So heres my impressions:
The rally dlc is as if pgg was making the power puff girls but instead of sugar and spice the ingredients were dirt rally and forza horizon, then they only half baked it, and then instead of spilling a bunch of chemical x they spilled a metric tonne of bugs
Spread the word!
I had a look around last night and did a couple of the races and have just finished the rest off (inc the Goliath) in c 3hrs. Did them all in rally and really,really liked the racing and tracks. I also donāt mind the helicopter too much either - it gives a sense off difference from ānormalā events and i didnāt find it that distracting. I drive auto tho,and i can understand manual drivers annoyance with it.
I also left the voices on to enhance the different vibe,tho obviously ignored them cos theyāre rubbish - Rami screaming āhard leftā as i was taking the apex being one that stood out 
I do think Alejandro was a bit more on the ball than the other pair tho. Chicken nonsense did grind pretty quick too.
Didnāt they pull the same thing with the HW DLC?
The tracks are great and the map is excellent in isolation. Side by side with the main map, Iād forgive someone for mixing up the two at a glance and we are way too oversaturated with deserts at this point, but as a stand alone map it truly is good.
The rest is a major letdown. Itās obvious they cared way more about presentation and maintaining their brand of unearned positivity then anything rally or rally related. The pace notes could have been great, even in their barebones form, but obviously werenāt playtested enough and implemented very poorly. No way to make them earlier and actually useful. Same deal with the helicopter. Half the reason why I need pace notes is because the stupid thing is flying way too low and kicking up dust in front of me, because shoving the thing in my face is more important than the gameplay experience apparently.
Without custom championships the new rally mode seems pointless and hollow. Maybe tour can provide at least some reason to stay for endgame with convoys, but once again what should be the best way to play the game is ignored as the majority of the expansion is way too much menu time for race time for convoys to bother.
Oh yeah and Iāve said this before but the cars are massively dissapointing. WRC has such a rich history, much of which is missing from FH5. Even if you donāt include Lancia, there are a ton of choices. We get 1 car and the rest are big offroaders. I understand some offroaders, with Dakar and other events featuring them, but winning trophy trucks for road rally events is just so pants-on-head I donāt even know where to start.
I cannot describe how much I hate this. We have one of the most amazing car lists in all video games, that can be built any number of ways, and yet the even the single player railroads us to a select handful of cars built a certain way. I get that there is always going to be a meta, and while PGGās balance definitely needs improving, there is no way for them to be perfect. I just want to do a historically accurate single player rally build and not have to watch as it gets decimated because of all the cheats and AWD conversions the AI has. Meanwhile, if I turn down the difficulty so that I can race RWD Dirt or CC, then the rest of the game becomes laughably easy. I could change the difficulty every time I race, but not only is that tedious, but this game already has way too much menu time to racing time as it is.
I donāt mind if unbeatable lives up to itās name, what I mind is not having a consistent vs AI experience, and the fact that I canāt impose restrictions on the AI like drivetrain or tire compound so they always build meta is ruining the whole point of having so much choice in the first place.
Small map, roads to wide, and only one new to series real rally car - 3 out of 10. Blizzard Mountin was way better.
Yes they did. I guess we shouldnāt be surprised that they again took what could have been an extended refreshing DLC playlist and twisted it to their "Play The Game Your Wayā¢ " FOMO binge rush 1 week deadline and never return except for more boring weekly chore list completion.
EDIT : p.s. Which about sums up my āfirst impressionsā too. Plus, buggiest release ever trophy ?
Same here. I also noticed the ones you do break, the game doesnāt keep count properly but says youāve done a random number. I wonder how glaring bugs like this get through testing. This is a AAA studio (supposedly).
I also encountered a bug where the road doesnāt register that youāve driven on it for the first time.
(Restarting the game fixed this.)
Another apparent bug is that the right stick sometimes stops working, sometimes in a race or during free roam. Quitting the race or fast travelling fixes it. I donāt know if itās an issue with the game overall or just the expansion.
That Koenigsegg is like Group S if the madness was never stopped. 
With everyone praising the map, I feel like I played something different. I still find the map on this expansion to be very mid. Itās not bad, but itās basically just identical to a condensed version of the main map, which as I pointed out in another thread, I am incredibly bored of.
Like, yeah the twisty routes are nice, but the visuals/scenery bring absolutely nothing new to the table.
Being so used to the routes on the main map, I will admit there are reoccurring times where it feels like youāre in certain previous locations, but it is still āMexicoā, so itās to be expected.
I guess Iāll add my āfirst impressionsā here, even though many people have pointed out the same things Iāve noticed.
Ok, starting with the goodā¦tracks are interesting, but I wish there were some bigger jumpsā¦I really do like my air time on rally races. The environment looks cool, but since it is so similar to the main map, itās not what Iād call inspiring. I like the idea of being able to do timed rally or outright racing on the same track.
Now with the badā¦pace notes audio and hud icons are unbelievably annoying, but I am glad they can be disabled in settings. The hud icons started giving me Crew2 flashbacks with how cluttered up the screen can be at times. Next, please get rid of that bloody helicopter that follows you everywhere during races. If I wanted to hear a helicopter non stop, Iād buy a helicopter combat game. I also absolutely HATE night races where the heloās spotlight is right in my eyes. That light combined with the dust creates so much glare, Iām deffo not looking forward to seeing night races in the rain or fog with the bloody light. My carās headlights are more than sufficient to see where I am going.
Overall, Iād say this expansion is okā¦not great, not horrible, just ok. I was far more impressed with FH4ās Fortune Island.
We as forza players are the only ones i know who pay to be both bug finders and content creators 
horizon 5 is almost out of alpha stage and ready for a public beta, if there was any other studio who made it
The races have been quite short for me, they are not bad and they are very fun but even the Goliath (+7 minutes) has passed me in a breath. The ā3 finalsā have been a small disappointment.
For the rest, I like the map and it has a lot of potentialā¦
I didnāt get to explore the map freely yet, so my impression only relate to the introduction and racing.
Visual design was very well presented in the intro and the first 3 pre-set races.
Rally Mode racing provides better experience than Race Mode due to narrower paths, challenging turns, and changing elevation. The co-pilot is a great help.
Good dirt racing cars in the main map donāt necessarily work well and needs different tuning and in many cases different upgrades. Rally Monsters do wonders in S1 class.
Sand is substantially different and presents challenge to som cars. On the other hand it makes trophy trucks preform better than how they do in main map.
Dirt racing is a lot of fun. Road racing is a lot more challenging especially S1 and S2. But in all racing is more engaging even in lower classes (B,A) in comparison to main map.
Dust from the helicopter is a bit excessive in some cases especially in Race mode if player is in second or third place.
This is a personal preference; I prefer racing and free roaming in clear wither to enjoy the sight.
This seems like it will be a 1 time play through for me and I will probably never return.
The biggest reason I probably wonāt spend much time with this is because it is rally racing, if I wanted to just run courses by myself I would to more rival events.
Only just got on to take a look at this. Went to the outpost to start it all off and it prompted another 18.4GB download! What was the 19.7GB download the other day then? Turbo lag addition? It sure wonāt be fixes.
Iām whingeing because this all comes out of a capped mobile data plan.
Yes, Iām getting major graphic lag in the sandy dunes areaā¦ (Valle De Foraneos) Tracks, free roamā¦ it doesnāt matter. I even crashed using rewind somewhere around there. Iām using a 3080ti on a strix z690 with 12900k, so no slouch of a computer either. I never lag on the main map, so thereās definitely something going on in that section of the map that makes the game almost unplayable at times.
