Overall, like many others have said, FM7 has been a pretty disappointing game for me. Not that it’s bad mind you, I’m still playing it and having some fun, but overall it feels like Turn 10 could have and should have done a better job with it. I haven’t played the other racing games mentioned (my last GT game was GT4), but here’s my thoughts on FM7.
There’s still way too many bugs and glitches that still haven’t been fixed, even this long after launch. Any game publisher pushing a game out with this many issues should be ashamed of themselves, especially given Forza’s AAA flagship status.
Far too many cars are locked behind online, time limited events. The game advertises 700+ cars, but fails to mention that a significant number of them will be completely unavailable (except for renting) to a large portion of the player base because they didn’t play online. Not to mention how unstable and buggy the online systems are in the first place.
The AI especially is terrible. They don’t really react at all to the player and will blindly follow the racing line, ramming into you and cutting you off. Every race starts off with a demolition derby in the first corner. With higher difficulties, it is nearly impossible to win on certain tracks with long straights because the AI gets a power boost that makes them uncatchable despite their often poor cornering abilities. Not to mention that they encourage the worst possible driving habits that would get you banned and charged with vehicular assault in a real race.
Haven’t really tried multiplayer. With the lack of incentives to drive cleanly, I’m not sure I would want to unless I had some friends to race with in a private event.
Don’t like the really long endurance races either, I find them tedious so I haven’t really done anything with pitting (except for accidentally driving into the pit lane once or twice). The few times I’ve turned simulation fuel and tires on for mod cards the race wasn’t long enough for it to make a difference.
Vehicle upgrades should have been like in FH3 where you could fill your cart full of parts to see what the final build would be before spending credits.
Homologation is a neat idea that needs a LOT more polish to really work well. I like the idea of being able to set a reasonable performance target and part restrictions for a class to get all the cars on a more or less level playing field, but many of the cars should be able to compete in multiple divisions, and some cars feel like they were shoehorned into a division as an afterthought and don’t fit with the others. I would prefer to see this system changed to be more customizable where players can create their own homologation divisions and rules for races, and some career races that don’t use homologation or divions at all and simply use PI like in the older games. Right now even in the open events you still have to pick a division, they aren’t truly open.
The menu system in general isn’t great, and like others have mentioned, the music choice is awful and I simply turned off music completely in the settings.
Loot crates should not have been in the game in the first place. The implementation we do have feels like it was changed at the last minute away from real money microtransactions as a response to the PR disaster that EA is facing right now with loot crates. The only thing I use them for is mod cards since the crates are cheap and the mod bonus for a single race more than pays for the cost of the crate.
Overall, even though I’ve had fun with FM7, I do feel like it’s simply a good game and not the great game that Turn 10 should have delivered with their reputation.