Kirby Air Riders Reviews
Still, while Kirby Air Riders won’t be remembered in the countdowns of Nintendo’s greatest games, and certainly won’t have the longevity that Sakurai brought to Smash Bros., it’s a fun distraction and the kind of thing that you’ll pick up every six months or so for a quick blast and laugh. And sometimes that’s all a game needs to be.
Open Critic: Whether you fall in love with this game depends on how much the City Trials mode appeals to you and whether you have people to play against locally.
Review in Arabic | Read full review
Kirby Air Riders is a colourful, chaotic and surprisingly tactical racing game that won't be for everyone, but if you like this unusual driving model, you can get stuck into it for hours on end. It works best with family or friends, offering lots of fun and great replayability.
Review in Polish | Read full review
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Review in Italian | Read full review
Kirby Air Riders is a fun and addictive racing game with simple yet deep controls, featuring a variety of game modes, unlockable characters and vehicles, and a charming visual style that, combined with its smooth performance, delivers excitement and adrenaline in every race.
Review in Spanish | Read full review
Kirby Air Riders is so full of variety, hearty challenges, and pure joy that I highly recommend it to anyone who relishes unconventional gaming experiences. Plus, its online component is so well implemented that it may just be my new go-to game for multiplayer fun. ⭐
Kirby Air Riders is a dream come true for fans of the original Kirby Air Ride, as well as an excellent party and racing game. It is packed with content, bringing back all the classic game modes and featuring a deep cosmetic customization system for the Air Ride Machines. Additionally, the online mode ensures everyone can enjoy the title to the fullest, the way it was meant to be played—with others.
If you have a Smash Bros. hole in your life and can’t wait for SSB Ultimate’s official successor, you should definitely give Kirby Air Riders. You may just love what you discover.
Like many others I thought we were in for another Mario Kart World fun racer game, when Kirby Air Riders was first announced and also wondered why Nintendo decided to release both games so close together in the Switch 2's launch year. However after the gamescom demo and with each additional hour into the full game it became increasingly clear to me how different the two games are and especially how much depth the Kirby spinoff has. Kirby Air Riders is much more than just another fun racer: the game modes all give their own twist to the game and City Trial in particular offers seemingly endless hours of fun & enjoyment, while the game runs almost perfectly smooth on the console.
Review in German | Read full review
Kirby Air Riders is like a box full of charming toys. There’s a lot to poke your nose into and prod away at, but it’s not long before I realize there just isn’t much to its many offerings. While its sense of polish and variety is impressive, this has come at the devastating cost of focus. You get lots of ideas and gameplay quirks that are individually fun for a while, but seldom do they come together to form something especially satisfying or cohesive. In its attempts to have lots of things that might please everyone, it winds up not doing any one thing all that exceptionally. As a racing game, it’s mechanically shallow and tracks offer little in terms of skill or engagement, often focused on looking nice rather than providing the player with fun challenges that are interesting to revisit. City Trial fares somewhat better, but having only one map whose changes generally aren’t that impactful means it has to fall back on randomness to do anything interesting. Sure, there are things like Roadtrip or Top Ride that are kind of fun in their own right, but again, these are just a collection of distractions rather than anything substantive on their own. I suppose that’s fitting as the final form of an old GameCube that suffered from many of the same issues, but it’s a shame that time didn’t do this format as many favors as I was hoping. I think fans of the original game will like, if not love this, so in that sense I can’t call the game a failure despite my many misgivings with it. It wanted to be a bigger version of Kirby Air Ride, and for better and for worse, it wound up being precisely that.
Sakurai-san fully realizes the vision he sketched out over twenty years ago in the previous chapter for GameCube. Part kart game and part action game, Kirby Air Riders manages to stand out from easy genre comparisons and shine with its overflowing originality. A content-rich package offering countless hours of fun, further enhanced by impeccable technical execution. An unmissable title for many, provided you accept two strict conditions: the chaotic nature (at times truly significant) and the depth scattered among the many (perhaps too many?) facets of gameplay.
Review in Italian | Read full review
Kirby Air Riders is the definition of a cult classic in sequel form, with a generous budget and developed by a very competent team. It's as crazy as it is wonderful.
Review in Portuguese | Read full review
Kirby Air Riders is a thrilling new take on a Kirby idea that fans have been missing for a long time. It successfully combines racing, arena exploration, and ability-driven combat into one experience. It keeps the original idea but brings everything up to date, from physics to visual design. The game lets you play aggressively, defensively, or experimentally, depending on the machine and abilities you choose. It does this by combining freeform combat with competitive racing.
Kirby Air Riders is a racer unlike any other and another great addition to a quickly growing Nintendo Switch 2 library. Even with Mario Kart World and Sonic Racing CrossWorlds occupying a lot of my time in 2025, I’ll make sure to keep carving more aside for Kirby’s unique speedster.
Kirby Air Riders proves it is far more than a simple Kirby spin-off. Road Trip, City Trial, Top Ride, and standard races all offer different ways to play, and the fun never stops with both couch co-op and online.
Kirby Air Riders isn't for everyone, especially if you're struggling to get the hang of something. It is not a traditional racing game, but one where you have to do a lot at the same time with a limited number of buttons. Fortunately, there are also other modes that make this easy to master and also make the game much more fun. So are you ready for some challenge after Mario Kart World? Then Kirby Air Riders is definitely something for you.
Review in Dutch | Read full review
Kirby Air Riders surprised me with its accessibility, fast pace, and variety of modes, but its extremely short sessions and some overly quick minigames end up hurting the experience. Technically solid and artistically vibrant, the game delivers a fun, chaotic, and well-polished package. In the end, I enjoyed playing it and had some good moments, but I didn’t fall in love with it. It’s fun, creative, and unique, just not particularly memorable.
Review in Portuguese | Read full review
Kirby Air Riders surprises with deceptively simple one-button controls that hide a deep, high-speed racing experience. While the lack of difficulty options may alienate younger players and City Trials feels weaker than the stellar Air Ride mode, the robust content, slick visuals, and addictive "just one more run" gameplay make this a spin-off worth boosting into.
Despite its design flaws and City Trial misses, Kirby Air Riders offers enough substance and charm to make it a game you’ll keep coming back to—whether for quick bursts of fun or to teach your friends something new when they come over.
Accessible, chaotic, and endlessly fun, Kirby Air Riders is racing for everyone.