YMMV / Sonic Riders: Zero Gravity

• Awesome Music: People. This is a Sonic game. What do you expect?
  • "Un-Gravitify" by Cashell, the theme, add more vocals and has a very hypnotic tone to it. Crush 40's version is pretty good as well.
  • The menu theme is so good and catchy you'd almost rather listen to the music in the menu than actually play the game.
• Best Level Ever: 80s Boulevard & 90s Boulevard. They're all museums featuring cameos from Sega's vast library of series, even obscure ones including Alex Kidd.
• Contested Sequel: While the first game had its fair share of people who enjoyed it, Zero Gravity has been quite a bit more polarizing. Some people commend it for a few key improvements over the first game, most notably the removal of the air system. Others claim it accentuates the problems the original game had, including messing up the controls on the Wii, taking away the sense of speed and being less sensical story-wise.
• Disappointing Last Level: Astral Babylon, the Heroes story side of the Mobius Strip, which you unlock after beating Mobius Strip, can be seen as overall a letdown because it's basically just a rectangle with only a few triggerable ramps and a few areas to use Gravity Control and Gravity Dive in. Even more so considering you can break the race by using Gravity Control over abysses and win easily.
• Franchise Original Sin: The game had some flaws that became more apparent in Free Riders such as the nonsensical story.
• Low-Tier Letdown: The Yacht Gears, who are Comeback Mechanic incarnate. All of them share the common distinction of having an incredibly awful top speed, and whose gimmick is built around trailing other players to go faster, to the point where you surpass them. However, once you get into 1st place, the Yacht's terrible speed becomes apparent to the point where the character you just passed will simply pass you again in a couple seconds.
• Nightmare Fuel: You can destroy traffic in 80s Boulevard with gravity manipulation. If there are any semis in the area, their cabs will instantly explode, driver and all, leaving just an isolated trailer.
• Porting Disaster: The Wii port got some gimmicky controls if you're just using the Wii remote by itself. Thankfully, the game has full Gamecube controller support.
• Self-Imposed Challenge: It is entirely possible to win a race as Super Sonic without ever actually becoming Super Sonic, due to the fact that without any Rings, Super Sonic is treated as Sonic on foot, who, despite having a far lower top speed than most Extreme Gear, is capable of accessing any Spring shortcut that would normally require a Boost item. This also works on the handful of other boards that eat Rings to use.
• Sequel Difficulty Drop: Zero Gravity can feel like this compared to the original title, largely due to the simplification^note Tricks now only require you to press the button with proper timing and hold a direction, while Turbulence was reduced to appearing in very few stages with limited use, revision^note Boost was reduced to a Comeback Mechanic power-up that appears more often for players in last place and is the only way to access shortcuts, Typing was changed to be based on the EX Gear instead of the character chosen, or outright removal of some features^note The Air system was removed, allowing characters to fly indefinitely, which also removed the ability to generate Tornados. At this point, the game largely deals with the player's skill, their ability to overcome the AI (which was also toned down from the original), and their ability to juggle the few new Gravity mechanics.