Guys, I need backup. Help me convince my financial advisor (wife) that a sim rig is a necessary investment so I can enjoy this incredible rally game the way it deserves.

As I write this, the game has just been released, and I’m approaching it not only as a gamer but as a real-life rally driver who has won nearly everything at the national level in my class(For the record, I’m not claiming to be a professional driver like Kalle Rovanperä, but I have spent enough time behind the wheel of a real rally car to understand what feels realistic and what doesn’t) Having spent countless hours with Richard Burns Rally, which I still regard as the gold standard for realistic rally simulations, my expectations were naturally high. At this early stage, it’s clear that the game has strong potential, but it currently falls short in a few key areas. The most noticeable issue, in my experience, is the lack of proper side grip. The car dynamics don’t yet convey the natural balance and feedback you’d expect when driving on loose surfaces. Suspension and tire physics, in particular, need further refinement to deliver the authentic feel that real rally drivers are looking for. That said, there’s a lot to appreciate. The sound design is excellent, capturing the essence of modern rally cars with impressive depth and clarity. Visually, the game is stunning — the environments, lighting, and car models are all top-tier. In summary, this is a title with immense promise, but it’s not quite ready to satisfy those seeking a truly realistic rally experience. I would recommend waiting for a few major updates that address the physics before fully committing. I’ll continue to play and follow the game’s development closely, and I’m confident that with the right improvements, it could become one of the best rally simulations on the market. For now, though, it remains a work in progress. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- SMALL EDIT ( 11-14-2025) After reading through the comments, it seems that some people have formed opinions about me as a person and about why I gave the game a thumbs-down in my review. The reasoning behind my thumbs-down was simply to make the developers aware of my concerns. With so many positive reviews already posted, I wanted my perspective to stand out rather than just follow the “wave.” I never said the game is terrible or that people shouldn’t buy it. What I did say was that the points I raised were meant as constructive criticism — not something bad, but aspects I personally would have liked to see handled differently. If others feel differently, that’s completely fine, but this is what I want, nothing more. Regarding my rally driving background, it seems some people misunderstood or didn’t read carefully. I’m not claiming to be the fastest driver in Sweden or the best out there, but I have had significant success in my class from 2021 to 2024. The 2025 season has not been my year so far, and I’ve struggled to adapt to a new car. I hope this clears things up. It was never my intention to hate on the game if that’s how someone interpreted it — quite the opposite. And yes, I used ChatGPT to help clean up my review so it would be easier for everyone to understand. And certainly not to put myself on a pedestal in any way. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- DETAILED EDIT (11-18-2025) In my earlier impressions, I highlighted that the game had strong potential but lacked the side grip, suspension behavior, and overall feedback needed to truly satisfy players searching for realistic rally physics. I want to expand on those initial thoughts and provide a more detailed review. First, the game excels in several areas. The graphics are outstanding especially during night stages, where the way light interacts with the road and surrounding environment creates a level of immersion that few racing titles achieve. Combined with the replay system and its varied camera angles, the presentation sets a new technical standard. The audio design is equally impressive. With a proper audio setup, the engine notes, environmental effects, and overall soundscape deliver genuine goosebumps. Even through regular headphones, the quality stands out. That said, I still miss certain mechanical details, such as the characteristic bite of straight-cut gears during aggressive downshifts. Another strong point is the ability to adjust road conditions beyond simply “wet” or “dry.” Options such as optimal or green surface states add valuable realism for players who want a more authentic rally experience. However, the core driving experience still needs work, particularly on gravel. Suspension, tire, and braking physics don’t yet provide the confidence and predictability you expect from a proper rally simulation. Situations where you must slow to unrealistic speeds just to keep the rear from stepping out highlight that the car balance still requires refinement. The cockpit and hood camera also feel too rigid, lacking the natural movement that should follow the car’s dynamics, even after adjusting available settings. The default car setups have similar issues. While personal preference always plays a role, the baseline should be solid enough that players don’t feel forced to overhaul half the setup just to achieve drivability. Finally, the pacenotes need greater consistency. At times they feel late or mismatched from corner to corner, even when set to the earliest call-out option. These points are not complaints born from negativity! They come from someone who sees the game’s enormous potential. I want to emphasize, as I did before, that this is my personal perspective based on real rally experience and thousands of hours in simulations. And despite the flaws, I still believe the game is absolutely worth purchasing, especially at a discount, because its foundation is extremely promising and the development team clearly cares about quality. With the right improvements to gravel physics, camera behavior, default setups, and pacenotes, this title could evolve into one of the strongest rally experiences on the market. I remain optimistic and I look forward to giving it a thumbs-up once those key areas reach the level the rest of the game already demonstrates. I would like to add that these are my opinions. If you don't think the same, that's fine, I mostly just want to share my opinion and give constructive criticism. As I said before, I said that I will continue to build on my opinion, maybe it will be fun to see what I thought of what after updates have arrived.

