It is a perfect remake of one of the most memorable JRPG's I've ever played. When the first trailers dropped I doubted that it would not be able to live up to it's original with the way everything looks so bright and SEGA's problematic "modernizing games suitable to the western audience" practises but there is nothing to worry about. It is just a faithful and flashy remake that managed the keep original's soul.

But still, Atlus and SEGA's business practices makes it hard to give perfect rating even though I loved the game.

First, SEGA just doesn't care about regional pricing. All SEGA published games are too expensive for many regions. It is at least playable on Game Pass for now but will go away eventually and even with discounts, it will be too expensive the way they only consider the West as only USA.

Second, when you remake a game, you, in all reason, remake it as a whole. Game's story already finished years ago but many new players will also need to wait The Answer DLC, which I know that will be priced horrendously again. They are making a full-fledged $70 remake and do not add For answer as an epilogue in the base game. It would be too much consumer friendly I guess. Even when they are not re-relasing their games, they find a way to fuck to customer in a similar way.

It hasn't much content and race types, race tracks are overly repetitive, has jarring and poor music library, and cops chases are just time wasting and annoying. Still, it is better than the last good NFS game since 2012, which is also made by Criterion.
Driving and customization feels fine as expected. There are good amount of cars, event though it is very grindy to unlock them during the story mode. The story started of good enough but obviously rushed and very predictible. Artstyle wasn't bad too. Driving effects are really good and I would take cutscenes with this style than NFS2019's live action cutscenes.