Brought to you by me watching a bunch of people play Kirby Air Riders and it being the "one game that would potentially make me crack and buy a switch 2" (I still don't plan on it, but now they're actually giving me a challenge :P)

I really wish Star Garden was better. Obviously it wears its inspiration of the original Air Ride's city trial mode on its sleeve, and I think that's great! We need more of that! But it really just does not feel great from the demo.

The controls feel pretty slippery - and that's even on the stars that theoretically should have great handling. You know how Air Ride has a pretty natural feeling boost that aims where you feel like it should? (You know, aside from when you're using a super slippery star and have mega powerups... but even then, you can usually wrangle things) The Star Garden stars all feel like you have to way overcorrect for every single boost to try to hit a box or grab a powerup.

There's also this baffling decision to hit you with a side camera view every time you jump up out of the water. I get that it's cinematic, but I'd *really* like to see where I'm going?? Especially when I have flying power and want to glide away after jumping out.

There's just a bunch of little things like that where it just doesn't feel great to play - I know it's just the demo so there's a chance they could improve on everything, but it all feels so core to the game that it'd kind of take reworking the game from the ground up for it to feel good for me.