Gonna give this a positive review as I do recommend this game, though it has realistically one huge, glaring issue.

So, positives:
- Gameplay is good, physics are what you'd expect of a Simcade drift game (Unlike all the Forza and Assetto Corsa players in the reviews, I didn't come here expecting incredible realism because that's not what this game is.) - if you like CarX Street/Drift, or drift setups in Forza Horizon, you'll probably enjoy this.
The recent 1.1.0 patch helped in making cars more predictable too, including in grip racing.

- Car selection is decent, looking forward to seeing what gets added later but what's already here is great, customisation and tuning options are also nicely in-depth without making you feel like you need a degree to put together a setup.

- The story being told through manga panels is a nice touch, unique way to do it. The numbered reading assistant is a good way of helping those not familiar with the way manga reads.

- The map is beautiful, lovely recreation of a Japanese environment, didn't fall into the trap of making roads unrealistically wide (Sorry, American wide) for the sake of 'making a racing game easier', even includes a load of tiny little alleys, winding mountain roads and city environments.

- Always nice to see traffic models that are actually licensed cars themselves, rather than something generic.

- The soundtrack goes HARD - good variety of songs that fit the tone perfectly.

Main complaint:

- This game has, unfortunately, the worst traffic and racer AI I have seen in a driving game in recent years, coupled with a density that is fair, but difficult to manage on realistic-sized roads.

Is it even AI? It doesn't react to you at all - everyone else on the road is *totally* oblivious to your existence.
I've played this for 12.8 hours at time of writing and I've already lost count of the amount of times I've been side swiped, pulled out on or just straight up head-on crashed into by random traffic, purely because it doesn't react in any way - doesn't slow down, doesn't swerve, nothing. It'll even change lanes straight in to you, or pull out of a side street or on-ramp and take up the entire road - both sides of it - as it does so.

On some occasions, I've spun the traffic that I've collided with, and its 'AI' is so bad it's just started driving forwards, the wrong way down the road with no attempt to correct itself or pick up its previous pathing.
Not to mention the amount of times I've seen the traffic crash into itself, purely because it doesn't react to anything.

In races this isn't too bad as you're probably going to end up ahead of the competition pretty quickly.

However, this makes the Sushi delivery missions annoying - moreso than the challenge they're supposed to be - considering you need to drift as much as possible during them to try to max out a decaying meter as well as keep a damage bar as high as possible, while finishing the mission within the timer, while constantly having to skid to a halt and/or spin out to avoid traffic that will obliviously ram you off the road or into other traffic - only for this to inevitably happen anyway five seconds later.

This also makes actually earning money via the wager-based underground races damn near impossible - I've lost millions thanks to oblivious traffic 'mishaps' such as those listed above, to the point that there's pretty much no point in doing the underground races at all, unless you want to just lose all of your money - might as well stick to being forced into mid results in the Sushi delivery missions so you can earn at least something.

Finally, the density. In most cases, it's OK, as in manageable at least - running into at least 1 traffic car on basically every corner is fine, drifting around them is possible.
There are however plenty of occasions where there's just thick traffic on both sides of the road, and with the more accurate road widths you're left with no way to get around it, resulting in regularly getting stuck in traffic in timed missions.

If the developers can address at least some of the issues with the AI - making them able to break when you stray into their path, swerve and improve their pathing for example, this game will be genuinely excellent.

Tl;dr, this game's great but the traffic AI sucks hard enough to render some of the game's elements almost pointless. With improvements to AI, this game will be excellent.

Other than the pre-release server issues that so many are pointing out, this game fundamentally has 2 main issues IMO:

- Game is always online; are you in the middle of a race? Not anymore, because the servers.
This includes races that don't even feature other players, such as Time-Attack events.
I can still play TDU:2 offline. Why not this?

- Races have forced matchmaking; Why?
If a race is meant to have more than 1 entrant, at least give us the option of playing against AI?
Forced matchmaking is hugely off-putting for some, being able to turn off matchmaking would make this a much more enjoyable experience.

Rest of the game (That the servers have allowed me to play) has its foibles, sure - graphics, physics, gameplay, mechanics and "Story" (If you want to call it that, typical racer 'storyline') are *Fine*, but don't expect anything groundbreaking.

Literally, if the above 2 main gameplay issues are addressed (As well as the server connection issues, but I'm assuming that'll be smoothed out around launch), this game will be worth a positive review.

**Edit, March 2025**

So they fixed the forced matchmaking in races - not only do you get to play in "Solo mode", not only do you get to pick the difficulty of the AI but, get this: In a revolutionary move, never before seen in the racing simcade space, you can even pause the game mid race!
How do they come up with this stuff!?

