In honour of the steam Autumn Sale (which, for some reason, is being held in Spring), I'm changing my rating to a recommend. My main gripe with the game was the confusing way that DLC content is just mixed in with the content I own, to the point where the game would let me pick stuff I don't own and then become unstable, glitch out and crash. When I tried to discuss this online the response from fanboys was appalling. OTOH, there are a lot of haters in the discussions and I don't think that's fair either.

So, for my purposes, which is casually racing against the AI, this is good enough. Unlike Assetto Coursa, I can actually set up my controller the way I like. Unlike Forza Motorsport the game looks and performs very well at 4k with my modest hardware. Unlike Project Cars, I don't have to spend 4 hours tuning a car just to make it drivable, in fact I rarely need to mess with the default tune at all. Unlike Gran Turismo 7, it's easy to find a difficulty setting that actually gives you a fun race.

I just wish that I could apply the same settings I have for single race mode to a championship, and I wish the championship would remember my car selection settings. As it is, i can only really use the game in single race mode, which, again, is fine enough.

Bottom line is, if you want to race real life racing tracks in realistic racing spec cars, this is very good. But expect to be both delighted at how good the gameplay is, and annoyed at some quality of life issues. It is a big improvement on the original version and there are semi-regular updates. I would hate for the game to fail because of too many haters so I've decided I'm not going to be one of those anymore.

Original review below:

The core racing is good, but the game is so buggy I can't access more than half the base game content. I'd be happy to pay for some extra tracks but I can't justify investing in a broken game.

When I tried to ask for help I got a toxic response from someone calming to be beta tester so it seems like just another game beholden to it's inner circle. So I wouldn't expect the game to improve any time soon if they want to gatekeep new players who dare suggest their precious game isn't perfect.

So for now I just occasionally play a handful of favourite tracks in single race mode with the one car I like that I know I can use without crashing the game. So even though this is the best serious track racer I've tried (and I've tried all of them) I can't recommend anybody pay money for it.