I won't deny that sim-racing is a very small subset of gaming. But as a car enthusiast, I just can't skip a good racing game. Is GT7 one of them?

Of course, for people who just can't stand my ugly mug, here's the written version! https://zyro-eg.com/2022/04/07/gran-turismo-7-review/

Generous score. I can't give it more than 6/10 myself in its current state, despite the fact that I can't stop playing.

A lot of that can't stop playing comes from having to grind all my spare time to be able to afford the cars I like to use, the older ones which go for up to 20 million a piece in the Legendary Car Dealership. The last patch has done a lot to improve payouts, yet not for the races I like to do. Custom endurance races with grids line-ups you create yourself still sit at 60K for a 12 hour endurance race. So instead of doing what I want to do most, I'm using a PP glitched Tomahawk to farm for credits to be able to build the line-up I want to race against.

It's a 6 at most due to:

- Lack of content. There are no races (yet) for the faster cars, not for the slower cars the game keeps throwing at you. All there is in PP 400 to PP 800 races against moving pylon AI. GT Sport has at least double the amount of content, however that was after years of support. Launch content of GT7 is more than what GT Sport launched with.
- The online is a big step back from GT Sport. Missing features, worse stability, new bugs on top of the not fixed old bugs, daily races split between ps4 and ps5, and no way to track your progress. PD has it all blocked now, no more stat tracking like what was possible with GT Sport on Kudos Prime and other sites.
- MTX, PD threw us a big bone with the last update but it's mostly one and done payouts. Grinding Tokyo with a glitched Tomahawk can get you a bit above 2 million credits an hour, almost on par with GT Sport. Yet there are more very expensive cars in GT7 and you can add another 500K to 700K per car for tires and tuning. And they only appear for 4 or 5 days, then who knows when they show up again. I missed out of the XJ13 and the 917K, 2 cars I really wanted to race but couldn't grind fast enough.

Dynamic time and weather are the star of GT7. Watching the track dry up, puddles slowly disappearing in the sunrise, absolutely stunning and challenging to race in these conditions. However a lot of tracks don't have night and/or rain implemented. It can't rain on Mount Panorama and the sun can't set at Spa. Brand's hatch has neither.

GT7 is a live service game through and through, meaning it's basically early access. It's not finished and it shows.

Then there are the technical issues. I was not expecting to see so many frame rate drops on PS5. The PS5 should be capable of showing better spray effects, yet the current ones already cause frame rate issues in traffic with the light changing. The server connection is bad as well, I get at most 3 bars and have received numerous penalties due to cars stalling with lag. On PS4 Pro you're better off setting the output resolution to 1080p. Doing this weeks Spa race with dynamic time has very unstable fps on ps4 pro in 4K HDR. While the game hasn't crashed on me, the races have. An unexpected error has occurred, thrown out of the online race, ratings tanked.

But it undeniable looks amazing when it all works


GT7 has a lot of potential, but also has a long way to go to get there. The UI is slow and cumbersome, so many missing QoL features, plenty bugs and generally very unbalanced. Back to lapping the entire field 3 times in the Tomahawk, still have 38 million to go for the current line up in the LCD.

Naturally, we may never come to an agreement, but as you know I'm not against us having some discourse about our disagreements lol... That, and at least you detailed out your thoughts unlike most people, so I respect that right off the bat!

Since I review in a bubble, it wasn't until after I had written my review that I started to get all the wind on "omg MTX this game sucks" rhetoric that was going around.  Granted, I said what I meant in the review: I never had at any point felt pressured to "buy" money.  I played through the game just fine, ended with several million and had 90+ cars (I think the footage shows 90, but I actually have 93 cars as I bought some right at the end, one of which I believe was the Tomahawk you mention!).  There is a car that was 18 million, and I knew that was meant to be grinded and saved up for.  BUT, I also then looked into some of the responses from the developers and they touched upon exactly what I had figured based on me knowing some real life prices of cars and seeing that they were very CLOSELY matched in the game: they're trying to mimic real life pricing rarity and difficulty to acquire.  Sure, I know, it's just a videogame, but what most people are complaining about is actually rather by design, even if it's harder to grind for the 18mil car than it would be in previous games.  And to add something: I've never even had anything CLOSE to as much money in Forza games as I did in GT7, and while GT7 contains far more expensive "legendary" cars, if the developers wanted to make the game's rarest cars hard to get, then that's what they did.  It didn't in any way hamper my experience, it's just there for people who want them.

