4.5/5 ★ – philip_acquaro's review of Mario Kart World.

Started: July 16th 2025 Review after a great majority of content played: (30-35 hours) Even though I have yet to 100 percent this game, I decided to put out my review after completing all of the Grand Prix and Knock out Tour cups several times each with a gold 3 star rating as well as with 250 P-Switch missions completed, all vehicles, costumes, and characters unlocked besides fish bones, and dozens of peach coins and question mark blocks found throughout the open world. I usually only put out reviews when i’ve beaten a title but other than if I were to one hundred percent the open world, I haven’t found a point where I could say I necessarily ‘beat’ the game, as this is a game that I’m going to just continue pouring dozens of hours into each year until the next title comes out in like a decades time. I suppose completing all the cups to a 3 star rating on 150cc is enough to consider the game beaten as the credits do roll after that last cup. I’ve debated whether i’ll one hundred percent the open world to then review the game but given that you can’t track any of the P Switch missions you’ve already completed nor the P-Switch missions you haven’t completed (one of my major flaws with the game), I still haven’t decided whether I will one hundred percent the open world, so I just thought with how i’ve already played/completed a really big chunk of the game with over 30-35 hours of playtime, it’s more than fine to to put out my review of the game. That being said, this is a near perfect game for me. I realize Mario Kart may not be every person’s game to put this amount of time into, understandably making it be a somewhat controversial launch title for the Switch 2, but I’m the exact type of person that this game was made for so there you go. Growing up Ive played Mario Kart Wii probably more than any other game to this day both by myself and with my sister. Since we were both around 7 years old to present day with us both in college, it’s been a game that we never stopped playing, from the days where we would jump in excitement ever time we’d unlock a new character, play VS mode, Battle mode, Online mode when the servers were still alive, to today where we’re now experts at the game, it’s contributed a lot to our bond as we always end up playing for hours each time we come back as we get lost in our conversations. I even got into playing a modded version of the game with CTGP for a time and it just never got old. We would both continue to play the series with Mario Kart 8 on Wii U and later on the Switch 1 as well for the decade that it’s been out for hundreds of hours. Given this connection i’ve had with the IP, you could imagine how I lost it when Mario Kart World was shown off at the Switch 2 Direct with the amount of content that was presented to be alongside it. So now that I was fortuntate enough to find a Switch 2 a month after release and with having played it for the past 2 weeks and a half, did it live up to my insanely high expectations? One hundred percent yes! I seriously cannot get enough of this game, it’s such a blast. Each mode whether that’s Grand Prix, Knock out tour, or the massive open world, it all feels like they can each be their own separate games with how much content they put into it, it’s WILD. This is the most distinct feeling Mario Kart we’ve had probably since Double Dash. Yes, you still have the core mechanics familiar to you, but now you can charge a jump, flip in any direction, grind on rails or walls, bounce off said walls, rails, or even racers, do multiple tricks in the air, ride on ocean waves and flip off of each tide, which all adds SO much given the playground that they let you utilize these Tony Hawk like move sets within every track and place you go in the open world. Every single location whether in the open world, every track, or a straight away route to the next track, looks drop dead beautiful. It’s all so colorful, vibrant, and full of vibes that make you feel like you’re traversing a Disney Land themed Mario world even more so than what Universal Studios feels like. Genuinely the aesthetics of this game are some of the best parts of it, every new character design is FULL of expressiveness and personality with their little dance moves on the character select, the sheer number of super dope and sometimes hilarious costumes for each character, or with the mid air trick celebrations, it just adds so much more character to them to the point where if you go back to Mario Kart 8, it’s incredibly jarring. I haven’t even brought up how there are now 24 players at once with tons of power ups returning and new to the series making for all the more chaos the series is known for. You’re truly never safe in first place for more than a minute at this point. To get to the meat of the game, that being the track selection, I mean what can I say, they knocked it out of the park! Like I said previously this game will have you fed with Mario Kart content for just as long as MK8, each track is so fun that each time you play it can be a new experience given the new move set you have at your disposal to experiment tricking off and discovering short cuts. I want to try to name some of my favorites but I feel like i’ll just end up naming nearly every single one! Just to name a few in no order, I would say Boo Cinema, Bowser’s Castle, Cheep Cheep Falls, DK Spaceport, Shy Guy Bazar, Starview Peak, Toad’s Factory, Moo Moo Meadows, were all phenomenal