Impressions after an hour and a half or thereabouts of gameplay: I'm enjoying it thus far. I've gone through as much of the street racing as the game will let me, hit the limit on followers and is currently making my way towards a slightly more interesting car than the free Mustang I went for. I have a theory on how changing parts between cars on the fly works, and I want to test it out.
I'd like to think that the handling model, while clearly better than TC1, is something that shouldn't take too long to adapt to. Assuming, of course, you've played arcade racers before and are capable of adapting to anything.
The event payout is fairly alright thus far, however. And that's the lowest tier events we're talking about. Yes, you will need to run them a few times, but.. what'd you expect?
I'm not quite sure why they've seemingly done away with the ability to teleport wherever your heart pleases, but that's apparently how things are for now.
In general, I'm getting quite a lot of if-TDU2-had-a-sensible-handling-model vibes off of this. And that's a good thing.
Edit: ..I've changed my mind as to what this game reminds me of:
..but somehow bigger and better.