As for performance issues, I played on ray tracing mode, and I had almost no framerate dips, ever.  I would get occasional stutters, sometimes feeling as short as the "regular interval" frame pacing ones from Mario Kart 8 on the Wii U, but it performed solidly.  And as you can see from the footage, I raced in the rain on the Ring Nordschleife and it never skipped a beat.  BUT, based on your description, the performance issues pertain to online type modes.  If I had to guess, this is because the game likely uses a framerate-locked timer to more accurately track your time and position, so any hiccups or slowdown in the connection likely affects the framerate.  It sounds a lot like the Smash Bros online netcode in which lag actually affects the entire framerate.  Granted, I avoid online modes in racing games, even if the time trials one would be more accessible.  This is because in online racing, players are not honorable nor respectful, and I've never found once any racing game to properly penalize poor driving ethics.  The amount of "gaming" racers who would be disqualified and banned in real life racing would likely kill most racing game communities in videogames lmfao!  Every now and then, there are respectful ones (I even remember a long time ago, I had taken the FINAL CORNER ever so slightly better than the person in 1st place and came out at a slightly higher exit speed, so I literally walked by him during the final straight, and instead of pitting my car, swerving into my car to push it, or do anything heinous/illegal in racing, he simply did what any real life racer would and watched as I squeeze out a win by probably less than half a car; he could have EASILY kept 1st place by hitting my car, but he chose to respect that I took that corner more skillfully and won fair and square, and trust me people like that are VERY rare in racing games!).  But I digress, I could be wrong about the netcode, but the game performed well for me.  Though, I never had cars pile up because the AI doesn't do that (agreed on the AI being fucking pylons, though!), which I guess could be a factor in me not having framerate issues.

And of course, since I'm addressing your items in random-ass order, to talk about content is where we have SOME agreement.  I was surprised that GT racing was only towards the end, and that there weren't any official Formula 1 championships.  The core foundations of F1 are there, and the same with rally racing, but neither was really fully dived into.  I'm pretty sure there will be added content to address this, so I agree with you that there is a lack of what is really considered THE pinnacle of automotive racing: F1.  At the same time, however, I also didn't feel the game was THAT lacking in content.  Gran Turismo has always had a more "schooled" approach, and GT7 does the same.  It's about building up your skills and ability to take on said F1 eventually, and in building up, I clocked plenty of racing time in different vehicles of different PP size-errr levels.  By the end, I didn't feel as if the game skimped on me, just that they've focused the bulk of the initial game on where most people will play.  It sounds like you play on a controller, but let me tell you, F1 on a force feedback steering wheel is a whole different physical tier of response and intensity than anything below it.  I think BECAUSE I played on a steering wheel, my level of fatigue and ability is met by the core content of the game as it is, even if they have not yet added the amount of F1 the game deserves.  As a controller player, F1 is probably more "fun", and I can understand you pining for it.  But for me, F1 is maximum intensity and "hardcore", so it being missing just feels as if it'll come later like endgame/postgame content, not that the core game needed it (again, despite me agreeing that it would have been nice).

All-in-all, I'm not really feeling I was generous with the score.  If anything, I was harsh on certain things you never mentioned mostly attributed to you probably playing on a controller.  The steering wheel feel is actually something that was more heinous to me than the AI, leaning towards a more casualized experience.  I turned off ALL the assists, and suddenly it was near-impossible to modulate the necessary amounts, something that told me everything I needed to know about where their focus was.  I also did later try a race on a controller, again, after having completed the game on a steering wheel, and as awkward as it felt, it was also EASIER to control certain aspects of the car.  That, to me, is more of a ding on the score for a "racing simulator" than anything else lol

The problem with the high priced cars is the enormous difference in price, which makes it impossible to balance the economy.

I just saved up enough for the 1938 Alfa Romeo, 20 mil, just in time as it switched to limited stock today, 1 day remaining.
https://ddm999.github.io/gt7info/
For that same 20 mil you can buy out the UCD a couple times over, or buy 40 GR.3 cars.

It's a neat idea to make it reflect real world pricing, but if you want to race iconic classic cars you're in for a long grind. If you happen to like taking a car from the UCD, tune it and race that, sure then the economy is fine. Yet since my interest is in endurance races at Le Mans and N24 in classic Le Mans cars and older, I'm in for a long grind. The 90+ cars I got from the cafe menu campaign don't interest me much. Maybe because they're not all that interesting on a controller? I don't know. The oldies I did get to race so far all feel very different. Sauber Mercedes C9 '89, De Tomaso Mangusta '69, Ford Mark IV Race car '67, Lamborghini Miura P400 Bertone '67, Ferrari GTO '84, Porsche 356 A/1500 GS GT '56, Mercedes Benz 300 SL Coupe '54, all behave very differently and are a lot of fun to race around the ring, tuned up to make them competitive.

Unfortunately custom endurance races don't provide any significant credits to the next car to race with or against. Mercedes-Benz 300 SL '52 is my next target, 11 million, while a 12h endurance race against garage cars nets you under 60K....

