| Kirby Air Riders | |||
|---|---|---|---|
| Release Date | Gameplay & Story | DLC & Pre-Order | Review |
Kirby Air Riders Review Overview
What is Kirby Air Riders?
Kirby Air Riders is the sequel to the 2003 GameCube title Kirby Air Ride, released on November 20, 2025 for the Nintendo Switch 2. The game reunites Kirby's original creator, Masahiro Sakurai, and the said series as director after more than two decades. It is being co-developed by Bandai Namco Studios and Sora Ltd.
The game builds on the same action-focused premise of its predecessor: players guide Kirby (and other riders) through race courses, using speed, agility, and power-ups to gain the edge. One of the notable features carried over is the City Trial mode, in which players explore a city within a time limit to gather upgrades and compete in randomized mini-challenges, be it a race, a battle, or a gliding contest.
Here, riders still slide forward automatically, with players focusing on steering, boosting, and using Kirby's Copy Abilities—all features originally popularized in Kirby Air Ride. The new game expands on the original by introducing additional playable charaacters. Beyond Kirby, characters like King Dedede, Meta Knight, Bandana Waddle Dee, and even Starman make an appearance. Each of them comes with a unique Special Move.
Kirby Air Riders features:
⚫︎ 20 Playable Riders
⚫︎ Machine Customization
⚫︎ Return and Expansion of Classic Modes
⚫︎ Simplified Controls
⚫︎ Local and Online Multiplayer
⚫︎ Road Trip Story Mode
For more gameplay details, read everything we know about Kirby Air Riders’ gameplay and story.
 Switch 2 |
|||||
| $69.99 | |||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Kirby Air Riders Pros & Cons
| Pros | Cons |
|---|---|
 City Trial Mode is Endlessly Entertaining Great Audiovisual Design Tons of Customization |
Can be Visually Overwhelming The Story is Just Meh Controls Can Feel Awkward at Times |
Kirby Air Riders Story - 6/10
I appreciate that Kirby Air Riders includes a story mode with Road Trip, and having a roster of 20 familiar Kirby characters helps give the game some personality. However, the story often feels flat, mostly because there’s little to no personal investment in the characters. You’re mostly moving through challenges without really caring what happens to anyone. Hey, at least there are epic set pieces and beautifully rendered cutscenes after each area.
Kirby Air Riders Gameplay - 8/10
Kirby Air Riders is just a blast to play, especially once you dive into the endlessly entertaining City Trial mode. The controls can be a bit frustrating, and there’s a risk of repetition after a while, since the variety of modes cycle through similar challenges. Even so, it’s still a lot of fun to jump back in and see what challenge you’ll go through next.
Kirby Air Riders Visuals - 9/10
Kirby Air Riders feels at home on the Nintendo Switch 2, with colorful tracks that twist and loop like roller coasters, and all sorts of effects filling the screen. The characters are expressive, and being able to customize both your racer and Air Ride Machine adds even more personality to the presentation. Sometimes, though, with so much happening on screen at once, it can be hard to track everything or react quickly.
Kirby Air Riders Audio - 10/10
The soundtrack in Kirby Air Riders does a great job of bringing back that classic Kirby feeling, with familiar tunes that immediately hit that nostalgic spot for longtime fans. The new tracks are also well-composed and catchy, and you can even listen to all of them anytime in the in-game music player. The sound effects are equally as solid, and they give off a familiar vibe that feels reminiscent of recent Super Smash Bros. games.
Kirby Air Riders Value for Money - 7/10
Kirby Air Riders can keep you busy for a good while, especially if you like exploring all the game modes, chasing achievements, or tinkering with Air Ride Machine customizations. Solo play is fun, but multiplayer really makes most of what’s here. However, if you’re not into cycling through similar challenges repeatedly, it can start to feel a bit light on content; some players might feel like it doesn’t quite justify the full price. Even so, there’s enough variety and replayability here to make it worth picking up if you enjoy the gameplay.
