Metacritic

Opencritic

Some Reviews

Trailer

I have a feeling this game is gonna bomb by mondern Nintendo Standards. Like sub 4m LT. I think lots of people are curious but not confident enough for a full price purchase. Anyway good to see it's of a respectable quality, not that there was any doubt. But the reviews aren't glowing enough to reassure me.

Honestly, I haven't seen many people excited about this game. For me, I think the score is higher than expected (I was expecting something around 70-75), and about the sales, I think the game will sell around 2 to 3 million copies.

We can't have nice things...

The lowest review comes from someone who hated the original. Why even bother reviewing a sequel to a game you hate.

For comparison, the MC score of Kirby Air Ride is 61. That's quite an improvement. The first game was broadly considered ok by critics, but this looks like it's considered good.
I'll get it, but not right away.

To me this looks like a really cool game from what I can tell that does racing mechanics differently than most, but definitely more of a niche title than something mainstream like Mario Kart, simply because it isn't well known with a somewhat smaller character franchise and only one fairly obscure old previous game. So yeah probably only a few million.

Also doesn't help that Nintendo priced it at $70. That's a serious wtf decision (as are many of Nintendo's decisions lately). Nintendo is missing the whole reason why companies decided games need to be $70, specifically that's for ultra realistic $100+ million budget games, that was the argument at least. Selling a game that comes off as a cute quirky little racer at $70 makes zero sense. This looks like a $40 or $50 game, and I think would have a decent chance to sell well at that price, at $70 it's gonna come off to most people as "why do I need this when I already have mario kart". Sales will be helped out by the lack of games on the Switch 2 so far, but once again Nintendo gets the pricing of yet another thing all wrong in 2025.

High 70s is fantastic considering the original was more or less critically panned in its day, and this seemed like such a “What? Why??” sequel. Though part of me does wonder how much of the solid reviews are skewed by the fact that Sakurai is adored on a Miyamoto level now by the gaming press…

Solid score! Day one purchase, easy.

With gaming becoming more expansive, I see games like Kirby Air Riders suffering in sales due to people saving money for more "important" games