s a devastating shame – the core game is great.
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