So currently I'm playing Wipeout, repeating the same Tokyo East race in a glitch tuned Tomahawk for just under 3 mil per hour. 12 laps, 540 kph on the straight, 400 kph down the back end, lap the field 5 times, 825K every 17 minutes. Nothing else comes close. Online racing would take 500 races to get to 11 million, 250 hours, while the cars only stay for 5 days. They'll be back (hopefully as I missed the XJ13 and 917K for my line-up) but who knows when.

I do enjoy online racing a lot and you can find honorable and respectful drivers online. It takes a lot of time though. You have to race a lot to get to know people. Respect comes from repeatedly racing together. When you know half the people in the room, it becomes a different game. No penalty system needed, people still make mistakes yet slow down to give the position back or apologize after the race. The SR system did work for a long time until PD gave up on it. So that's also where my 6 comes from. PD abandoned GT Sport a year ago, and is now serving up a worse online mode in GT7 with lots of missing features while putting a discarded broken penalty system from GT Sport back in action. It's borderline unacceptable. Meanwhile PD stopped updating the races in GT Sport, they did change eventually, but now it seems the daily races are monthly...

For now I avoid online. Matchmaking isn't working very well due to the broken penalty system messing up SR scoring and the user base being split between ps4 and ps5. Not enough people to create clean close racing. Plus no credits in it, got to keep up with the Legend car dealership :/

The performance issues aren't just online. The GT3 Cup at Daytona has frame rate issues in lap 1 as well. Maybe I played that on ps4 pro though, it seems it runs the worst on that one if set to 4K HDR output.

The most annoying is the AI. Avoid online, play against the AI. Yet the AI behaves worse than the average online player... Plus their cars are on rails, use different physics and most of the time are completely unaware of your position. It's another big step backwards from GT Sport. They are a bit faster, but so much worse in avoidance and leaving room. Maybe PD though Sophy would be ready to provide better AI and then they scrambled to spice up the old AI routines when they wasn't happening.

It just feels like the AI was made faster by turning off the avoidance most of the time, making them dive for position and give them more boost and better grip. That is for the pro AI in missions and custom races though. The cafe races all have the moving pylon AI, catch the leader who starts 40+ seconds ahead. In missions it comes down to having a sane pit stop strategy, the AI might be faster but are total idiots when it comes to race strategy.

Back to dodging cars at Tokyo, got my lap time down to 1:12. 22 mil to go. The McLaren F1 GTR race car '97 is another 9.5 million. Then another 500K for each for tires and tuning. Hopefully by the time I get a full grid of race cars per era, PD will add a way to save custom races and grid line-ups :)

See, that's the thing, you kind of proved a few things at the same time: clearly the game is a competent sim because you can FEEL just how different those "classic" cars are.  At the time time, the grind bothers you because you just so happen to PREFER those cars.  I'm pretty open-minded, I'm more a car enthusiast who just loves motoring as opposed to a car enthusiast who's, say, into JDM, or classic muscle cars, etc.  Example: I'd LOVE to own a '71 Cuda, but considering only 7 ever made it here into the US, that's even rarer than a dream.  Yet, I absolutely embrace modern technology, and would have probably dropped a modern LS7 crate engine in that Cuda (ya know, so that I can hurt Mopar fans and put a GM engine in a Chrysler platform for shits and giggles instead of a Hemi lmfao).  This is the same philosophy I clearly have in gaming: I play games, not systems.  I enjoy working on and embracing cars, not brands or eras.  I think it's fun to tinker, and would happily stomp your Miura in an Aventador, but not mock the Miura for its legacy or history.  Thus, the economy of the game proved zero hindrance to my enjoyment, and cars I would have to grind for weren't something that made any real difference to me.

What I'm finding overall, though this may not apply to you, is the usual "finding something to be mad about" "gamer" talk going on in regards to MTX in GT7.  You probably know that the majority of players will simply not ever need that 20 mil car, so what you're seeing is a very vocal minority, and then a bandwagon of people who hate MTX who take the narrative and run with it.  I'm more than sure this is the case simply because of how much "yea but it costs $XX to buy a car" when actually, you can't buy cars, you can only buy the currency.  It creates a false illusion that GT7 is "littered" with MTX, or "filled with" MTX, but it's nothing of the sort.  The ONLY thing you can buy is currency, the game is not in any way putting MTX in my face and never did, nor has it created any artificial grind OUTSIDE of the game's rarest and most uber-expensive cars.  As I mentioned before, the game actually gave me MORE money than any of the Forza games did overall from the core game.

I'll try the GT3 Cup at Daytona to see, but I only had one real hiccup on the PS5, and that was because the camera zoomed in at the start on a fully raytraced car, and even then it only lasted for a few seconds.  Gameplay was a near solid 60 for me with nothing that hurt my experience (hence not being mentioned) other than the aforementioned occasional "hitch" that I couldn't really explain or nail down the cause of.

And lastly, you're kind of proving my point about the online, lol... You think I wanna sift through the dirt to find the diamonds?  Come on man, I ain't got time for that lmfao