This is tough.
No.

Skeleton of a racing game, aka: hotlapping experience, while abusing hardware power draw without proper visual benefits over current titles.

It took me 30 minutes to realize how cheaply made this game is on the software level and how much hardware it needs to portray the same image fidelity as previous titles.

AC1, is just marginaly less sophisticated in visual quality while weighting 1/5th on the GPU than EVO.
On the previous title you can crank up pretty much anything, have space for shaders addons and still have room for a triple screen, all that in native resolution, while having a much better performance than here in single screen with temporal anti aliasing.

I've waited 5 patches to see how the development would go and today I feel like it is a 'no'.

Serious❌DRM/Online checks for content availability. AC1, everything is ready to go even on a internet outtage as I found myself 2 days ago. All cars, all tracks. Group C, GT1, GT3, Supercars, Hypercars, 60s Prototypes, F1, 80s Rally, 90s Rally...everything. Here you will be required to be online to access a damn Ferrari >>road car<<.

In ACC, the disconnection was constant and often impossible to access the player status page (Their server side issue). As people are still complaining today with the online disconnections, be prepared to be locked out of free roaming or something. Devs need to change direction on this.

❌Sluggish Menus. Low effort menus. AC1 menus, which a lot of people disliked, seems to be a piece of art in comparison.
❌Heavier in GPUs than modded AC1 while looking worse. Strange glow in the sun direction when the sun is behind a mountain (Bathurst as an example).
❌Weird car lineup missing powerful vintage cars while featuring a damn EV. And it is ironically called a 'beta'.
❌Some engine sounds are awful. Back to AC1 as baseline which is a downgrade to todays standards.
❌Worse AI than the bad AC1 AI
❌Massive weight on CPU with Single Threaded workload with AI grid. Absolutely forget about racing Daytona/Nordschleife/LeMans 60+ cars grids if this ever features it with code like this under the hood. PLEASE, multithread this.
❌Shady Roadmap: little to no info to what's coming up in the game until 1.0, besides free roaming and multiplayer. The only content I found interesting from little that has been published on dedicated racing sim websites is the Ferrari F40, which is fully ready to race on AC1 for ages.
❌No Multiplayer.

❌Bad mistake of trying to pursue Gran Turismo. If you want something like Gran Turismo, there is...uh....Gran Turismo to play on. Instead of building a fully fledged racing Simulator, with race weekends, cutting edge organic like AI, Championship mode, Fully customizable racing grid names and stats for AI which would guarantee a lot of fun for friend groups, solo custom championship with real life names without having to depend on licensing and content creators... +pit strategies, rules customization for race day in the likes of mandatory pitstop and tire restraint rules, types of qualifying sessions being private or in steps like Q1, Q2, Q3 etc... Kunos decides to go head to head against a Playstation giant with 7+ titles under the belt with car customization and car licenses.

❌Modding scene with questionable future with the content management policy in this sim. (I can be wrong though, everything seems very anti-AC1).

Wasn't Assetto Corsa 1's whole point was to be as open as possible simulator with a high degree of modability, fully customizable HUD with all the elements divided as 'apps' in order to be brought in on the fly and be the successor of rFactor 1 as a highly moddable platform?

What's going on? What hapened with that philosophy?

Now a bit of pros for lighten up, eh... 😊:

✅Physics is awesome. (to a certain extent)
✅Upcoming Free Roam on Nordschleife region. (insane)
✅Laser Scanned tracks. Can't ask much more than Kunos tracks.
✅Very well detailed cars. Cream of the crop.
✅Customizable cars.
✅Day-Night cycle, something AC1 missed the most.
✅Weather. Very welcome.

Overall. No.

Kunos. Wake up.

Review may change if the product change. Will wait for 1.0.

Refunded and I'll gladly pay 3x the price if this lives up to the hype later on. Today, this should be a free demo for people to try out.

Was enjoying this game, being able to just jump in and drive like the old one. Then I recently logged in after an update and all the cars are gone? I have to use in game currency to buy or I only have the ability to rent certain models? I don't want to be forced to play into some stupid in game economy. I just want to drive. I hate modern gaming.

Just let me drive the cars man im here for better physics not licences, economy or any of that shi t.