Well, it's NFS, it's fun and better than what you'd expect.
The Good:
Graphics: They're great, the game looks really good and I personally love the cartoonish effects. It really makes the game stand out from modern arcade racing titles like TC2 and FH5.

Setting: Game basically tries to be Underground in 2022. It actually gets that pretty spot on, even though I'm sure it wasn't the way the devs intended judging by its story. Regardless, it manages to reproduce the overall shallowness of current nu street culture, with over representation of overpriced, branded 'drip'. The game constantly talks about 'stylin' your ride but never once mentions what's under the hood itself. The entire setting can be summed up as "Rich, upper class people pretending to be 'gangsta' by ricing out their cars". This is further exemplified as you're basically a nobody running a failed garage until a rich girl decides to bankroll you through the tournament.

Gameplay: It's pretty decent too. The Day/Night system of Heat was improved on by making Night races not completely useless. You now earn small change during the day to use as buy-in for Night races. The problem with this however is that it also builds up heat, which makes Day time races feel pretty underwhelming considering all you're basically doing is making Night races harder for no bonus.

The game has a twin boost system which feels really odd at first: You have your normal boost which fills up as you race, like you'd expect, and your burst boost, which fills up as you drift, draft and drive dangerously.
Burst boost builds up in tiers and quickly decays, which makes for a rather interesting 'use it or lose it' system where you're encouraged to drive dangerously, always in doubt if you should use it quickly before it decays or try to get that final sliver left for the next tier.
Reaching tier 3 burst boost speeds you up considerably and lets you do some crazy Fast n Furious overtakes. Tier 3 burst boost also lets you fly out of tight turns by completing negating gravity on your car. It feels really weird and throws you off at first, leading into crashes as you suddenly find yourself now flying straight and turning as hard as you would in a 90 degrees turn.

The handling system is stiff at first. Tuning the car to grip fixes most of that but it's clearly a drift centric game. With that said, drifting actually slows you down in wider curves even though it builds up boost and burst boost, so grip turning ends up being faster than drift turning most of the time.

Car customization is pretty good, though a bit shallow in actual parts. Sure you can do lots of mix and matching, but you'll still be mixing and matching from about 3 to 4 different parts, the only difference being you can now fine tune the details.
It's still way better than any other game we have currently.

Audio: The game's audio is great. The cars sound great and everything about the game sounds great. The soundtrack is pretty spot on too for the game's street tone, and you'll find that a lot of the races/events are named after iconic hip hop/rap songs and songs that were featured in previous Need For Speed games. I was surprised to even find a reference to Rakim's 'Know the Ledge' song.
AI Drivers will constantly spurt out cringy lines mid race, but I find it pretty cool how if they crash mid sentence you can actually hear the muffled crash sounds coming through their 'mic'.

The Bad:
Story: It's absolutely garbage and inconsequential. It's actually so incredibly bad and out of touch with car culture that it brings the quality of the game down.
It feels like as if it was written by Millenials in their late 30's who spend all day on Twitter and never touched a car in their life. The writing is abysmal in every single line of dialogue produced by the game.

You also get bombarded by random podcast reports of your generic Republican mayor talking about how much she hates street racing. Ironically enough, her attitude is actually treated as villainous by the game, even though the racers (you included) are actually setting up race lines through sidewalks, causing untold amount of public and private property damage, constantly crashing into cars and each other and worse.
It is so absolutely out of touch with both reality and the story it's trying to tell. If you don't care about Real World politics like me, then you'll care even less about the generic political blabber you're forced to hear everytime you leave the garage at night.

Open World: Open world in this game actually comes to its detriment. The game's random selection of races is further dilluted by the fact you have to painfully travel from one race spot to another. That wouldn't be so bad if there were more races, but the selection of races you are given in a Day/Night cycle are actually pretty small.
You'll find yourself spending upwards of 20 minutes driving around every Day or Night time, running the 1-2 races you can participate in, then driving back to your safehouse.
There's also no free roaming racers, even once a race is finished. You are instead thrown in a Forza styled win screen, before being tossed back on a "Resuming chase" screen, with all the AI drivers having magically vanished. Since the police is pretty much worthless below Heat 4, you then escape the chase in 5 seconds, and go on your second 5 minutes drive to the next event.
I don't understand why this win screen was created, when Heat's instant race disband into a high stakes police chase was actually a much better system.

