After a month playing, I can finally be honest with this game. I hope it can improve, but most of it can already be played almost as a full game. See you in Sunset City.
🎮 Gameplay: Goodish. Minimal loading screens, fluid, pleasant. Everything here screams a real game. Almost perfect, but it could be better. The AI is hostile and so is traffic. You will notice after you play a lot. Traffic renders in your way, and it feels as if you are being attacked by it. The AI is hostile, it will push, bump and downright crash you out of the podium, it is very aggressive and I never seen something like this. It is not unintentional, so it leaves a bitter taste. The idea of evil drivers is cool, but executed poorly when mixed with traffic. Also some rendering bugs like invisible objects.
📖 Storyline: Bad, very lackluster. You are introduced to the game by a cool shady dude to a pretty lady in the port, but this is just the tutorial. Once they teach you the basics, you are left to your own devices, and there is so much more to learn about the game mechanics that you end up learning it the hard way.
🕹️ Controls: Good, but it could be better. You have arrows, wheel(bugged) and gyro. They work very well but it takes some time to get used, since this game has actually good physics and believable inertia. I use arrows for drifting, because of precision, since drifting is very hard and you need to know how to setup your car like a mechanic, be a very good and patient driver to keep the car from spinning. Clearly, the more money you spend, the easier it gets.
🎨 Graphics: Perfect. It gets no better than this, and I doubt it will in the next five years. You have beautiful reflections, water, vegetation and particles, but you need a good phone. At least 8GB with a gamer chipset, like SD 7 gen 2 and above. I'm playing in Poco X6 Pro and I play it with 30 FPS lock, tweaked graphics: 3, 6, 5, 4, off, low. I could raise it, but I like to be gentle with the battery. If you have a flagship you can have fun with settings, but even you will suffer a bit sometimes.
🎵 Sound: Very good. Some cars are too loud, others are too low, but not detrimental. What they did got right was simulating spatial reverberation. Whenever you come close to a indoor space or tunnel, you can feel how the engine fills up the space while you drive through it, it is something really rare to be seen on mobile. The music could be better? Maybe learn from NightRunners(PC game)?
👥 Multiplayer: Mid, but it has potential. The world map acts as a hub, and from there you can see other players, challenge them to drag, drift or races. I believe this is NFS homage and intentional on their part. No friend system and voice. Important to mention that Drive Zone Online, another game, uses Vivox proximity chat and it is quite funny.
🎬 Presentation: Excellent. You get the best of everything. A functional map, clean UI, and extreme detailed resources like car models. The city is so beautifully detailed that you barely notice there is no one walking on foot, it feels very much alive. Everything tidy and clean.
💰 Value for Money: EXTREMELY generous. You can play it completely F2P, but I highly suggest you to buy anything you could just to support the devs. They are working for so long and people forget this game could be enjoyed for years, instead of a month or two. Just be patient, don't be a car goblin. I paid for some content, but just the minimal. If they ever fixed the AI, traffic and bugs, I could see myself paying full game price to have all the content, but I advice you to be cautious in your purchases.
👍 Pros:
• F2P
• Work of art, you can spend hours just looking at the game
• It is being optimized, getting better everyday
• You can have FUN and enjoy yourself and even play with friends
👎 Cons:
• Artificial difficulty(frustrating)*
• No mechanics tutorial
• Bugs
Final consideration: If you have a good phone, play it. It is better to play this game now, because there are a few games out there that can be enjoyed fully, don't listen to others, you might lose the opportunity. The game feels challenging and it can improve, but since the last two updates, this game is the best car game PlayStore can offer. I don't believe NFS Assemble can rival it, different categories. I used to avoid playing it before, but the last updates were decisive for me coming back, and I'm quite happy.
Final Score: 7.5
I'm usually brutal in my reviews. Any game above 6.5 is what most people would say a 10/10 game.