Given the fact that I’m always eager to see more racing titles on the Switch, I tend to load up each one with high hopes for some good fun. Unfortunately, the odds have felt about even each new game being at least decent or not terribly great, but we can only work with what we’re able to get. In principle, Rally Arcade Classics at least manages to give people who like the idea of rally racing, but not the more challenging difficulty of your typical simmy version of it, like with the WRC series. In practice, while it does check off that unique combination of boxes, that doesn’t manage to raise the experience above being pretty underwhelming.

If you’re the type of person who is in for the experience, and happy to grind things out until you’ve completed every mode and objective, this may be the sort of game you’ll love. There are plenty of modes, and tons of events within each for you to tackle. While, for the most part, they do all feel very much like variations on a theme, there are small distinctions. For the most part you’ll be racing against the clock solo, grinding through courses with different layouts and conditions. Depending on the mode or event you will sometimes also work against other racers on the track, though honestly you’ll still feel like your competition is the clock regardless. At least the controls are simplified and arcade-style, generally not requiring a whole lot of braking if you’ll just let off the gas properly, so if you find sim-style racing frustrating that may make for a saving grace to some degree.

In terms of problems though, there are quite a few that are tough to sweep under the rug. The first is that the brevity of almost every race you’ll participate in gets old in a hurry. Ranging from 30 - 60 seconds at most, more often than not, it’s a constant start and stop. Even when other cars are on the track, the fact that you’re usually able to blow by them like they’re standing still sort of makes them irrelevant, other than as an annoying obstacle to maneuver around at times. Yes, as you get into tougher classes the challenge level will slowly creep up, but if you’re even a moderate racing fan it’s going to make for a frustrating slog to get that far, and elements like the game’s poor physics aren’t going to make that any easier.

I suppose that people who’d like to simply challenge the leaderboards for giggles may find some room for longevity here, but the game is really asking for a lot of patience to get you to hang around. Without longer races to get you more invested, or at least better implementations of things like the game’s physics, this just feels like a pretty mediocre effort trying to compensate with a mountain of content… but even so much of that quickly feels repetitive and dull, given the low-energy action and lack of some compelling “it factor” to help you keep coming back for more.