Racing: It's the best part of the game, but as I pointed out above, extremely dilluted. The races are random and graded by car Tiers. Which means if you somehow upgrade your car too much you'll end up in a higher tier and shortening the selection of races you can participate in even more. You get maybe 1-2 races every Day/Night, with a Takeover (Smash objects for points) event and a Drift event. So to make the most out of any given Day/Night cycle, you need to look at the map, upgrade/downgrade your car until you reach the rank with most races available, then leave garage. It's a pretty tedious system which I'm sure was put in place to make up for the fact the police has been extremely toned down.
Endurance Races are by far the highlight of the game. Long sprint races full of cop chases, but you maybe get one once every 24 hours cycle because the game doesn't actually let you select them.

Lastly, to add to the whole ricer feel of the game, you are throw right away in high stake racers with enemy AI driving riced up, somehow grade B sports cars (?????????).
It makes no sense that your fresh, starter car is getting thrown in with an overly riced out, Carrera RSR, and even less sense that you actually beat them in a race.

Police: They're... okay. They're nothing like Heat's police, which was overly aggressive and insane to escape from, but Heat's police was in place to make the Night a risk/rewards system. The more you raced at night, the more heat you got, but the more Rep you got.
In NFS Unbound the police feels largely toned down and useless. The first 3 tiers of Heat (Which goes from 1 through 5) are basically useless and poses no threat even to a starter vehicle. They are quick to give up and forget about you, and their cars can't keep up with yours even though they're driving supercharger muscle cars.
Once you reach Heat 4 and above, the chases actually become more intense, but unlike previous games the police won't exactly try to murder you at any given opportunity. You can evade them by weaving your way through tight turns and unmarked shortcuts inbetween buildings, though at this point you already have the police chasing you with exotics, so it doesn't get any harder from there.

In conclusion, it's a legitimately good game, one of the best NFS to date, sadly some of its design choices keeps it from being a flat out upgrade to NFS Heat.