The game really gets massivly overhyped by influencers and the reviews here. There are massive issues nobody is talking about. It feels like all the influencers got paid. Dont get me wrong. The driving is fun. the graphics are really good, the setups like tire pressure, rideheight has a meaninfull effect on the car. But... FFB: - The FFB is really bad and not on 2025 standards. The only FFB effect that tells you what the car does is the rotation of the car. When the cars starts to rotate arround its center of mass you start to get a force in the wheel. - There is no FFB for tire lock ups. No FFB for front tire grip. No FFB for rear tire grip. - Oversaturated raod texture FFB effects. I don´t know why this is so dominant, But it feels like a Playstation Controller rumbling all the time. It doesn´t add anything to the drving its just an anoying effect. (EA WRC has a really good ffb regarding road texture and what the car is doing, despite beeing on the arcady side it gives you a pretty clear understanding what the car does. It only sucks hard on tarmac.) Physics: - As the general feeling is pretty good. The rear feels way to gripy, but then you sometimes just spin for no reason. - While breaking the car feels like it is floating. It feels like it is as heavy as a tank, but the ffb is not telling to you what is going on. You just keep going straight - I am allways driving with ABS off and even braking with 100% the tires are not locking up. Or the ffb is not telling that they are. I dont know. But from the feeling and the car not spinning while heavy braking i would assume they are not locking. Roadtexture: - As far as the visual road feels good and as long as you stay on the road everything is fine, but once you get off the raod for like half a meter end cutting over the gras it feels like you drive over multiple mount everests aligned after each other. Sometimes the car explode into the air. At this point, because the negative points are the most critical for a "sim" i can´t recommend the game. If this things will be improved I think this could be the best rally game out there.

Extremely disappointed with the controller support On controller the game significantly lowers your steering sensitivity and max steering angle the faster you drive. For a rally game this makes it pretty much impossible to drive properly as you cannot steer enough to correct oversteer when going at even medium speed. You also have to slow much more than necessary for every corner as at the correct speed you cant steer enough to turn in. Really hope they improve this soon or at least allow you to turn off the speed based sensitivity. The actual physics of the cars feels really great.

Assetto Corsa Rally — Early Access Review. Score: 6/10 (From the perspective of a long-time Dirt Rally 2.0 player using a PS4 controller with hundreds of hours on console, and decent amount on PC) As someone who has spent countless hours in Dirt Rally 2.0, almost exclusively on a PS4 controller, I came into Assetto Corsa Rally’s early access with a ton of excitement. I’ve always admired the Assetto Corsa lineage for its realism, and with so many rally YouTubers praising the game. most of them with full sim setups, I was eager to jump in and see what the fuss was about. Price: Unbeatable. For as much as this game has right now for 25 dollars. "Triple A studios" should start paying attention. Graphics: Stunning There’s no denying it: visually, Assetto Corsa Rally is a knockout. The lighting, weather effects, track detail, and overall presentation are absolutely top-tier. It captures that gritty, immersive rally atmosphere perfectly. No complaints here. Physics: Fantastic… On Paper From what I can feel through a controller, the physics seem exceptionally well done. The cars feel weighty (sometimes), damage models is amazing as it correlates to the car performance too, the terrain communicates a ton of detail, and the potential for realism is clearly outstanding. You can tell this sim is built with serious attention to mechanical detail. But the Big Problem: Controller Driving Is Atrocious Here’s where everything falls apart for me: the gamepad response is just terrible. Braking feels inconsistent and overly twitchy. I brake for just a single moment and the car at 60km/h slides across the corner as if I flew through at 180... That's ridiculouse. Steering inputs don’t translate cleanly, sometimes the car reacts late, sometimes it snaps. The acceleration response feels delayed or muted, as if the car decides on its own how much throttle to accept. I would brake around the corner and add gas to accelerate out the corner and the car just wont respond to any input of gas at all and begin slide or just go through a wall. only after a full stop THEN the car reacts to input of gas. Even after extensive tweaking in settings with driving assists, sensitivity settings, brake bias, ABS, everything—the game still feels fundamentally unresponsive on a controller. It’s not just “a learning curve.” It feels like the game simply isn’t tuned for gamepad users at this stage. And that absolutely kills the experience. Comparison to Dirt Rally 2.0 (Keep in mind, this game is also considered the pinnacle full Rally Sim for off season Rally driver practice at home.) Whenever I hit a wall of frustration, I go back to Dirt Rally 2.0 to see if maybe I’m the problem. But no, DR2 still drives smooth as ever. Inputs translate instantly and predictably. What I do, the car does. Full stop. That contrast really highlights how unfinished the controller support in Assetto Corsa Rally currently is. Final Thoughts I fully understand this is early access, and I genuinely hope the developers improve the controller handling, because the potential here is monstrous. With a wheel and pedals, the game already looks phenomenal. Unfortunately, not everyone can afford a full sim rig yet, and for players like me who rely on controllers, Assetto Corsa Rally is currently undrivable. I’d love to come back once controller optimization is addressed. Until then, it’s a gorgeous, promising rally sim that just doesn’t listen to its drivers unless they’re using a full setup. 6/10: Could be amazing, but not there yet for gamepad players. I want to love this game as I do DR2, but so far I guess I'll have to wait.

