Recent reviews by Silver Knight

the game has its moments, but ultimately i can't recommend it and decided to get a refund, even tho i just paid 10 bucks for it

The campaign is extremely repetitive, the already low selection of races is made even smaller because you are limited to certain car classes for certain events

Lack of quick travel paired with annoying cops make traversal from safe houses to events way less fun than it should be in a racing (!) game - talking about cops:
They are, once more, annoying instead of fun to engage with like in Most Wanted (2005). No pursuit breakers, no cooldown spots, no slow motion ability all lead to you just trying to drive away as fast as possible, no route to plan or strategy involved.
Being forced into a cop chase after every.single.race is also insanely annoying if you just want to progress in the races and not waste time on pursuits.
The radio chatter is also pretty cringe, with "funny" one-liners and quips that repeat ad nauseam, instead of the cold professionalism that had at least some sense of threat like in MW 05

The story and framing of illegal street racing as "the poor kids just wanna have fun" is also pretty whack and nonsensical, the writing itself is much better than i expected but it still feels very out of place and "nobody has asked for this".

Driving is alright, you can disable all "break to drift" mechanics and get a decent grip build going but the car still sometimes behaves in ways that feel like some weird binary game system is at play, like the way you loose grip is very sudden and doesn't feel natural at all.
The sense of speed is also surprisingly low.

IMO, play one of the Black Box Era NfS games or Heat, which had an interesting risk/reward mechanic going for it instead if you want some arcade racing fun

Just the right amount of little graphical improvements like better weapon models, additional animation and camera movement to make this game feel like it was designed as a retro boomer-shooter in 2023.
All this while still being very faithful to the original "source" material (pun intended)

highly recommended, even if you are a first time player

""""Quality of Life Update"""""
This week's update features various quality-of-life improvements, including:
Account linking option added in-game
The addition of a new Launcher which includes a Store to purchase new content

forced epic account requirement patched 1 1/2 years after release, even when you have no need for the crossplay functionality

labor of love award

RGS always on DRM prevents you from playing a singleplayer game without internet

aged like milk
wonky physics
clunky gunplay and movement
awful mission design/fail states
cumbersome to restart missions
braindead AI

don't bother, just keep the good memories of the game

released in 2018
base edition: 70€
"Ultimate" edition: 100€
and still there are half a dozen car packs missing, each costing an additional 7€
get 🦆ed microsoft

A flawless reinterpretation and modernization of a clunky classic

♥♥♥♥ mr. x 'tho

An upgrade in gameplay mechanics, level design and graphics compared to its predecessor Human Revolution.

Only real letdown are the unfinished story and spotty performance which requires a lot of tweaking for decent fps.