Riders Republic – Review

riders republic

Riders Republic is Ubisoft’s answer to extreme sports. Ever want to race down a mountain with your bike? Ever want to soar through the canyons on a rocket suit? Ever want to make those slick ass moves on a skiboard? Riders Republic has it all.

Riders Republic is an open world multiplayer racing game. For those who wants to try the game in offline mode, the game also has a Zen Mode for you. However, in order to have progression on your account you will need to play in the online mode.

The game allows you to customize your character. This will be your representation in the game and will be shown to other players when you see them in the open world. You can also buy items in the shop to further customize your character. You can use Bucks which you can earn in-game or use Republic coins which you need to purchase with real money. You will then take on several challenges that feels like a tutorial to the game. Once you complete this portion you are free to roam the world of Riders Republic.

The game has a central hub location called the Riders Ridge. Here you can do all sorts of stuff to make your Riders Republic experience more enjoyable. You can shop for items here, learn new tricks at the Tricks Academy, check on your Sponsors to do daily challenges and earn rewards, and compete in different types of races and battles like the Free-For-All and Tricks Battle.

Races and challenges are categorized into Bikes, Snow and Aerial. Then there’s also the Shack Daddy races. There are 5 events that you can compete in which are Bike Races, Bike Tricks, Snow Race, Snow Tricks and Air Races. Each type of races gets unlocked everytime you reach the required stars. Stars are earned by completing races or exploring the world. You can also get bonus stars for completing certain challenges given to you for a race.

Collecting stars is actually not too difficult in this game. You don’t have to be first place in the race to get a star. In fact, just competing in a race gets you 1 star. So there’s really no reason for you not to level up unless you don’t participate in anything. Winning a race is just bragging rights for you.

With the number of activities you can do, there’s just so many things to like about this game. One of my favorite activities would have to be the aerial races. It’s just so fun and exciting having to fly through the air while competing with other racers. I also like the MultiSport events.

The MultiSport events is like a triathlon event where you’d have to compete in several types of races to become number 1. The mixture of races you will compete in are always different each time. Some events start you off with a bike race that turns into a jumpsuit rocket race and finally back to a bike race. It was just so much fun having to go through all those different events.

Another MultiSport event that happens hourly is the Mass Race. In this race you are competing against 64 other online players in a series of different types of continuous races. The chaos and the craziness this brings was just so entertaining to be in. I really felt like I was in one of these races and I’m going toe-to-toe with these other people online. I have not yet won this type of event but just competing in it and seeing all the other racers already felt like a win for me. This game does it best to give you the best entertainment possible and they deliver.

The soundtrack is kick-ass and actually complements the races. Each track is destined to get your adrenaline pumping and going all out in these races. I even felt like I’m actually there in the race competing. While exploring the open-world you can also listen to the radio and change stations if you like. Another interesting thing about the sound is that when you’re in a race there are moments where you have to backtrack if you miss a checkpoint. Backtracking will also rewind the music. If you ever get wiped out either in a race or while exploring, the music will also stop playing. It’s the little things in this game that really makes it interesting.

Speaking of missing a checkpoint. That’s probably my only gripe in this game. I do get that each race needs to have its course however, the checkpoints in each race seems to be ridiculous and too close to each other. For an open-world game it really doesn’t give you much of a choice when you’re racing because you can’t veer too off from the course because you’d be missing the checkpoint.

The map is huge and you can explore the entire world on foot or on your preferred vehicle. The Shackdaddy challenges offer up fun and interesting vehicles that you can use to traverse the world. One of them was rocket-propelled skis. It was so fun just running around the map with it.

Speaking of Shackdaddy challenges, these challenges offer up a variety of race and events that are not your typical races. They would usually have you riding one of their unique vehicles like the Rocket Bike or the Rocket Skis. There’s even this one race where you need to wear these tiger costumes while racing on a bike. It was just hilarious and fun to watch that you will even forget about the fact that you are competing against other people in a race. There’s really no dull moments in this game ever. Even exploring the vast world is fun in itself.

Overall, Riders Republic is a fun multisport game with so many fun activities for you to do. If you’ve ever wanted an extreme sports racing game, Riders Republic is definitely something that you’d need to consider.