In franchise racing games, it is common for the character you choose and vehicle you opt to pilot to have a significant impact on how your character feels and races once it’s time to go. In Kirby Air Riders, this is only part of the consideration in City Trial mode; however, the game also allows you to improve your machine as you play.
This happens in the form of Power-Ups, which take your machine’s existing stats and elevate them when you pick up one of the in-world power-up icons. How you customize your vehicle in Kirby Air Riders plays a big part in determining how effective it is as a racing machine, so it’s important to understand what each icon does.
What Do The Stats And Power-Up In Kirby Air Riders Mean And What Do They Do?
Customization of your machine is a great tool for making your racer as fast as possible but only if you understand what they each do. Here is what each Stat in Kirby Air Riders does and how it may benefit you to pick up some power-ups to elevate it:
- Boost (Magenta Chevron): Your Boost stat is all about improving the ability to increase your machine’s acceleration. Picking up a Boost power-up will improve both your normal acceleration as well as your acceleration while charged boosting, helping you get up to speed as quickly as possible to bypass the competition.
- Charge (Yellow Battery): This icon represents your ability to charge up the boost meter of your vehicle. The more power-ups you put into Charge, the more quickly it will fill up, allowing you to utilize the ability more often to blow past opponents and move as fast as possible.
- Defense (Blue Hexagon With Side Panels): In a racing game where opponents can attack you, it’s important to be able to counter those offensive maneuvers with some resistance. The Defense power-ups raise your defensive stat to reduce the impact of enemy attacks and protect your machine during a race.
- Glide (White Wings): The machines in Kirby Air Riders are, as their name implies, capable of riding on the air. The Glide stat determines how well or not your machine can do so, allowing you to further and faster the more of them you add to your build to tick your stats up.
- HP (Red Heart): One of the most universally used symbols in all of video game history, the red heart icon once again represents the health of your machine. There’s never a bad time to have more HP to withstand opposing offense, making this a valuable power-up for your machine regardless of the type of build you are working toward.
- Offense (Orange Split Explosion): Raising your Offense state by picking up Offense power-ups raises the damage done by your offensive maneuvers, making your machine more dangerous. This makes you more capable of disrupting opponents to improve your standing.
- Top Speed (Blue Fireball): This stat does what it says on the tin and improves the overall top speed of your vehicle. While Boost attributes determine how quickly or not you can get your machine to that top speed, the limit of just how fast you can actually take it is determined by your rider, the machine’s base speed, and the Top Speed power-ups you collect to raise it.
- Turn (Green Circular Arrow): A machine can be as fast as it wants in a straight line; if it doesn’t turn well, it’s going to struggle in races. The Turn power-ups increase handling of your machine, granting you more control over it by making it more responsive to your steering. This allows you to take corners at higher speeds as you do not need to slow down to account for sluggish handling.
- Weight (Brown Kettle Bell): A stat that requires you to decide how to balance its pros and cons, the Weight power-ups increase the weight of your machine. On the positive side, heavier machines are capable of doing more damage to opponents and can feel tighter to drive. On the downside, heavier machines are not as capable of gliding, limiting your capabilities in that arena.
- Power Down Patches (Grey Icons): Not every power-up patch will raise your attributes. For each of the game’s stats and attributes, there are grey versions that will decrease the value for the associated stat instead. While this is generally a bad thing and to be avoided, if you have reached a point where you feel you have invested too heavily in an attribute, you may seek out some grey versions to dial it back.
Machine customization is a key component to making your machines as fast and functional as possible. Get out there and get after the power-ups you need to make your machine feel just right.
