I've never played any other Forza Motorsport before this, so I have no nostalgia for this franchise, I'll judge this game on its merits or lack thereof.
First off, "Good things come to those who wait", after 3 years of patches, almost all DLCs included, and a FAT discount on a sale, this game is great!
It manages to fill a particular niche of mine, left by the great Gran Turismo 4 on the old PS2, it being "I like *this road car*, what if I could turn this into a race car and actually race with it?" type of niche, it's a Motorsport sandbox.
#Now for the actual review.
*As a Game:* buy Horizon instead, the Career mode is boring and soulless, it may or may not be true for Horizon as well, but as a game it makes more sense to play Horizon instead, Gran Turismo 4's Career Mode is still the benchmark, even to this day (unfortunately).
*As a Sim:* it's surprisingly competent, the level of grip feels more believable than AMS2, if you play AC, your skill will transfer very nicely, you just have to dial the FFB settings to get the most out of it, out of the box the FFB is trash, but with a bit of fiddling, the FFB can feel on par with AC, understeer, oversteer, road detail, curbs, brake lock-up, weight transfer, self aligning torque, it's all there, you just have to dial it in.
*The Racing AI:* it's... fine?! It's nowhere near the close racing from AMS2, but at least it doesn't have the murderous intent from AC's AI, so even when the servers shut down, you can still enjoy playing it offline.
*What's the catch?*
Menus/UI could be better, Career sucks, some car models are outdated/recycled, FFB out of the box needs tweaking, 2 DLC's are not included on the Premium Edition, without a sale the game is ridiculously expensive, I do NOT recommend buying it at full price, no way.
"If you want to race road cars, AC has mods..." yes it does, however, the quality of the mods varies a lot, the physics, even the cameras, and you can't tailor the cars to handle in some way or how much power they have, you can change a few settings but you can't tune the whole car 'from the ground up'. In Forza you can. All the cars have to abide by the same physics model, even tuned, so no magic grip or magic drift cars here, all cars obey the same physics model, for better or worse.
*Final thoughts*
Btw I play this exclusively with a sim rig, I can't tell if the controller support is good or not (but it must be). Performance is good, I play with an ultra wide 1440p display and I get 100+FPS on high settings (no RT), online play locks it at 60FPS anyway.
Have fun!
