A bit of feedback and tweak requests

[Recs]

I'm pasting my review of the game here for visibility, so a dev will hopefully see it. It's lengthy, so I apologize. I really want to like this game a lot more than I currently do, I feel like these small things could really help a lot.

This game can reach some great peaks but also devastating lows

It obviously hurts me to give a negative rating to a free game with so much good in it, but all those good qualities make the frustrating ones stick out even more, and it's a really frustrating game. Here's some of the issues that seem like an easy fix to me I want to bring up:

-Karts retain collision when hit,

so when a kart gets shot in front of you, it stops immediately and takes you with it. This can get even more annoying when a lot of karts block the road because a single kart ahead got hit. It would be so easy to disable their collision for just a second while they're spinning out, they already blink to signify they're immune to continued damage, so why not let other karts phase through them? I feel the devs could think it adds a new interesting hazard to the game, but in reality it just bottlenecks the race and takes control away from players.

-Items are unreliable.

There's a capture the flag stage where you're on your own against 3 npc's. 90% of the time after scoring, one of those npc's will be camping at the flag's respawn point, ready to grab it. No biggie I guess, you rush to them and since their AI path-finding is so lackluster, they somehow haven't scored yet. You have to hit them with an item to make them drop the flag, so on your way to them you pick up an item, but it's boost fuel, or blood points, or health, or a mine... ALL of these items will screw you up because you can't use them to make the npc drop the flag. So chances are you'll crash into them, and begin the most frustrating staredown until the NPC scores. You *need* to make item pickups distinguishable between support and attack, or even better, get rid of that stage entirely, it's not fun or memorable, and the flag's hitbox is deceiving.

-Being first is boring and frustrating.

You stop seeing karts altogether, and you become targeted by blue shells every 10 seconds. Imagine playing in an empty race, and every so often control gets taken away from you for like 5 seconds. Even worse, every 3rd time it happens, your HP reaches 0 and you have to wait like 10 seconds instead. The whole HP system needs a revamp. Healing depends on a single item, so it's completely unreliable like all items are. Failing a boost start at the beginning of the race makes you spin out as it should, but ALSO takes away 2/3 of your HP... why?? and why so much?? The risk in attempting the boost-start is already spinning out and instantly being in last place, why would I attempt it again when the reward is so insignificant. There's like 3 problems bundled up here (hp system, blue shells, boost start) all with easy fixes. I reckon it's not easy to fix how players in 1st place aren't even playing the game much anymore, but I see all the cool stage hazards and monsters, and wonder why they don't play a bigger part in regular races, players ahead do have to deal with them before anyone else.

-What do blood points even do.

There's a stage where you need to get the most blood points to win, fair enough, but every stage has them, there's even an item to get more. When you die, you lose all your points and drop them on the ground as per the souls-like formula, but what do these things even do?? There's no apparent use for them, no effect granted from them. Maybe they're just for score, but then scores need to be given more importance, because I haven't seen them play into anything in my whole playtime with this game. My suggestion is use them for healing or a DMC-like rank at the end of the race. Simply adding up to a bigger number doesn't spark any dopamine. Or you could make their effect more obvious if there is one? If there is one, it appears easy to miss.

-The fight against birdcage guy is very lacking in terms of player guidance.

I restarted a few times at first because I didn't know what the game was expecting from me. I knew from BBorne that I had to chase him into a small room for a real fight, and to be fair I did figure out you're supposed to lead him like a herding dog via the grid maze in the first phase, but after that first phase there's no hint to the player that they're supposed to find a road leading to the 2nd phase, so the first few times I wasted a few minutes just running in circles around the grid trying to find this dude, when he's not even there anymore, but you still hear his voicelines as if he were! Later phases also require you to jump onto some platforms, but several times the jump didn't get me all the way there, so I'd fall over, and the game would restart me *at the start of the chase* basically miles away from birdcagey, and it doesn't stop there, because if he runs just a bit further on you "lose him" and the chase resets... AGAIN. The amount of time wasted made me reset a bunch of times, which made me realize...

-Restarting takes ages.

This is more of a pet peeve, but I would love this game a lot more if load times for restarting weren't so long, or cutscenes didn't have to replay, and the racers overview before the start could be sped up or skipped or didn't take so long. While on the topic of dragging on, just like in other popular kart racers, items have a delay from the moment you pick them up to the second they become available for use, I'm talking about the roulette effect that plays before you see what item you got. It's a staple, but it's unnecessary. I see no reason why you can't cut it shorter. It becomes even more annoying during battle stages where you need a weapon FAST.

-The wall of text before every stage kills the pace.

Don't make it autoscroll, at least not that slow. Let players control it, and allow them to re-read it whenever, so they do it when they feel like it. You need to understand we have child-like levels of attention, we're playing a kart racer. What's most likely to happen is the player either forces themselves to read it and then gets annoyed, or they skip it and understand nothing. Right at the end you have to make a choice for the ending, and me not knowing the context behind it based my choice entirely on my previous knowledge of BBorne, which led me to a seemingly bad ending... I think??

All of this and lots of other smaller things just overpowered the moments where I was enjoying myself, it made me appreciate those moments less, and that's a shame really, because I do see a ton of potential and good times to be had already in the game. I will also say that a big chunk of these problems became an actual problem once I got to NG+, but that's mostly because NG is too easy. You might think this makes the criticisms less valid, but what I'm saying is the game is far too easy (and yet frustrating) at the start, and it only gets worse as you continue on.

If even one of these things get addressed or the devs explain why they are the way they are, I'm willing to change my review. I want to, even. I want to play this game more, but when I do I instantly want to drop it.