The original Chōcobo Racing was not an astounding game, but it was a cleverly-positioned one. It offered the PlayStation owners of 1999 an answer to the Nintendo 64's Mario Kart while dusting itself with Final Fantasy references (and in the process taking a jab at Nintendo, with whom Square had split just a few years prior). It didn't catch on, fated to be more a novelty than a real competitor for Mario Kart or the PlayStation's own Crash Team Racing. As a successor, Chōcobo GP is a big improvement and an even greater risk. It's sharper, tighter, more enjoyable...and now competing directly with the latest Mario Kart on Nintendo's home turf.

Chōcobo GP is technically part of the broader series of games wrapped around Square Enix's adorable bird steed mascot, but it's fitting to call it a Final Fantasy racer. The story mode introduces moogle and Chōcobo protagonists yet wastes no time in setting up a squat version of Final Fantasy V's Gilgamesh as a rival. From there it's a journey through pastoral Chōcobo scenery and Final Fantasy locales, including VI's rainy Zozo town, VII's Gold Saucer casino, and IX's Alexandria palace. And a Final Fantasy guest star or two joins the roster with each level cleared in the Story Mode.

The courses themselves are reasonably complicated, with mundane features like speed strips and ramps leading to slamming gates, swinging chandeliers, and multiple routes. Players can also pick different versions of stages, with short, long, technical, and “hyperspeed” variants. It's a welcome feature for any racing game, though even the more complicated tracks fall short of what you might find in the latest Mario Kart. At least Chōcobo GP makes it all look bright and appealing, with pleasant graphics and a soundtrack that switches from heavy rock to a menu song chirpy enough to make the NiGHTS theme sound like a leaden dirge.

As with nearly every game that could be labeled a kart racer, Chōcobo GP is unguarded in its similarities to Mario Kart. Cute characters speed around a track, pelt each other with attacks, jockey for position, and provoke furious reactions from players when everything goes wrong. Speeding, braking, and overall handling are smooth, and it's easy to learn the game's more elaborate moves: drifting around a curve until your wheels spark to give you a boost, leaping off a ramp to pose in the air and speed up after landing, and saving your crystals and power-ups for the right moment.

Those power-ups go well beyond the usual projectiles, granting players barriers and other defenses alongside magic spells that unleash earthquakes, fireballs, tornados, a capering little grim reaper, ice that freezes every other racer, and a summoning that lets you soar all over the track as Bahamut the dragon. Best of all is a gate that can transport you ahead of the pack—or send you to last place.

Yet it's the cast that makes Chōcobo GP more than just another kart racer. Wrapped in colorful style and upbeat voice acting, the story mode is a lighthearted roundup of actual Chōcobos like the cheeping protagonist and the more verbose Camilla and Clair meeting extra-cute versions of Final Fantasy espers and monsters. Some of the jokes are labored and cliche (particularly when Atla the moogle over-explains them), but it's not hard to like the game's moogle version of Racer X or to consider why recurring antagonist Irma stays polite and timid off the track while fretting over her more aggressive (and interesting) racing persona, because heaven forbid that a woman have conflicting personality traits. At least Camilla appreciates her.

And what the cast does on the track is even more important. In addition to the usual variances in handling, overall speed, and acceleration, each character has a unique ability available once a special meter fills. Atla swipes power-up crystals from other racers. Shirma the white mage reflects attacks with a barrier. Cid the mechanic shells his rivals from a tank precious enough for Dominion, Metal Slug, or Pop'n Tanks, The game's direct Final Fantasy guest stars are even more inventive: Final Fantasy VI's Terra launches missiles from her magitek armor, while Final Fantasy IX's Vivi can cast a different spell with each direction of the thumbstick.

It all results in a pleasantly unstable experience. The plentiful power-ups and character abilities send characters boosting and skidding all over in delightful chaos, with spells and warps and attacks ensuring that no one is safe for long. Technical expertise will get players ahead, of course, but the magic spells add that all-important element of uncertainty. The unpredictable attacks make it almost as easy to damage yourself as other racers, and it turns even a sure lead into a frustratingly enjoyable multiplayer mess.

Racing as Final Fantasy characters might be Chōcobo GP's biggest selling point—and its biggest letdown. On one hand, it's cute to watch Terra and her father Maduin bond as they never could in Final Fantasy VI or to see Cloud Strife and Squall Leonhart gloom things up. On the other hand, Square Enix has such a generous library that any fan could rattle off a dozen excluded characters who would have been just perfect for the kart circuit. The original Chōcobo Racing actually included Aya Brea from Parasite Eve, and while her star may have dipped a little, surely Chōcobo GP could have made a few more picks from other Final Fantasies, like Balthier, Rydia, or the best character in Square Enix history: Quina Quen.

On that note, Square Enix's packaging of Chōcobo GP merits some attention. The game's sold in a full-price version and a free, bare-bones version, and you're never without an incentive to buy additional features and characters. Cloud and Squall are currently extras, and the game blurs the line between a free-to-play racer with unending money hooks and a regular release. This is the way of the modern industry, of course, but it's downright mercenary of Square Enix to lock away the most popular Final Fantasy fixtures behind a paywall.

Even so, there's plenty to enjoy in the game's regular offerings. A grand prix whittles down racers from an initial pool of 64 players, multiplayer is available both locally and online (and seemed stable at this writing), and the usual timed challenges, multi-course series, and customized races broaden everything.

Chōcobo GP's greatest problem may be the competition: as a newcomer, it can't hope to match the polish, depth, and entrenched popularity of Mario Kart. Yet it deserves to do well, despite some manipulative Chōices in its pricing, some simple track designs, and some unavoidable letdowns for those nutcase fans who demand the inclusion of favorite obscure characters (I'm holding out for Mint from Threads of Fate, Cube from Live A Live, and Big Joe from Xenogears). There's always a place for a speedy and appealing little racer, and Chōcobo GP is just that.