and the new Rainbow Road especially made my jaw drop. Even returning tracks, feel like new ones in the way that some like Peach Beach are now designed to take you on a new path within each lap instead of repeating the same course for three laps, which makes it so much more refreshing for returning players. Now, I’ve seen some people complain about the routes that you have to take to the next track in Grand Prix or Knock Out Tour in that they’re a straight shot to the next track for the most part but I don’t know I had no problem with it. I still find it very fun and really cool how it makes the experience seem very seamless in how you just start the next track just like that instead of waiting in a loading screen. I definitely do think however that there should be 2 methods of playing Grand Prix mode. One should be called World Grand Prix or something like that and that could be the standard drive to the next track mode that we already have in the game, and the other mode should be called Classic Grand Prix and that should exclude the driving to the next track route. It’s not everyone’s cup of tea and it definitely makes each cup feel WAY longer than it previously did in prior entries. Not only that, you only get to drive the first track of the cup for three laps, where each track that follows in that cup are only played for one lap so having this classic mode could definitely be a useful option to play the game in. I suppose that brings me to my only major flaw with this game which is the lack of accessibility. This counts for what I just previously mentioned with the game not giving you an option to play Grand Prix the normal classic way from previous titles but it also goes into the open world. Throughout the open world you have such a vast experience ahead of you with how big the word is and how much there is to do. To one hundred percent it you’ll need 394 P Switch Missions completed, 200 Peach Medallions collected, and 150 Question Mark Panels found. With that being 744 things to complete/find, you’d hope that there would be an efficient way of both tracking your progress and having a method of finding the ones you haven’t. Nope! All the game gives you is the number of each that you’ve completed or found. No marks on the map for the ones you have done or found, no way that helps you find or track where the remaining missions or collectibles are like how you have a beeper that tells you when you’re close to a shrine in Breath of the Wild. Absolutely nothing! I don’t get it at all man, they put so much effort into the main course of this game but they don’t want to give you accessible/preferable options to play it in Grand Prix nor do they want you to have an accessible means of playing the entirety of their game in the open world. It’s so weird. They’re such easy fixes that I really hope they’ll be patched in future updates because it really sucks. Another very stupid thing Nintendo did with this game is the character unlock system. Rather than incentivizing you to do missions or explore the open world to unlock characters, you have to rely on pure luck/rng through an item that you get from an item box that spawns kamek to turn you into a character based on the location or track you’re in. You could race over 30 times where the character is supposed to appear and you could still not get it to appear. Trust me I know, I’ve gotten every character except for fish bones and i’ve tried dozens of times to get it to spawn out of pure luck and I STILL haven’t gotten him. But besides those things though, everything else is pretty much flawless to me. It has probably a top 3 soundtrack of any game I’ve ever played as it includes tracks from every single Mario game in existence but beautifully re done in a lofi or jazz like remix that is so well composed. If you’ve been a fan of Mario and have played most of his history for every era of your life like I have, this game’s soundtrack will really be something special for you. It’s one of my absolute favorite things about this game and I could just have tons of fun in the open world driving aimlessly while appreciating how it celebrates Mario’s history in music so well. The actual experience in the open world is a blast too. Like I mentioned I completed over 250 of the 394 p switch missions thus far and while I previously thought before getting this game that they wouldn’t be a big deal, they’re SUPER fun and addicting. Whether they take you on a timed mini 3 lap race, challenge you to collect a number of coins throughout a specific parkour course or route within a track, take you to the skies to collect coins or reach a goal post in a very fast timed pace, avoid weather conditions or enemies falling down mountains or blocking your path to the goal, there’s so much variety and fun level design that I really can never get enough of it. This combined with the incredible soundtrack makes for the open world experience to be a phenomenal game of its own that somehow comes with the same package of the rest of the game. They teach you how to play with the game’s parkour mechanics very well and encourage you to try new things whenever you race that track again while also taking you to places you would’ve never seen otherwise in the open world. Overall, the lack of accessibility while being a flaw of this game, doesn’t overshadow how phenomenal the rest of this game is and it’s now one of my favorite video game experiences i’ve ever had an will continue to have for so many years to come.e