Kirby Air Riders Overall Score - 80/100
Kirby Air Riders takes a simple idea from its 2003 predecessor and stretches it in ways that feel fresh and energetic after two decades. The gameplay is faster and more hectic, especially in City Trial mode, where keeping up with everything can be a challenge. Its simple controls are easy to pick up but sometimes hold the game back, and the Road Trip story mode never quite hits the same highs. Even so, the range of game modes gives both solo and multiplayer players plenty to do, and this makes it easy to jump in and hard to put down once it gets going.
Kirby Air Riders Review: Dream Land’s Wildest Ride Yet
Two Decades Later, the Pink Puff Races Again
I never owned a Nintendo GameCube. In fact, I pretty much skipped the entire sixth generation of consoles, so I was stuck listening to friends go on and on about their time with Grand Theft Auto on the PlayStation 2, Halo on the Xbox, or Super Smash Bros. Melee on the GameCube. One title I didn’t hear as often, but was equally curious about, was Kirby Air Ride. Part of that came from how much I loved Kirby: Nightmare in Dream Land on the Game Boy Advance, and part of it was just me being a sucker for any kind of kart racer. I didn’t know much about it back then, just that it was a strange little racing game that some people swore by and others brushed off.
Over time, the mentions became fewer and fewer. Kirby Air Ride, after all, wasn’t some massive hit. It launched in 2003, on a console not many owned, earned a pretty mixed reception, and sits at a 61 on Metacritic as of writing this. Nevertheless, it built this loyal corner of fans who kept asking for Nintendo to give it another shot. It was a simple game, but it had ideas that made it feel different from other racers of its time.
Two decades later, those long-running wishes finally came true with Kirby Air Riders, a kart racer that somehow even managed to pull Masahiro Sakurai out of his semi-retirement to direct it. However, calling it simply as a kart racer almost undersells what it tries to do. If anything, it feels like a combination of Mario Party, Smash Bros., and Mario Kart.
The amount of variety here is impressive for something built on such a basic foundation. At the same time, you can feel that limit of the concept creeping in, reminding you that no matter how far the team pushes it, the core idea is still built on this simplicity. However, that doesn’t stop it from being fun. It may not reinvent kart racing as a genre, and it may not satisfy every kind of player, yet it has an energy to it that makes it hard to put down once it gets going.
Its Simple Controls May Be a Bit Too Simple
The basic principle of the game appears simple, and that’s part of what gives the game its identity. Your Air Ride Machine moves on its own, so your main job is steering and making smart choices as the race goes on. You tilt the stick to move, and you use the A, B, or X button to drift. Drifting charges a boost, which works almost like in Mario Kart, except here that boost is basically your main way to control your speed. It sounds barebones, but once you’re in a race, you realize there’s more happening than its simple setup makes it seem.
Because it’s a Kirby game, inhaling enemies plays a huge part in how you win races. Basic enemies, once inhaled, can be spat forward to hit whoever’s unlucky enough to be in your way. Enemies with abilities work differently. If you inhale something like a Blade Knight, you gain that ability and can swing away at anyone beside you. What’s nice is that you can also pop off Special Moves with the Y button once you build up enough energy. There’s also the option to spin your Machine by wiggling the stick, which lets you bump into rivals and damage their kart.
Once everything stacks together, the game asks more from you than you’d expect. You manage corners, land jumps with good timing to get that small burst of speed, judge whether it’s worth hopping onto rails, and try not to slam into the nearest wall when the speed suddenly ramps up. There are moments when the game feels like it’s moving faster than your eyes can follow. You’ll hit a dash panel, collide with an enemy, get launched into the air, land off-center, try to charge a boost, and now you’re drifting into things you didn’t even see. It’s total madness, and even though that can be overwhelming, it’s never not fun!
However, its simple control scheme, while easy to learn, sometimes works against itself. Using the same button for both charge boosting and attacking enemies means you’ll often slow down without wanting to, especially if you picked up an ability you want to use aggressively. It breaks your momentum because part of you wants to experiment with the ability, but the other part knows you’re giving up speed every time you tap the button.
