When this first came out, I ended up dropping it after a few races but came back to it after getting it on sale. Multiple updates later, I think it's a fun enough racing game, albeit repetitive. Lakeshore as a map was more enjoyable to race and drive in than Palm City from NFS Heat for me, making the repeating events less of a chore than they were in Heat. Another thing that has changed are the police chases, where they've dumbed down the AI a bit and with a map that has more jumps and destructive rails to easily hop from lane to lane, you can evade them a lot easier. They can still be irritating at times when you're heading to a safehouse or event and you get caught by a helicopter or a car, but they're more prone to mistakes.

The progression is decent, although you're not collecting more than a couple of cars at a time due to needing large amounts of money to finish the story in the Qualifiers and then the Grand. It's not as grindy as Heat, but it is just a longer story overall due to the week system and the high entry fees for the final races.

My biggest issue was mostly some of the handling and drift controls, as the one-tap drifting mechanic carries over once again and while it is a bit better than Heat, it still has inconsistencies that can ruin your races at S or S+ rank, especially on the higher difficulties where one mistake causes 2nd place to blaze ahead at you and create a 500yd difference in 2 seconds. Sometimes you'll have a perfect drift, while other times your wheels lock up and you fly off the track. It caused more race restarts than necessary.

Overall, it's still got issues and doesn't really hold a candle to my favorite game in the series, Underground 1, but it was enjoyable enough for me to finish over Heat and some other games in the franchise. I didn't have a problem with the visual style, and I mostly played with the soundtrack muted and substituted it with a podcast or my own music, so that wasn't an issue for me.