Great review, sums up my experiences quite accurately.
I was beyond pumped for this game, after the relative disappointment and frustration with GT5 and GT6.
I got home after work last Friday, popped the disc in, loaded up the Lotus Type 40 Ford at Classic Spa, and went for a lap. I honestly can't remember a single video game experience that I've had that put a bigger smile on my face. It was heaven!!
After trying a few more car and track combos, and falling even more in love, I told myself it was time to get serious. Got in the NISMO GTR GT3 at Algarve, and started to work on a base tune for online racing. After an hour of tweaking settings, I felt I was ready to start actually working on the tune. Compared to the year old it took me to get a comfortable setup in PC1 on the DS4, I was really impressed with the changes made to controller support.
When it came time to start working on the setup, I hit my first speed bump. Within 15 min of working on setups, I realized there was some pretty serious issues and inconsistancies with the way tunes were saving and loading. On top of that, the ergonomics of the UI started to grate at me from the word go.
I eventually gave up on setting up the car, figuring that there was clearly issues with setup saves, and decided to just jump online, do some default setup lobbies.
First lobby I join, I go gvt the loading screen to get yto the track, and I get to a screen that says Waiting, in a yellow box at the top. I waited for 5-10 minutes before eventually leaving. Over the course of Saturday and Sunday, I spent several hours trying to get into online lobbies, only to have either the same thing happen, or get disconnected when switching from quali to race. I also had several lockups and blue screens along the way.
I gave up on the online for now, figuring it would get fixed - this isn't the first game I've bought that had connectivity issues at release. I decided to try my luck with a single player career. I didn't do much single player in PC1, as I just couldn't get along with the AI.
Upon starting my career with Ginetta Jrs, I instantly noticed 2 things. There was an improvement in the AI, but there was some recurring issues, as well as some strange phenomenon. The first race I did at Snetterton 200, I instantly recognized the same line and speed issues that the AI has at T1 and T4. T1 they are slow as molasses, T4 they are unbelievably fast. it's like racing against a yo yo on a rubber band. As I progressed through the rest of Jrs and GT5, I came across other weird issues like tire temps, inconsistent pace in the wet, inconsistent pace from track to track or event to event, along with more tracks that had corners similar to Snetterton - Knockhill being another, fast at T3, slow at the chicane.
I posted some of my issues here, mostly the online ones, and got a response from
@IanBell, saying things were being worked on. Cool, great to hear that. After life with PD, it's nice to actually hear a response.
I went to the official SMS forums, where I discovered many other people were having similar or exact same issues. I made several posts detailing my experiences, with the aim to give info to the devs in hopes that they can fix and improve some things.
What I found in more than one thread was rather snarky and arrogant comments from some moderators, very proud of the product they had sold, but not to keen on taking negative feedback, unless it was coated with sugar and sprinkles.
In one thread regarding the AI, one mode boasted about the phenomenal amount of work that went into the AI. I replied saying that he was either full of crap, or hadn't played the same game we are if he wasn't able to see the repeated issues that people were experiencing and explained. I promptly got a lifetime ban from their forums.
So now I don't really know what to do. Part of me wants to stay positive despite yet another letdown after GT5, GT6, PC1, and now PC2. Like I said, the core of this is great, and has massive potential, if it could work. Another part of me wants to return the game, but that doesn't really do much except screw over the store I bought it from, since they can't return it. I was thinking I could return it and then use my in-store credit to rebuy a used copy in 6-12 months when hopefully all the bugs are ironed out, along with a used copy of GT Sport. I do feel bad for anyone who spent a few thousand dollars on a complete rig for this, that has to be frustrating.
Overall, it's a diamond, but it's covered in a lot of turd right now.
But that's quite off-topic in here. 
