This review was written to reflect the online multiplayer portion of the game as I have not played very much of the single-player side and do not know if the soon-mentioned issues are reflected there.
I am quite disappointed with this game. As far as multiplayer goes, this game is one of the most unpolished falls from grace I've seen. Starting with the force feedback on racing wheels, half the time it decides to up and leave at the start of, or even during a qualifying session, or (albeit rarer) but worst of all during a race. These problems were significantly less significant in previous titles, including F1 2024, and with the situation being that every new F1 game is practically a copy/paste of the previous year's game (bar a few handling tweaks and changed UI elements), I have no idea how they could mess this up so bad. And maybe it would be tolerable if they were issues at launch that were eventually fixed, but here we are and they're still ruining races.
The issues do not stop there. God forbid someone causes a safety car in your online race because if you allow AI to take over your driving during the safety car period, get ready to start back up behind a truck-load of drivers you may have just spent half the race overtaking, or outqualified from the start. One of the worst problems that can occur here is when you get released exactly where you started the safety car. And you may be thinking "isn't that exactly what should happen?", and my answer is "yes", but there is a high chance that the game is deceiving you to the absolute highest degree when it actually informs you that your P3 is really a P10, and you should stop racing the top 2 for the win, accept the endless blue flags and let everybody back through! Suppose you want to beat the system and fight for your P3 despite the foolish remarks of the dreaded blue flag.
Well of course that would be against the rules, so expect 10s penalties up the rear-end and if you keep on long enough, a disqualification.
All for someone else's mistake.
So there you go, the fantastic and gloriously joyful experience of F1 25 online with your pals!
