I think the main things this game has over Sport is the tuner experience and the hub world. I wanted to wait until I could get a PS5 but I figured it was going to be a long time until I can just walk into a store and buy one.
There are a few tracks which have been added, I think they are all from past games but have been reshaped and lengthened for the new generation. Trial Mountain has massive straights now.
One thing I’ve noticed is that older cars handle a lot better compared to GT Sport. You no longer feel like you are driving a cloud when picking a car from the 60s. It’s also much harder to correct a spin, when you feel oversteer its important to not completly lose grip. I think they’ve changed how tyre grip works. On Tim’s Friday stream he plays a challenge where it really exemplifies this when driving a RR Porsche.
At the moment the game still has a few bugs, they seem to be fixing them quickly though. One which I’m currently running into is a Rally challenge where you are a racing a Audi Quattro on hard tyres, (it’s meant to be on dirt tyres). I passed a couple of these earlier without noticing the bug, which I found quite funny.
The game is centred around the Menu Book missions. This makes progression a lot more linear compared to past games. There is no menu with 1000 races you need to complete.
Most Menu Books are centred around collecting 3 cars of a theme, it may be French hatch backs, Mustangs, or Japanese FR cars. The Menu Book will spawn 3 races where you must get a top result to win one of the required cars as a prize. After collecting all 3 cars, you will get a nice presentation about the cars. After completing a few of these, the next Menu Book mission will be to compete in a championship.
I’m not sure how I feel about the linearity, it’s nice to have the presentations but it creates a lot of menus to go through when sometimes you just want to race. I like the tuner aspect a lot. I tuned up a s660 to compete in a championship against RX7s and NSXs, when the recommended car was a 2021 Supra. It’s fun to have that BTCC Mini vs BMW experience.
Also if you buy this digitally on PS4 you get a PS5 copy too. If you buy PS4 physical the PS5 one is offered discounted.