izigame.me

I was hyped as fuck when playing the demo, waiting for a long time and finally able to play the actual 'full' game after several hours now felt really empty. The 'fun' or 'enjoy' factor almost hit zero whenever I finished my session due to how the story/missions works.
Updated at 5 June 2025 my local time, and all points still stands (sadly I found some more new negative findings).

Short summary:
Only buy if you want an enjoyable cruising/open-world drifting game (using money and level cheats if you don't want to grind) and/or spare money to use.
Personally, the game is fun when I am not doing the story/missions.
The game SHOULD BE using 'early access' label and have a lower price.
Maybe the game is worth half the price than now, and current price more suitable when all the developer's roadmap fulfilled. Intro offer discount is listed @ IDR 424.150, which is kinda high.
Detailed review:
Bear with me, details below.


The Setup

PC: Ryzen R9 5950X, Sapphire Radeon RX 6800XT, RAM Corsair 32GB @ 3600MHz, SSD Corsair MP600 @ PCIe Gen4, Mobo Aorus Master B550, Monitors x3 @ 2560*1440-170Hz.
Controls: Controller Logitech F310
Game: Hard difficulty, exclusively using driver's eye cam, manual, simcade, all medium graphics settings, resolution full screen 2560x1440 @ 120, 4th chapter finished.


The Good

Open world map, beautiful and vibrant, really catch the long awaited 'Japan' themed racing game. Has a little bit of everything: Touge (or whatever you call it), wangan, rally, circuit.
Sound design is an absolute masterpiece for me. Most (if not all) OSTs match the game's atmosphere and personally every single of it is an absolute banger. Car sounds also hits the spot, probably the most accurate and satisfying racing game I've ever played. The details like how the car sounds during outside and inside camera is different, how each car's cabin (driver's cam) have different level of soundproofing (most obvious one about this is the sushi car/Nissan car that I forgot its name), how each car has its own unique and distinct engine sounds (including each car's turbos sounds different but this is subtle and may counts as way too subjective), notably the RB and rotary for me sounds really legit. All these making the game a perfect cruising game if you just want to drive casually while listening to the car's engine or synthwave during night drive (ofc after using cheats for the money and player's level if you don't want to grind). I really recommend to use a proper headphone when playing this game.
The auto counter-steering mechanism helps when drifting, probably the first for me in racing games. The dynamic camera also felt great.
The comics actually beautiful, mostly the ladies' introduced shows their charm really well.
Actual licensed cars, albeit the lineup is kinda limited.


The Neutral

Things I found inside the game, but not crucial.
World felt dead. There is no single person exists outside cars. Traffic AI is funny and honestly amazing since oncoming traffic can react by turning on their hazard lights just a moment before they think you would crash into them.
The story is all over the place (pacing), and it makes me feel like that it doesn't worth my attention or worth to remember (storytelling).
Car customization isn't as much as I expected.
There is no manual way to turn off engine and/or the headlights (headlights keybind not working for me in the world). The same with traffic, they still turn on their headlights during the day.


The Bad

THE GAME: Should be an early access. Opening the game to see the dev plans (which honestly, looks very significant) for the next 9 months feels like an insult both for me and for every single devs out there that trying hard to release a finished high-hype game.
PERFORMANCE: My PC can't run this title in a stable fps in high or more, even using medium still causes spikes, mostly when starting an event (the countdown) and after finished an event, drifting in the rain, drifting in a lot of traffic in the mountains, and drifting in multi-cars drift event that produces a lot of smoke. This is <20GB game but my PC also can't load faster than 10s due to consistent long loading time at 95%-99%. UE really make a trademark for themselves, aren't they? The frequency of loading screens also made all these much worse, tuning cars after buying parts? Loading. Forgetting some parts? Loading. These steps happens in one place (the garage/tuner shop) and why it needs another loading?
PHYSICS AND (INCONSISTENT) ENVIRONMENT: Physics outside the driving is ridiculous. Crashing/touching any objects felt absurd, as the car will mostly (not always) 'bounce' back and there is no clear indicator which object that can be destroyed, which makes it feels stressful during events, for example several type of fence and traffic lights can be destroyed when got hit, while some don't (speed isn't a factor, and I hate the wooden stick and hydrant). Parked cars is static object and literally a concrete object painted like cars. Traffic cars' headlights is annoying, due to some of them visible from far in the night, while some don't, and most of them has zero visibility taillights during the night. Traffic cars either feels like a sponge or a tank when crashed on, while opponent AI cars during events felt like they had some glue or something and our cars feels like running on ice whenever it touches each other.
STORY PROGRESSION AND DRIFT SYSTEM: Why do I need to deliver sushi with style (even the tip is enormous) while I also need to take care of its condition? Why I need to pass 80k+ drift points during the drive with my gf when she just got called by a sudden matter to attend? These two is so unrealistic due to them being so contradictive, hence tbh kinda silly.
Why reverse-entry drift is (almost) impossible (because the angle which the multiplier resets to x1 felt random) to get scored? Why hitting traffic/guardrail (once again, speed is not a factor apparently) sometimes fails my drift multiplier and sometimes don't? Why some main story events labeled as 'DRIFT' when actually it is time-based events? Why drift-duels only happens one-round and the player always as the chasing ones?
OPPONENTS AI: I know making racing AI is hard, and making them 'drift' is probably much more harder, but the way it is presented here is very annoying, mostly in drift face-off events. They are drifting very, very slow and 'cheating' since they can do this very slow drift while I can't. Drift face-off in hard is ridiculous, near the end of 4th chapter I had this battle with the mentally-ill dude antagonist and when I finished the event first it shows that I won by 5 points. He has ~26k points less than me when I was about to finish with ~10% track progress differences (he reached 89-90% when I finished). The game basically said "you better finish last during drift events or get fucked".
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3493324024
USER EXPERIENCE: There is no 'quick-change cars' when trying to accept events (the mislabeled events make it worse). Custom-tuning cars doesn't show its effect on the metrics shown for the car. No tuning presets save mechanism during the game's release. Car levels actually differ if you have two of the same type, which is absurd. No option to hide UIs to have more immersive experience.


Closing Notes

The game declares itself as "not as realistic, but not so arcade-ish", but all these findings make it position itself in a really weird position. Players get almost the same hassle and experience as a 'realistic sim' game would, yet completely not getting the 'arcade' racing game experience.
A shame, really, as I really wish to like the game as a whole, but the negatives is way too impacting my experience.
Sorry for the thumbs down (for now).