Gameplay
The game hosts various challenges you can tackle in about a dozen designated event types, snowboarding and skiing, mountain biking, flying with rocket wing and wingsuit, the DLC skateboarder and BMX as well as the toys. A lot of fun and varied ways to traverse this beautifully made map. If you haven't guessed yet; freeroam is easily my favorite aspect of this game.

You can also participate in races called events against CPUs, winning these will get you exp for the relevant career. Leveling your career up will reward you either with better gear or bucks you can spend on outfits. These outfits are on weekly rotation. While tastes are subjective I think there's plenty of good outfits you can earn for free. You can also earn gear and outfits from completing sponsor challenges.

Beyond this there's a lot more activities you can participate in like online Mass Races and Trick Battles. There's also Daily Sponsor Challenges, Weekly Challenges and Weekly Shop Rotations making you almost never run out of reasons to play even after finishing the main game.

Downsides
The game opens up with a tutorial and cutscenes, you'll quickly notice this game is a little cringeworthy, but that only makes up a tiny percentage of your playtime. The dialogue in general is a little cringeworthy, but again it only makes up a small percentage of your total playtime. The music isn't really good in my opinion, different strokes for different folks I guess. You can disable the ingame music, still use the other sound effects while playing your own music in the background.

Events are in my opinion the weakest part of this game, because it's an open world game it has to confine you to the intended area and route somehow. Basically keeping you from taking shortcuts during races or earning trick points in unintended locations. Their less than elegant solution is to put checkpoints every 30 feet. If you miss a checkpoint during a race you can kiss your victory goodbye. While an alternative solution is hard to come by, at least make the checkpoints less frustrating to deal with, I've lost tons of races just because I missed and arbitrarily sized checkpoint.

There's also little incentive to try if you can't make it into the top 3 as 4th till 12th (last) get the same rewards. I know it's supposed to reflect medals in real life, but from a gameplay perspective it makes little sense not to just make it more incremental. However once you have your gear you can mostly avoid events in the bulk of your playtime.

Monetization
This is basically an MMO so it should be considered a live service game and should be treated as such. Premium outfits shouldn't be considered any more or less taboo in this than other live service games like ESO or Warframe. Doing so is kind of a double standard. This is a game that gets regular updates and DLC. The developers need to be paid to get us that content.

I preface this because the game seems to catch a lot of flack for selling outfits for real money exclusively, However compared to other monetization schemes Riders is arguably one of the healthiest ones. I'd argue it's a really good example of how monetization should be done.

They're confident enough you'll enjoy the DLC items, they let you playtest them for free so you can make an educated decision whether you want to buy them or not. There are no lootboxes or fomo items as about half the seasonal Premium outfits can be bought outside their featured week and there's no pay-to-win at all. Even the bought currency isn't purposefully inconvenient as the incremental amounts you can buy are usually exactly what you need for a set number of outfits.

Gameplay The game hosts various challenges you can tackle in about a dozen designated event types, snowboarding and skiing, mountain biking, flying with rocket wing and wingsuit, the DLC skateboarder and BMX as well as the toys. A lot of fun and varied ways to traverse this beautifully made map. If you haven't guessed yet; freeroam is easily my favorite aspect of this game. You can also participate in races called events against CPUs, winning these will get you exp for the relevant career. Leveling your career up will reward you either with better gear or bucks you can spend on outfits. These outfits are on weekly rotation. While tastes are subjective I think there's plenty of good outfits you can earn for free. You can also earn gear and outfits from completing sponsor challenges. Beyond this there's a lot more activities you can participate in like online Mass Races and Trick Battles. There's also Daily Sponsor Challenges, Weekly Challenges and Weekly Shop Rotations making you almost never run out of reasons to play even after finishing the main game. Downsides The game opens up with a tutorial and cutscenes, you'll quickly notice this game is a little cringeworthy, but that only makes up a tiny percentage of your playtime. The dialogue in general is a little cringeworthy, but again it only makes up a small percentage of your total playtime. The music isn't really good in my opinion, different strokes for different folks I guess. You can disable the ingame music, still use the other sound effects while playing your own music in the background. Events are in my opinion the weakest part of this game, because it's an open world game it has to confine you to the intended area and route somehow. Basically keeping you from taking shortcuts during races or earning trick points in unintended locations. Their less than elegant solution is to put checkpoints every 30 feet. If you miss a checkpoint during a race you can kiss your victory goodbye. While an alternative solution is hard to come by, at least make the checkpoints less frustrating to deal with, I've lost tons of races just because I missed and arbitrarily sized checkpoint. There's also little incentive to try if you can't make it into the top 3 as 4th till 12th (last) get the same rewards. I know it's supposed to reflect medals in real life, but from a gameplay perspective it makes little sense not to just make it more incremental. However once you have your gear you can mostly avoid events in the bulk of your playtime. Monetization This is basically an MMO so it should be considered a live service game and should be treated as such. Premium outfits shouldn't be considered any more or less taboo in this than other live service games like ESO or Warframe. Doing so is kind of a double standard. This is a game that gets regular updates and DLC. The developers need to be paid to get us that content. I preface this because the game seems to catch a lot of flack for selling outfits for real money exclusively, However compared to other monetization schemes Riders is arguably one of the healthiest ones. I'd argue it's a really good example of how monetization should be done. They're confident enough you'll enjoy the DLC items, they let you playtest them for free so you can make an educated decision whether you want to buy them or not. There are no lootboxes or fomo items as about half the seasonal Premium outfits can be bought outside their featured week and there's no pay-to-win at all. Even the bought currency isn't purposefully inconvenient as the incremental amounts you can buy are usually exactly what you need for a set number of outfits.