The previous game in the series, Sonic & All Stars Racing Transformed - is one of the best kart racing games, so it’s a hard game to follow. Sumo Digital could have simply taken that game, add some new ideas, modes, characters, courses, and made something that expands on the game. However, not only have the “Transformed” elements been removed, the “All Stars” have also been removed so this is just using Sonic characters and courses; which seems a silly decision.
Kart racing games are often accused of being a “Mario Kart” clone, but since Transformed had transforming karts (plane, boat, kart), and also courses that are modified as you do laps; it felt like it was doing its own thing and expanding on Mario Kart’s ideas. I mean, Mario had static courses and only had short gliding sections rather than flying, so you could argue was a better and more innovative game than Mario Kart 7 or 8. In Team Sonic Racing, you only have karts and they don’t transform; not even for short gliding sections. Then the courses are using the anti-gravity idea from Mario Kart 8 which doesn’t modify the gameplay; it is just a visual gimmick. So therefore, this is more generic in this regard.
However, Team Sonic Racing’s new idea, and the main selling point - is the Team aspect, which I’m on-the-fence about. Sometimes I felt it was an idea that works, but other times it just felt like more randomness but gives you fewer competitors to shoot weapons at. There’s no friendly-fire so you cannot take out your own teammate.
The teammate in front lets out a trial that you can follow to gain a slight boost when following, then gain a large “Slingshot” boost as you move out of the trail. If you clip a teammate that has spun out, you give them a Skim Boost. You can pass items to teammates which can upgrade them eg they end up with triple the items. Performing any team mechanic charges a gauge that gives you the Ultimate boost which is like having the Starman power up in Mario Kart. You lose this after a short time, or if you fall off the track.
You can gain boosts individually by drifting, or doing tricks in the air.
Another copied idea from Mario Kart 8 is the collection of rings to go faster (well, coins in MK8). However you drop them all when you are hit or fail a stunt, which is a bit mean - especially when some of the objectives of the story mode involves finishing races with a certain amount of them.
You gain points for your position, but the overall winner is the combined points for your team. So you need some luck that your teammates do well. Even though there’s 4 teams in the standard races, it’s quite rare for members of 2 of the teams to challenge you. It’s really a race between yours and a rival team.
I seemed to be overtaken on the final stretch on a frequent basis, and it is even more annoying when all 3 of your rival team overtake you on the final stretch. If you're playing individual races like in the main story mode, this is infuriating. I had to retry several events many times because of this. When playing the cups, it usually averages out a bit; so it will happen only once or twice out of 4 races. I thought I would struggle on Expert because of this, but I actually got the Gold medals for all but one cup on my first try - so it can’t be that bad (or I was just very lucky).
A few tracks are familiar from old games like the casino one, but since all the non-Sonic ones couldn’t be used, they have made plenty of new tracks.
The characters are categorised into 3 groups and you need 1 of each on your team. I believe the general idea is that “Technique” characters are not slowed down by rough terrain so they can cut corners. “Power” are not slowed down by obstructions as much, and “Speed” are generally faster.
I thought the weapons were hard to learn because most are just different colour Wisps. The boost and the missile were hard to differentiate when you just see the colour at the corner of your eye, so I often tried to cut corners with a nice boost but then just launched a missile into a wall.
You earn coins based on your performance which can buy Mod Pods which are just Gachapon but you never get duplicate parts. I got the impression it was also biased towards characters you had recently used. You either win kart mods, or single-use weapon modifications. The kart modes are either cosmetic or modify the kart’s attributes.
In the story mode, a character called Dodon Pa gives Sonic and friends a vehicle and invites them to race. Everyone is sceptical of his intentions and think it is a Robotnik scheme. However, Sonic likes to go fast, so is willing to go along with it and he will worry about thwarting any scheme later.
The story mode is composed of single races, drift challenges, battle challenge, and survival. There’s objectives in each event which awards you with Stars. Stars gate off certain event paths but the mainline to complete the story has fairly low requirements. I thought the objectives in the non-races were very difficult - I felt I was missing some technique when my points total was way off. Even when watching some videos on Youtube, it wasn’t clear what the difference was, although it seemed beneficial not to drift on the drift challenge! Instead, you just quickly tap the button to begin a drift just as you hit the area then instantly straighten up.
There’s spoken dialogue at the start of the events which is skippable. I found that some events seem to trigger the exact same dialogue that you saw on another event. I thought that you encountered the same few courses for the majority of the mode as well, so it generally seemed that they hadn’t put as much effort into making it as varied and comprehensive as the one in Transformed.
Overall, I think Team Sonic Racing is a decent karting game but it feels like a step back from Transformed. If they took Transformed and added Teams as a new mode; then it would be an enhancement. It’s very much one step forward, two (or more) steps back.