Star Overdrive | Switch Review

I was ready for Star Overdrive. When it first appeared in a Nintendo Direct, it looked fast, stylish, and musically charged. You wield a keytar (yes, really) like a sword, race around on a hoverboard, and explore a world that looked like Breath of the Wild if it had sand instead of grass. The game screamed energy and attitude.

What I found upon release was still gorgeous, occasionally fun, and sometimes exciting. The problem was that occasionally part.

We’re Off to a Solid Start

The premise starts strong. You play as Bios, a character who crash-lands on a mysterious planet while searching for his missing girlfriend. What follows is part mystery, part scavenger hunt, and part hoverboard-driven adventure. Imagine SSX Tricky with boss fights sprinkled in.

When the game hits its stride, gliding through the dunes and pulling off tricks feels fantastic. You’re dashing, grinding, and gliding across ancient alien ruins, and the flow almost delivers on what the trailer promised.

But then the story all but vanishes. You’ll occasionally find cassette tapes with messages from your girlfriend, but they feel more like breadcrumbs than meaningful story beats. There’s little else to deepen the emotional stakes. After a while, I had to pause and ask myself: Why am I doing this again?

A Gorgeous Setup, Full of Promise

Let’s be clear, Star Overdrive looks phenomenal. The shifting sands, curved ruins, and cosmic sunsets are visually striking. It’s the kind of game where you’ll stop and admire the view more than once. It oozes style, and the presentation is one of its strongest assets.

But that style rarely pays off with substance. I remember one early boss encounter where I lassoed a giant sandworm, riding behind it on my hoverboard like some wild sci-fi rodeo. For a moment, it felt exhilarating. But then the awkward controls kicked in, I wiped out, and had to restart the whole fight. And by the time I finally beat it, the repetition had drained all the fun out of it.

Exploration suffers from the same issue. Yes, the game doesn’t hold your hand—but not in a good way. You can see activities on the map, but there’s no guarantee you’re strong enough or even capable of doing them yet. So you hoverboard around, hoping to stumble into progress. It turns the open world into more of a guessing game than an adventure.

Combat Falls Flat, and So Do the Controls

Combat doesn’t help either. Despite having unlockable abilities and flashy animations, fights devolve into button-mashing with very little depth. Most enemies can be dispatched by just wailing on them. Bosses have gimmicks, but they don’t feel memorable; they feel like set pieces that never quite click.

The hoverboard, the game’s star mechanic, is a mixed bag. Movement can feel smooth, but the physics are just too loose. I’d be in a groove one second, and then suddenly slam into an object or overshoot a jump. And in the heat of combat, the finicky handling becomes a real liability.

It’s like the game is juggling too many cool ideas but never quite sticks the landing on any of them.

Oh Look, More Time Trials

The game clearly wants you to fall in love with speed. Time trials are everywhere. And early on, I did enjoy them—they’re decent showcases for the hoverboard’s potential. But they quickly wear out their welcome. You’re required to complete many of them to earn materials for upgrades, and doing them over and over again starts to feel more like homework than fun.

If I wanted that kind of grind, I’d go back to farming Radiant Weapons in Destiny 2, and I don’t want to go back to farming Radiant Weapons in Destiny 2.

Worse still, just getting to these events can be a drag. The world, while pretty, often feels empty. You’ll spend a lot of time aimlessly skating across nothing, which turns traversal into a chore. Exploration should feel rewarding. Here, it too often feels like a commute. There are no enemies between each area.

Star Overdrive Final Verdict

Star Overdrive is a game that looks and sounds like a wild ride, but too often feels like a slow crawl. Its incredible art direction, promising premise, and creative core ideas are held back by flat combat, frustrating controls, and a loop that quickly grows stale.

There are moments of brilliance: a lassoed sandworm boss, a sunset chase across dunes, or a slick trick pulled off mid-jump. But, they’re fleeting. The rest of the time, you’re either grinding through time trials or crashing into geometry while wondering where all the fun went.

It’s clear the team behind Star Overdrive is talented, and I’d love to see them refine these ideas in a future project. But this one? It feels like a stylish mixtape of better games that never finds its own rhythm.

To hear me talk more about Star Overdrive, be sure to listen to the April 10th, 2025 episode of The Gaming Outsider Podcast around the 54:45 time stamp.

This review is based on a Nintendo Switch copy of Star Overdrive provided by Jesus Fabre for coverage purposes. It is also available on PC via Steam.