This game is very evil and very awesome at the same time with just a vast number of pros and cons imo. Personally, I absolutely love how gorgeous it is, visually and stylistically stunning. Hawaii looks incredible in this game with quite of bit of surprising and beautiful variation.
Cons -
Battleye
Ubisoft Connect
Live service, always online, no playing without a solid connection.
The NPC cars on the roads that have collision, incredibly frustrating and annoying to me personally.
The grind. Even just doing the really enjoyable playlists packed with ambience require purchasing cars to start them with real or in game money, which makes getting the cars you really want take even longer to get. And some of the luxury cars cost a lot.
The handling feels weird and not always great, but I am personally not used to playing racing games. There is a lot of tuning and assists you can use as well, but that takes some dedication to figure out and understand.
Lots of long load times, weird menus. Smaller gripe, but this is the longest a game has ever taken me to just turn on. Its literally like 4-5 minutes from hitting play, to playing the game.
Time wasting stuff like grinding and not allowing fast travel until 10 playlists are completed, which takes far too long imo. Slows down the entire game when you want to collect and enjoy more cars since even doing the playlists requires a ton of just getting from place to place.
Pros -
Amazing graphics, cars look real, environment is breathtaking and it just feels a treat to drive around and enjoy the scenery.
Hundreds of iconic cars, too many to get without a serious time or financial investment.
Playlists felt really fun to me personally as a super casual car and racing enjoyer with tons of variety and atmosphere.
Many, many roads and courses including more for events and thousands of player made courses. The main world alone takes a very long time to drive through and there are like 10 - 20 minute long drives and races in there. There are so many places of all kinds to drive, rally and offroad included, that you would not get tired of them for quite awhile. And then you can make more or drive ones other people have created. Like with the amount of cars, you are spoiled for choice where to drive them.
There are tons of things to do. Playlists which are 5-10 or so races/drives featuring different types of cars and then challenges for each playlist of which there are many and I haven't finished them yet. Simple activities like speed trap and slalom all over the place, tied to starting playlists. Events seem to be constant if you want more of a challenge. Racing other players of course. And just driving around and enjoying the wonderful scenery with light shifting throughout the day and night, including directly having sun in your eyes which is actually a negative. And there are collectables to drive around and find or pick up as you go from place to place. These things all reward varying amounts of money and xp. If you really wanted to do everything, it could take well over a hundred hours, possibly two hundred. And this is all setting aside getting better times and just getting better at the game.
Being able to fly, drive boats on the water, drive off road vehicles and instantly transform with to one of four favorite vehicles, meaning that you can drive fast, turn into a plane and then back into a car and just blast out of the sky. This goes well with being able to land from any height without being destroyed or suffering actual damage to your car.
There are some really fun, huge jumps in the world and in some tracks that are a blast to fly off of.
Despite the long grind, you will end up with a lot of really cool cars including a few of your choice if you keep playing the game. Some are playlist rewards, some are event rewards.
The price is honestly not bad. I grabbed it at 90% off and now picked up a couple passes for not much. Considering the mega price of some other racing games, this one lets you in cheap atm on sales and tries to reel you in with cosmetics and more cars with the in game store.
The beauty and wide selection of vehicles have made me enjoy this game quite a lot even as a casual car enjoyer, but there are serious problems with Ubisoft's practices that almost ruin it entirely. The game does not respect your time, money or privacy and It was a deal breaker for me for years, but it looked so good that I did finally cave and end up enjoying it. There are tons of annoying big and little things, but once I get into a new playlist, I am so happy that I am surprised by the feeling.
