I am early in, but I am enjoying the game so far. For those interested, the game starts similar (not exact) to the demo with the same three races before you start your career. You are offered a free car to choose from, and then you start your Forza Career. I have chosen the Focus RS Forza Edition as my starting car.
I started with 100,000 CR, and then was gifted 225,000 with the Forza Rewards, making me at 325,000 CR. As I type this, racing has now put me at about 520,000 CR. When you finish races in the career, you are earning levels to unlock your choice of 3 items each time. You can take CREDITS (for example I was offered 20,000 CR in my first race win), or you can choose to take the FREE CAR that they designate for you, or you can take the Helmet/Uniform they offer you. You choose one of those three each time you level up while racing in the career. I have been offered that 3 times so far, and all three times I took the free car. Every time you get a car you get a number that goes towards your Car Collection Tier. I am Tier 2 right now. So for example, one car gives me +50 towards say 1500 (making up that 1500 number). Once you have enough cars that add up to that 1500, you move up a Tier. Moving up a tier gives you access to more/faster cars.
For the record, I was given Tier 2 as an award for being a previous Forza racer. I was also given the Hoonigan car pack, and each car was worth tier points, and those cars also helped push me up to Tier 2. Those are legit free and you can put them into your garage. No need to use in game money credits to buy them for your garage.
Also, the game gave me 7 prize crates with like 4 or 5 mod cards in each one. It said I received those because I have played previous Forza games.
Racing, IMO, feels just like Forza 6 to me so far. I didn't notice any change to understeer, oversteer, difficulty, braking, accelerating, corner cutting, AI. It all felt the same to me, but that isn't a bad thing.
Graphically, it's a mixed bag to me. I know that playing this on the X1X in a month will enhance this. So to me, the cars look just like the cars in Forza 6 graphically. To me it seems like they left the cars the same, but then expanded upon graphics or physics in other areas. So instead of upping the graphics in the Xbox One version of the game it seems like they added more things in the sky such as fireworks, confetti....added the cockpit and driver reflections on the windshield, as well as the awesome sun reflections you get that stream across your dashboard as you go around the track and hit the sun just right. I think they also focused on the night, weather and dynamics. The 3D puddles are indeed gone from Forza 6 from what I have seen so far, but there are still puddles and rain, as well as FOG. I raced this morning before work, and it was daytime in the game, but it was foggy with some rain and visibility was low. That is a better difficulty feature than pre determined 3D puddles that we all memorized. I turned off the camera shake, proximity markers, names above the cars.
The Prize Crates (you know, the ones that are blowing up the internet right now) haven't affected my experience since I am not bothering buying any. I am progressing as normal, unlocking cars just by playing. Prize Crates ARE NOT required to unlock cars. You can buy them with in game credits, as well as unlock them in Forzathon, the campaign, and another way in the game, but the game format escapes me. Since the mods I have been given to me were free for being a previous Forza owner, I am using those up until they are gone.
I am bummed that they still didn't fix the hubcaps on nearly ever car at certain speeds. I wish they would default to manufacturer paint color when buying a new car instead of the community paint jobs. I don't want any community paint jobs, ever. I just want manufacturer color.
I think what I see the Forza team doing is that with like Forza 6, the economy was insane and it allowed you to just buy the entire game of cars and took the car earning out of the equation. So you were gifted cars, you were gifted 350,000 credits EVERY WEEK, you were getting like DOUBLE credits with VIP AND you were getting big credit increases with MOD cars. If you wanted to, you could easily get 1,000,000+ credits a week.
I think they should have met us in the middle. Not drop the Forza weekly awards to 50,000 from almost 300,000 (or whatever tier you were on), but maybe to 100,000. Then maybe give VIPs the ability to have the bonus credits still, but at smaller percentage...maybe half as much as before. And now that the auction house is back, I can see some SERIOUS credit earning coming back.
Still, it is early in the game, but that is my initial impression.