Spin attacks suffer from a similar issue. Since you have to waggle the control stick to perform them, there are times where instead of performing the action, you’re zigzagging across the track. It would’ve been better if these actions had a specific button assigned to them.
There’s also the concern of wear on the Switch 2’s thumbstick. The constant waggling for spin attacks doesn’t feel great on the hardware, and given how common drifting issues have been on Nintendo’s sticks over the years, it’s hard not to think about it while playing.
Plenty to Do for a Small Set of Modes
Even though the controls are simple, the Machines themselves add the depth the game needs. Each one comes with quirks and gimmicks you have to learn, and they sometimes push you into different habits and even completely different strategies.
The Transform Star is a good example. With a spin attack, it can shift from its flying form to its bike-driving form and vice versa, so you’re constantly adapting mid-race. The Vampire Star automatically "bites" nearby enemies, sparing you the trouble of inhaling anything just to copy an ability. There’s also the Swerve Star, which is amazing in tight corners because it completely stops when you charge, then rockets forward the moment you release the boost—though in exchange, it can’t steer at all. Once you understand how these Machines work, half the fun comes from matching them to the right tracks and game modes. The game opens up once you start experimenting.
This depth carries over into the variety of game modes. Kirby Air Riders has four modes in total, three of which return from the original GameCube game: Air Ride, Top Ride, and City Trial. The fourth, Road Trip, is new and functions as its story mode.
Air Ride itself is the closest to traditional kart racing, where your goal is to place first against five other players. Six racers might seem small compared to games like Sonic Racing: CrossWorlds with 12 or Mario Kart World with 24, but the action never feels lacking. The Paddock, essentially the game's online lobby, can house up to 32 players, but not all of them will be your opponent in the race track.
The tracks move fast, often throwing you into narrow paths where everyone ends up squeezing and bumping each other whether they want to or not. The game does not slow down to give you room; if six racers fire off abilities or Special Moves in the same stretch of track, the entire screen fills with effects. It’s not graceful, but it’s definitely intense.
Top Ride is the opposite. It shrinks the tracks down into top-down maps. It’s cute and easy enough to understand, but it didn’t stick with me for long. It honestly feels more like a distraction or a quick break than a mode you spend a lot of time mastering. There’s nothing wrong with it per se, but I found myself coming back to it far less often than the other three modes.
City Trial, though, is really where it’s at. I could play it for hours without touching the other modes at all. 16 players drop into a wide-open map where the goal is to build the best kart you can within five minutes. You search for stat boosts, chase down other Air Ride Machines that fit the playstyle you want, deal with events like giant bosses suddenly spawning, and even choose to ruin another player’s run by destroying their kart. Watching someone run around on foot trying to find a replacement after you knocked them off their ride never gets old.
Once time’s up, everyone is thrown into a Stadium Challenge. Sometimes, it’s a race. Sometimes, a boss battle. Sometimes, it's a Mario Party-esque minigame where you compete to see who can fly the furthest. It’s almost always great because every run plays out differently.
But with all that freedom comes the risk of not accomplishing much in a round. There are moments when you’ll turn a corner only to see someone else scoop up the power-up you were headed toward. Or you’ll get unlucky with what spawns near you. Because of this, you almost never end up with the build you want. That can be annoying, but in a way, that unpredictability keeps the mode from falling into the same repetitive patterns you see in other online kart racers. There’s no "bagging" here, no way to game the system by just hanging back. You just have to work with what you get.
Story Has Epic Set Pieces But Not Much Else
Road Trip is the single-player mode that actually tries to give the game a story. It takes you through ten or so different areas, each laid out on a path with a few branching options. Sometimes those options are as simple as picking up stat boosts or visiting shops, but most of the time, they’re different challenges based on the game’s other modes. You’ll be completing races, trying to stay ahead of opponents until the timer runs out, or getting the most points while diving down, and every now and then, there’s a boss fight thrown into the mix. The structure is rather straightforward, and it keeps the focus on the gameplay, but it’s wrapped in a coating of story so it doesn’t feel like you’re just hopping from race to race to race.
