SpeedRunners 2: King of Speed

I really love Speed Runners and it pains me to write a negative review, but honestly this game in it's current state I cannot recommend it to folks, compared to the original this is just genuinely so empty. To me for a game to be a successful Sequel it needs to do well at one of two things, One it has to expand upon the original's ideas and/or two it needs to do something different to keep the gameplay fresh. This fails at both. Let's just bring it up first the gutted cast, I can live without the collabs the youtubers all of that stuff, the base cast for this is small but full of personality they have custom voice lines and let me get a little more connected to runner I play, but lord there's nothing beyond who you see on the menu, no unlockables; excel gone, no Dr. Smart, No Diamond Diva, and no Gil in sight. This killed a lot of the drive to grind because it's mostly just for recolors of the runner you main and some customization for your online profile. The Game modes, Call me crazy but the Game modes are honestly not that great they're all basically online only so rip to anyone who wanted to practice or try them out solo. 8 player mode felt like hell, A lot of the time I was just waiting in the lobby to have it fill up maybe get like 4 or 5 players and I know there's more than five people online so really it felt like hoping quickplay with extra steps most of the time but when it's actually like 6 or so people it's actually pretty fun, chaotic but fun. Then on to what is basically the game itself, it offers absolutely no content for anybody who's offline or wants to get better at learning speedrunners, The bots are alright at best and at worst they feel clunky, and rarely downright stupid. Imma be honest a lot of the stages feel exactly the same or were parts used from the previous speerunners levels. I haven't played the first one in such a long time but there were A lot of moments where I got hit by deja vu where I instantly recognized the layout of the stage, Not bad to have reoccurring and reappearing stages but a majority of the stages felt really familiar to me and I clicked to it pretty instantly, and muscle memory began to kick in it really did not feel like there was a lot of new Content was added stage wise and to be honest that made the game less enticing to continue playing because I wanted to see new stuff and the older stages didn't have anything new to keep it interesting. While the new stages I genuinely couldn't tell if they did add any to the game. Hell, even the races themselves are pretty much exactly the same a majority of the items function pretty much exactly the same with maybe one or two being nerfed but pretty much it's the same items with only two new additional ones overall and that's about it. it doesn't really change too much it's exactly the same game and you can have pretty much the same exact experience on Speed Runners one There should have been more new items for this game to in order for it to feel fresh, they could have changed the lineup or at least had more Items that would rotate in and out every race. When you're in a game there's a small chance that you will encounter some type of glitch or bug that ruins the flow state of the game nothing that game breaking and causes the game to crash but something that ruins your run when you're in the heat of the moment whether that's you getting stuck on some type of object or the terrain itself or your hook not working for some reason. While it's still playable, It happened enough for me to mention. The game is really nice graphically to look at I enjoy the art style I enjoy that the characters do have voice lines with the exception of the announcer, he's so repetitive and lacks variation in what is being commentated on screen Its basically the same lines every race I had to mute it. But outside of those two things and the cheaper price tag compared to the original this game offers nothing good long term for returning players, not much content for casual new players, The story mode is laughable and the boss fights are practically nonexistent. No worthwhile unlockables outside of skins for your characters no reward to complete the story, no reward to complete the training or any of the practice. In its current state I just can't recommend it to anybody, unless you got a large competitive Friend group who likes this style of game and has a good Internet connection. Add more content, give me option to shut up the announcer, and add more available options for local and single player play.