3.5/5 ★ – UpwardBoss's review of Riders Republic.

Hoo boy this one's coming in late. I started playing Riders Republic about a year and a bit ago (February 2022 or so), completely forgot about it, and finally came back to finish it. So here's the super late review... I guess. Riders Republic is a decently fun open world racer with a variety of events to play, but suffers from a lack of consistent quality between the different types of events. At its best, it's very fun, at its worst, it's tedious. Let's start with the best events, the snow events. Riders Republic comes from the developers of Steep, which focused primarily on skiing and snowboarding, and you can tell, as these events are easily the most polished. The snow races (and snow tricks point-based events) are very fun, with the tricks system itself being very intuitive. The bike races (and also the bike tricks events by extension)... are fine. They're a little janky at times, and the controls aren't particularly good, but they're a decently fun time. Nowhere near as polished as the snow events but I still enjoyed them. The air events though... good lord these are terrible. They control horrendously and were a complete drag to get through. The jetpack events in particular essentially were simply "fly through rings", partially due to a complete lack of stakes as you get a "star" for completion regardless of whether you win, podium, or finish dead last (more on progression in a moment). Therefore, it becomes mind-numbingly dull. Speaking of progression, it's not great. Progression through the career does not rely on you completing (or winning) events, it relies on your level for each sport, and your overall star level. Therefore, getting to the end of each specific sport can be a grind, as it often requires you to replay events. Qualification for the final event requires you to get 750 stars, and having completed every other event in the game outside of DLC (also with the exception of 6 events locked behind grindy sponsor contracts, more on that later) I was almost 150 stars short still. Fortunately, playing the DLC got me well beyond the 750 mark, but if you had no intention of purchasing the DLC, be prepared for a grind. (Speaking of the DLC itself, I did not particularly like the BMX events. The BMX bike is good for tricks but it's far too slow and it made the events unenjoyable overall. The Ridge Ultimate events were fine, but overpriced for what they are.) Once I did get to 750 stars, the final event was a massive disappointment. It essentially boiled down to playing one track with all 3 sports. I really expected something grander for the big finale. Now, Riders Republic is online only, and multiplayer is a big focus here, as it's essentially an MMO. Every 30 minutes there's a 64 player (on next gen and PC anyway) "mass race" which is exactly what it sounds like. 64 players racing against each other. Sounds fun but the awful netcode makes it absolute carnage, and only really fun to laugh at. There are traditional multiplayer modes, although as far as I'm aware they seem to get swapped out every now and again. The three available as of writing were "Tricks Battle" which wasn't really fun as you're basically doing tricks in specific areas and hoping your teammates do the same, "BMX Freestylers", which is just the BMX mode from earlier in PvP, and "Showdown"... which I couldn't even find a match for. Not impressed. There's also some weird service game elements here. "Seasons" are a thing, like in every live game, but the game doesn't really seem suited for it, as for one, the game didn't sell particularly well so the multiplayer isn't all that active, and also... the main events of the game are solo?? Why lock extra events behind sponsor contracts which require you to complete daily missions like a free-to-play mobile game? This game was $60 on release. Typically for Ubisoft, the game is very buggy. Beyond the aforementioned netcode issues, you'll clip through the ground many times, the scoreboard can bug at the end of events, and I had one crash. However, performance on PS5 is very good. It isn't native 4K, running at around 1620p upscaled, but I got a rock solid 60 FPS and never experienced any noticeable frame drops, which for a game where you're frequently going at over 250 KM/H, I'm very happy with those results. In conclusion, I do recommend Riders Republic, but not as much as I might have done. The snow events are very fun, and the bike events are enjoyable... enough, but the air events are terrible, the multiplayer is a big letdown, Ubisoft can't help but try and turn every single game of theirs into a live service for some reason, and of course, it's got technical problems. 7/10.