Sarcasm (Or vibe match of their own marketing, you choose) aside, this is a genuine positive improvement that has made the game at least worth playing a bit.

On top of that, it's rare now for there to be server connectivity issues, so you do actually get the chance to play the game.

However

The game is still online-only, as in it still lacks the offline mode seen in, say, TDU:2 - doesn't bode well for long term, uh, licensing(?) of a game at this price point, plus it's a basic expectation of a game of this nature, that can be found in almost all of its competitors.

Plus, the servers can still be a bit... iffy, even if they don't disconnect you.
I've been playing solidly for the last week - at one point, I joined an Ibiza session that had 5 other people in it. This ran at ~20fps until the game crashed.
This is not the case if there are 1-2 other people in a session, more than that and it seems to struggle.
Maybe it's for the best that I've only actually driven past 2 other people in the last week.

General foibles mentioned earlier are still there, probably won't be addressed and can generally be looked past.

Additionally, thanks to the improved servers and 'solo mode' races, I've now been able to play enough of this game to find a couple of new ones:

Firstly, client instability. I've spent the last week troubleshooting this almost as much as playing it, as it likes to crash a *lot*. My hardware hasn't changed and it's rare to find a game that crashes quite as often, and seemingly as randomly, as this one - especially when compared to other games of similar hardware requirements or released in a similar window.
It also sometimes simply doesn't launch - it'll launch into a white box, which immediately crashes.

Second, the sheer g r i n d.
End game (and some midgame cars) are expensive - as in, upwards of 5,000,000 credits.
Even the entry level Hypercars, needed for the endgame content, are what, 4.000,000?
(Unless you were in time to receive the free LaFerarri Aperta, which is very fast but handles terribly).
So, what if, with the exception of 5 races unlocked at like level 55, races pay between 13,000-28,000?
And what if most one-off missions pay, if you're lucky, 100,000 credits?
(With the exception of 5 that, again, unlock at level 55 - these are difficult times of the 5 very long races, but they pay 1,000,000 credits each, which is enough to purchase one (1) entry level hypercar, which you would have needed anyway to complete all of the events.)
Are you ready to grind for like a month for 1 car?
Do you want the new, proudly advertised Countach? 10,000,000
A Koeniggsegg? 12,000,000+
You get the idea.

Thirdly, the car delivery missions.
Most of these aren't too bad - be careful, don't rush and you'll be fine.
There are however a couple specifically on Ibiza that are ridiculous:
- Ferarri 812 Superfast delivery: The final 100 yards involve driving through a thin gate, down a small lip (Less than a curb) to the parking spot.
You will always take 1% damage here, regardless of how carefully you do it.
- Lamborghini Diablo delivery: Every time I have done this, a random NPC car has been parked in the parking spot covered by the finishing box.
Every. Single. Time.
Driving a ways away and coming back does not fix this, it simply changes what car is parked there.
You also cannot gently push the parked car out of the way - the only way to actually complete the mission is to literally ram the parked car out of the space so that you can park there, completely tanking your reward to the point it wasn't worth doing.

Finally, weather.
Okay, I get it, Hong Kong is a hot, humid environment.
It also rains a lot in the UK, but Forza limited that for the sake of gameplay.
If you're going to make a game that is, let's be honest here, primarily about driving supercars and hypercars very fast, it does not make sense to implement a weather system where half of the game's cars are practically undrivable 70% of the time because the roads are almost always too wet to get any traction.

All this considered and, while I don't want to change my original goal posts here, these do need work.

Most importantly IMO is still the offline mode - the rest can largely be ignored or played around, but as things stand there will come a point, probably not too far from now if the general 'success' of this game is anything to go by, where I will have literally wasted my time and money buying and playing a game that will forever be inaccessible.
I don't even care if we have to download whatever files you're hosting serverside in a 90GB update - at least I'll still be able to come back to and enjoy this game in 15 years, like I still do with TDU:2.



Update TL;DR,
Solo racing good, well done
Server stability good, well done
Still online only bad
General foibles still meh, not great
Crashy crashy client bad
Grind/race rewards bad
Delivery missions generally OK, couple that are bad
Hong Kong weather bad.

Wait for a very steep sale if you must buy this, or just play TDU:2.

If you're under the influence, in any way, and are thinking about buying this game, you won't regret it when you wake up tomorrow afternoon.

Fantstic game, great fun to play, and even when it all goes horribly wrong and your kerbals end up being rocket-propelled into the ground from 50,000m, it's still funny. I'd recommend this to anyone interested in space and science.