Well, it's NFS, it's fun and better than what you'd expect. The Good: Graphics: They're great, the game looks really good and I personally love the cartoonish effects. It really makes the game stand out from modern arcade racing titles like TC2 and FH5. Setting: Game basically tries to be Underground in 2022. It actually gets that pretty spot on, even though I'm sure it wasn't the way the devs intended judging by its story. Regardless, it manages to reproduce the overall shallowness of current nu street culture, with over representation of overpriced, branded 'drip'. The game constantly talks about 'stylin' your ride but never once mentions what's under the hood itself. The entire setting can be summed up as "Rich, upper class people pretending to be 'gangsta' by ricing out their cars". This is further exemplified as you're basically a nobody running a failed garage until a rich girl decides to bankroll you through the tournament. Gameplay: It's pretty decent too. The Day/Night system of Heat was improved on by making Night races not completely useless. You now earn small change during the day to use as buy-in for Night races. The problem with this however is that it also builds up heat, which makes Day time races feel pretty underwhelming considering all you're basically doing is making Night races harder for no bonus. The game has a twin boost system which feels really odd at first: You have your normal boost which fills up as you race, like you'd expect, and your burst boost, which fills up as you drift, draft and drive dangerously. Burst boost builds up in tiers and quickly decays, which makes for a rather interesting 'use it or lose it' system where you're encouraged to drive dangerously, always in doubt if you should use it quickly before it decays or try to get that final sliver left for the next tier. Reaching tier 3 burst boost speeds you up considerably and lets you do some crazy Fast n Furious overtakes. Tier 3 burst boost also lets you fly out of tight turns by completing negating gravity on your car. It feels really weird and throws you off at first, leading into crashes as you suddenly find yourself now flying straight and turning as hard as you would in a 90 degrees turn. The handling system is stiff at first. Tuning the car to grip fixes most of that but it's clearly a drift centric game. With that said, drifting actually slows you down in wider curves even though it builds up boost and burst boost, so grip turning ends up being faster than drift turning most of the time. Car customization is pretty good, though a bit shallow in actual parts. Sure you can do lots of mix and matching, but you'll still be mixing and matching from about 3 to 4 different parts, the only difference being you can now fine tune the details. It's still way better than any other game we have currently. Audio: The game's audio is great. The cars sound great and everything about the game sounds great. The soundtrack is pretty spot on too for the game's street tone, and you'll find that a lot of the races/events are named after iconic hip hop/rap songs and songs that were featured in previous Need For Speed games. I was surprised to even find a reference to Rakim's 'Know the Ledge' song. AI Drivers will constantly spurt out cringy lines mid race, but I find it pretty cool how if they crash mid sentence you can actually hear the muffled crash sounds coming through their 'mic'. The Bad: Story: It's absolutely garbage and inconsequential. It's actually so incredibly bad and out of touch with car culture that it brings the quality of the game down. It feels like as if it was written by Millenials in their late 30's who spend all day on Twitter and never touched a car in their life. The writing is abysmal in every single line of dialogue produced by the game. You also get bombarded by random podcast reports of your generic Republican mayor talking about how much she hates street racing. Ironically enough, her attitude is actually treated as villainous by the game, even though the racers (you included) are actually setting up race lines through sidewalks, causing untold amount of public and private property damage, constantly crashing into cars and each other and worse. It is so absolutely out of touch with both reality and the story it's trying to tell. If you don't care about Real World politics like me, then you'll care even less about the generic political blabber you're forced to hear everytime you leave the garage at night. Open World: Open world in this game actually comes to its detriment. The game's random selection of races is further dilluted by the fact you have to painfully travel from one race spot to another. That wouldn't be so bad if there were more races, but the selection of races you are given in a Day/Night cycle are actually pretty small. You'll find yourself spending upwards of 20 minutes driving around every Day or Night time, running the 1-2 races you can participate in, then driving back to your safehouse. There's also no free roaming racers, even once a race is finished. You are instead thrown in a Forza styled win screen, before being tossed back on a "Resuming chase" screen, with all the AI drivers having magically vanished. Since the police is pretty much worthless below Heat 4, you then escape the chase in 5 seconds, and go on your second 5 minutes drive to the next event. I don't understand why this win screen was created, when Heat's instant race disband into a high stakes police chase was actually a much better system. Racing: It's the best part of the game, but as I pointed out above, extremely dilluted. The races are random and graded by car Tiers. Which means if you somehow upgrade your car too much you'll end up in a higher tier and shortening the selection of races you can participate in even more. You get maybe 1-2 races every Day/Night, with a Takeover (Smash objects for points) event and a Drift event. So to make the most out of any given Day/Night cycle, you need to look at the map, upgrade/downgrade your car until you reach the rank with most races available, then leave garage. It's a pretty tedious system which I'm sure was put in place to make up for the fact the police has been extremely toned down. Endurance Races are by far the highlight of the game. Long sprint races full of cop chases, but you maybe get one once every 24 hours cycle because the game doesn't actually let you select them. Lastly, to add to the whole ricer feel of the game, you are throw right away in high stake racers with enemy AI driving riced up, somehow grade B sports cars (?????????). It makes no sense that your fresh, starter car is getting thrown in with an overly riced out, Carrera RSR, and even less sense that you actually beat them in a race. Police: They're... okay. They're nothing like Heat's police, which was overly aggressive and insane to escape from, but Heat's police was in place to make the Night a risk/rewards system. The more you raced at night, the more heat you got, but the more Rep you got. In NFS Unbound the police feels largely toned down and useless. The first 3 tiers of Heat (Which goes from 1 through 5) are basically useless and poses no threat even to a starter vehicle. They are quick to give up and forget about you, and their cars can't keep up with yours even though they're driving supercharger muscle cars. Once you reach Heat 4 and above, the chases actually become more intense, but unlike previous games the police won't exactly try to murder you at any given opportunity. You can evade them by weaving your way through tight turns and unmarked shortcuts inbetween buildings, though at this point you already have the police chasing you with exotics, so it doesn't get any harder from there. In conclusion, it's a legitimately good game, one of the best NFS to date, sadly some of its design choices keeps it from being a flat out upgrade to NFS Heat.