The story itself is pretty basic; after each area, you get a short cutscene that explains a little about what’s happening in Planet Popstar and why Kirby and his friends are racing around on Air Ride Machines. The plot revolves around an inorganic lifeform that can’t move on its own but wants to. It’s not exactly deep or emotional, but it’s enough to give you a sense that there’s a reason for what you’re doing.
I think it’s fair to say that most players probably won’t play Kirby Air Riders for the story. Games like Mario Kart and Mario Party thrived for years without any narrative at all, and some Smash Bros. games have done just fine doing the same. However, it’s nice that Sakurai and the team added a story mode here to give the game a sense of progression.
That being said, I didn’t feel personally invested in it. The cutscenes talk about hopes and dreams, but the characters themselves never really left an impression on me beyond how their stats affected gameplay. You’re not going to get a story as engaging or memorable as World of Light in Super Smash Bros. Ultimate or Subspace Emissary from Brawl. Sure, there’s an epic boss fight at the end of the trip, but most of the time, the story feels a little hollow.
Gameplay-wise, Road Trip is solid, though. The challenges can get tough on higher difficulties, and I found myself replaying whole areas to figure out the best path or combination of challenges to succeed. Each run through all ten takes roughly two hours, but it can stretch longer if you want to explore every branching option and collect all Air Ride Machines.
Is Kirby Air Riders Worth It?
Yes, Even If It’s Pretty Lightweight
Triple-A games these days don’t come cheap, and with prices creeping higher and higher, it’s hard to justify picking up everything that looks good. Kirby Air Riders costs $70, and that’s a lot for a game built on such a simple concept. The game, though, is genuinely fun, and there’s a lot to do if you want to push yourself. Chasing all 750 achievements, experimenting with different Machines, or tinkering in the customization menu gives you plenty of reasons to replay each mode. The different ways you can interact with the gameplay make it feel like there’s always something new to try.
It does have its limits. Sure, there’s a good variety of game modes, but they do end up cycling through each other. If you’re not particularly invested in the modes themselves, the repetition can become noticeable after a while. I will say, though, that the game is at its best when you’re actively enjoying the hecticness of City Trial or racing friends, online or in person. Alone, it’s fun, but it’s clear that this is a game built to thrive in social play. And yes, racing online or even just mingling with friends in the Paddock will require a Nintendo Switch Online subscription.
Even without DLC, which Sakurai has confirmed won’t be coming, there’s a lot here to enjoy. Kirby Air Riders takes a deceptively simple idea and stretches it into something surprisingly deep. Years from now, I can see players still finding joy in hopping onto a Machine and seeing where it takes them.
| Switch 2 |
|||||
| $69.99 | |||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Kirby Air Riders FAQ
How Long to Beat Kirby Air Riders?
Kirby Air Ride’s Road Trip Mode is relatively short, running for about two hours. However, those seeking 100% completion will find the total game time to be 20 hours or more.
How to Unlock Kirby Air Riders’ True Ending?
To unlock Kirby Air Ride's true ending, you must first complete a full run of Road Trip to unlock New Game+. In NG+, you then need to unlock all Machines before defeating the final boss and the True Boss.
Game8 Reviews
Kirby Air Riders Similar Games
Kirby Air Riders Product Information
|
|
| Title | KIRBY AIR RIDERS |
|---|---|
| Release Date | November 20, 2025 |
| Developer | SORA Ltd. Bandai Namco Studiostd> |
| Publisher | Nintendo |
| Supported Platforms | Nintendo Switch 2 |
| Genre | Racing |
| Number of Players | 2-8 Players (Local Co-Op) 1-16 Players (Online Co-Op) |
| ESRB Rating | ESRB E 10+ |
| Official Website | Official Website for Kirby Air Riders |
