Chocobo GP is riddled with performance issues, microtransactions, and poor gameplay

Chocobo GP is Square Enix's take on the modern kart racer. It takes obvious inspiration from the Mario Kart series but uses characters, locations, and more from the Final Fantasy series. It was released on March 10, 2022, and is seeing backlash from fans.

Related: Can you play co-op in Chocobo GP?

Issues

Players of Chocobo GP are reporting severe issues with the game. Reddit user Sat-AM posted a detailed list of numerous issues with Chococob GP. These include issues with performance, false starts, issues with lap counts, and more. These issues point to a problem with synchronization across the game.

Players are finding themselves or other players starting a few seconds before them and even finishing races before lap three. Unfortunately, this makes the online unplayable as these issues could randomly appear and completely ruin the race. You can see this below on player mizukingstyle's Twitter below.

Microtransactions

The aggressive microtransactions in Chocobo GP further fuel this. The premium currency, Mythril, is available through the Nintendo Eshop and nowhere else. Players can get 800 Mythril as a login bonus for season one as well as 500 Mythril as Square Enix's way of apologizing for the issues above.

But despite paying real money for Mythril, the currency will expire. You can see an in-game screen that confirms Mythril will expire at the end of the month, five months after purchase. In addition to this, there are two other currencies in the game.

Tickets and Gil are the other in-game currencies. These cannot be purchased with real money but instead are earned in-game through racing and the Prize Pass. The Prize Pass is only purchasable with Mythril and is how you earn the popular character Cloud Strife. Another character, Squall Leonhart, is purchasable with Gil.

Poor Gameplay

Regardless of the issues above, Chocobo GP has gameplay issues at its core. The AI is severely broken and borderline OP due to rubberbanding. When you combine this with the long recovery time after getting wiped out, a single mistake or getting hit by an item could cost you the race.

To make this worse, there is no way to quickly restart a race. This means if you mess up on a Story Chapter, you have to back out to the Chapter selection screen and sit through all the loading screens and cutscenes.

Circling back to microtransactions, the only way to earn Gil or experience for your Prize Pass is through the online-only Chocobo GP mode. If you have no internet or a poor connection, you cannot earn enough Gil to purchase Squall or level up your pass to earn Cloud.

At launch and until serious changes are made, Chocobo GP is a bug-riddled game burdened with unnecessary microtransactions and a predatory business model.

For more information on Chocobo GP, check out All playable characters in Chocobo GP kart racer and All Story Mode character unlocks in Chocobo GP on Pro Game Guides.