I really, really enjoyed the game. Now that I dedicated “a few” hours to it, I can say that it’s a great driving simulator, mostly thanks to the fact that the physics of the cars feels just right. Each of them is different, and sometimes it almost seems like you’re playing a different game when you switch between them. Some are easy to drive, others are a hell to master (Audi Quattro I’m looking at you). I can’t even imagine what a blasting experience it would be to drive with a decent wheel and maybe in VR, instead of just a joypad.

There are different game modes and challenges too, in case you get tired of the usual rally stages. I must say, though, that despite the fact that for each rally location present in the game they basically created only 2 levels, it hardly happens to get the feeling of racing over and over on the same tracks. That happens because for each level you have the whole stage run, the 1st half run, the 2nd half run and their reverse counterparts. So basically from 2 levels you end up having 12 stages for each rally, and there’s a dozen of rally locations. So there are about 150 possible stages you can drive on (not counting the RallyCross ones).

The learning curve has been quite steep, especially from the moment I decided to face the Flat Out DLC challenges seriously for the hardest achievement in the game (beating them at “very hard” difficulty). The hardest part was mustering the courage to go flat out even on very narrow roads when your brain tells you nothing but to brake and slow down. I lost count of how many times I crashed the car on some rock or some pile of logs, got a tire puncture or simply lost control and got off the road. Beating these challenges was the most rewarding experience in the game for me, though.

A side note about a moment of frustration I experienced: there’s a glitch in the game that greatly affects the times of your AI opponents and it still hasn’t been fixed. In more than a game mode, if you don’t complete a whole event in one go (meaning without closing the game, or even without simply going back to the main menu), it is possible that, once you resume the event, the times registered by your AI opponents will be much, much lower than they should, even lower than the currently set world records in some cases, making them impossible to beat. I first encountered this bug during the 3rd stage of a 5-stage challenge, so I lost about a total of 4 hours of gameplay if I consider the time spent to properly beat the first two stages, the time spent on the third one before I realized it was actually frigging impossible and there had to be something wrong, plus the time needed to get back there once I restarted. Because yes, the only way to fix it is to abandon the event and start all over. I’ll leave you a link here that lists all the correct times (and some of the glitched ones) for the multi-stage challenges there with difficulty set at 91/100 (the minimum for counting as “very hard”). Maybe it will prevent you from unnecessarily wasting time.

Since I played the first one, it's impossible not to make comparisons. The first big difference you notice is that it's way better when it comes to the graphics. Another point in its favor is the level and ambient design; they really overdid themselves with some of the maps. You have some really amazing locations to explore, and the experience is further enhanced by the aforementioned improved graphics.

Gameplay-wise I feel like there's been a step back, instead. Mind that the shooting feels similar but I think there's a problem of enemy balance or maybe I should say class balance. Normal monsters, even the special ones, are too easy to kill: 2-3 shots will usually suffice. Even the boss fights are a bit underwhelming. There’s no real time to learn their pattern or even see if there is one, because they usually die without much effort on your part—if I don’t immediately die, that is. In fact, with a class like the one I chose for myself, one or two hits are enough to shoot you out of existence, while my gf’s class, which is tankier, can withstand 4-5 times the damage without breaking a sweat. It’s okay to have tanks and glass cannons classes, but the game doesn’t make any effort in warning you about it, and I wish there was a smaller gap between them. The usual boss fight goes this way: we burst damage half the boss hp in 2 seconds, I die the second after cause I get basically 1-hit killed, she slowly tanks away the other half of the boss by herself. So no real fun there, at least for me.

Another thing that I didn’t like is the change of the protagonist we play as, which means that we’re following a different story, even if closely related. This shift makes you feel more like you’re playing some kind of spin-off rather than a main game in the series.

That said, consider that everything I just said is based on a fraction of the game only. They're basically just first impressions. I hope it will get better later. For now, let’s just say I have mixed feelings about it.