Jett Rider Review

An awesome game, but hard already without caring about your playtime, the speedrunning achievement is brutally difficult. However, I kept playing while I also died a lot. Takes around 10h+ to unlock 24 of the 25 achievements, and then there is the speedrunning achievement…

Approximate amount of time to 100%: 14h+
Estimated achievement difficulty: 8/10
Minimum number of playthroughs needed: I would say 2, but probably more because of the speedrun achievement.
Is there a good guide available: Not yet, but for most of the achievements you don’t need a guide, there are NPCs in the game that will tell you in which areas you still have collectibles left.
Multiplayer achievements: No
Missable achievements: Yes, the speedrun achievement
Grinding Achievements: No
DLC-Only achievements: No
Speedrun achievements: Sadly yes, and it is a challenging one! I don’t expect to ever get 100% on this game because of this specific achievement and how bad I’m in this game.
Time-gated achievements: No
RNG-achievements: No
Does difficulty affect achievements: No difficulty setting
Unobtainable/glitched achievements: No

Wauw, Jett Rider is so much fun, but so brutally hard in my opinion. I don’t have much experience with this type of game, which might be why it feels so difficult, but I struggled a lot in my normal playthrough… let alone in a speedrun for a specific achievement, not counting on being able to ever unlock that one with my gaming skills. However, let’s back up a bit because normally I’m easily done with challenging games, as that is not my bread and butter… so why did I kept playing Jett Rider and worked to get all the other achievements?

To be honest, I’m not sure myself. Something just clicked and it was so much fun. Cleaning up a planet is a fun game loop for me, and there is more going on behind that. Upgrading weapons and seeing how much that improved them helped a lot. It is also fun that the different weapons really feel different. And there is a lot of humor and craziness going on in this game.

For those who know the game “Willy Jetman”, this is a new version of that game, with added content. I never knew about that game so I went in blind and just loved what I met. One of my complains is that you are able to speed up animations and text, but aren’t able to skip them. and every boss will have some sort of animation and/or talk before the fight starts. That gets really annoying when you keep dying on the same boss and have to get through that every single time. A skip button, or even better and instantly retry button on boss fights would have been really nice.

What I also love is that close to the portal hub in-game, there is some sort of bar where there are 2 NPCs who will tell you where you missed a collectible. This means that you won’t need a guide for 24 achievements out of the 25 there are. The only achievement you’ll probably need a guide for is beating the game in under 4h. Beating it the first time took me 11h (says the save file), but in reality, it took more like 13 hours. Gladly for the speedrun achievement, when you die, a save game is loaded, so you can struggle with beating bosses, but you have to beat them fast and get through the game fast, doing nothing optional, which makes bosses harder because you’ll miss out on experience, money and upgrades. I never expected to go for it, but I gave the speedrun a try.. however, I got to world 3 (out of 4) with a timer on 3,5h… so I knew I wouldn’t make it, not even close because that meant I only had 30 minutes left for world 3 and 4. It was a long shot, and it is really hard, but as stated above. I don’t expect I will ever be able to 100% Jett Rider because of that pesky achievement :P.

This review for Jett Rider was written on 23 January 2024, based on the current Steam version of the game which has 25 achievements at the time of writing this review. This information can be outdated, for example, when the developer adds or removes achievements or releases (new) DLC.