My honest observations about the game
Even after all these months, I still can’t decide whether this game is good or not. It’s good, because compared to F1 24 you achieved a significant improvement. That game was the embodiment of a catastrophe, while 25 fixed some stupid things. It’s good, because the handling is enjoyable (compared to F1 24, which was a joke), the graphics are fine, and you finally introduced the option to apply special liveries to the regular F1 25 cars, not just through the F1 World option (which, let’s be honest, was pretty lame).
However, F1 25 also has plenty of problems – you still haven’t solved the “train effect.” Just like in 24, you can follow all the cars for like 100 laps without any real consequences. And if that weren’t enough, once again, just like in 24, the person who wins the race is simply the one who's sitting in the most favorable position behind P1 on the last lap, then just uses DRS + ERS to breeze past when the time comes. That’s what everyone try to do in online races, and it’s bad. You guys has just killed pure racing. It's now "waiting for the moment racing", not F1.
While in F1 23 tire management and strategies like offset pit stops actually mattered, in F1 25 you don’t need to care about such things. You just need to keep pace, and after spending 32 laps in a DRS train, if you’re positioned well, you just make the overtake – and that’s bad. On top of that, ERS still recharges way too quickly and is way too overpowered compared to how easily it can be replenished. The dirty air you promised - it's not a quarter as harmful as you advertised.
The tires are impossible to overheat. I can slide as much as I want, the tire temps will never go above the optimal range, unless I play with my monitor turned off and start doing donuts. Oh, and the crossplay? – it’s unplayable. The cars are way too easy to drive once again this year, requiring no special challenge or skill whatsoever. The dustier racing line we had back in 2023 disappeared in 2024, and it looks like it’s gone forever, because it hasn’t returned in 25 either. Racing against the AI is still unenjoyable, because while there are some tracks where you managed to balance their strength quite well, on most tracks they’re far too fast on the straights. That wouldn’t even be a problem if they lost some time in the corners to balance it out, but that’s not the case at all. They use ERS in a way like no one in the world ever did. Their tire management is flawless. They are on the limit all the time. So how does this make sense? The Safety Car is just as inconsistent like ever before – sometimes it comes out for things it really shouldn’t, and other times there’s a wreck sitting right in the middle of the track, but I guess Mayländer is off having dinner somewhere, so he has no intention of coming out. With the expanded setup options, I assume your goal was to allow players to run with a wider variety of configurations. However, despite this, almost everyone ends up using the exact same setup, because your concept is executed so poorly that there’s no point in experimenting with clever ideas – they simply won’t work. So with this kind of implementation, the broader setup range is completely pointless.
If you keep this up, guys, your sales are going to keep dropping year after year, and in the end you’ll just shrug and say, “players don’t want to play F1 anymore.” But we do want to – just not in a form that takes everything into an arcade direction.