It made me look like a really bad rally driver, 10/10 accuracy. The game seems great, the cars and tracks feel solid and it also plays well on a pad while performing well. can't complain, looking forward to seeing how it develops.

If you are a gamepad user, this one is not it yet. The settings for gamepad are very barebones, basicaly only linearity setting is there. No steering speed adjustment, no return rate, no deadzones for triggers, no increase or return rate for triggers, no steering wheel rotation range, no speed sensitivity, no filter adjustments for jittery movement. You cannot even use steering wheel section to map gamepad inputs there, so it acts like a steering wheel device, which is usually allowed in other racing sim titles. Personally, I am using Dualsense on PC with Steam Input to steer with gyro and I just cannot set it up correctly here, because I need to have infinite steering speed, like wheel users do and I need to turn off all filters. But even using just Xbox gamepad it is not great as current default gamepad setup is way too sensitive and just increasing linearity value doesn't cut it. I kinda expected this one to have at least the same settings options as Assetto Corsa Competizione, since it is using the same engine, but no. I understand that this is a sim title targeted primarily to wheel users, so it has higher priority, but there is still going to be a ton of people trying to play the game on gamepad. I will update this review when things improve.

It's a really good game! But as a poor guy with only an Xbox controller it's hard to recommend, it's quite impossible to recover from oversteer idk if it's me being bad but I've been pretty comfortable on Dirt Rally 2.0 and BeamNG.drive so I've heard that with a wheel it's much better. I'll change my review when the controller support gets better.

If you ever played Dirt or WRC and hope similar feeling of the car sticking to the ground- forget it. It feel somewhere in the middle of Richard Burns Rally and other AC games. If you hope to play with keyboard boy oh boy you will have a "great time". controller or wheel is a must! What i really dislike is this hype to release unfinished/early access games. You buy a cat in the bag and don't know what to expect in the end. So far it looks promising, car tuning, is more in-depth than your usual rally games, It't follows AC approach. Physics of the car when you hit something sometimes gets funny, but again. its early access. But in general Physics are great and immersive. Finally - a Rally that requires a skill, discipline and hard work to be great at because this one will not forgive mistakes, even the smallest ones. Hit the grass on high speed tarmac and you'll be spinning, break too hard you'll lock the brakes and you'll be flying to the moon from that nasty cliff you tried to avoid. Overall, if developers will listen to players moving on with development - this game for this price is a steal EDIT I went to change drivers and co-drivers names and nationalities and noticed that Lithuanian Flag is upside down . Should be yellow, green, red (top to bottom) but its flipped :resmile:

Best $23.99 I've ever spent on a game Also, I (can't believe I am saying this) but I am happy there are only 2 locations and 10 cars. Sometimes (for me), when a game comes with a ton of initial content, I just get lost and lose the focus needed to learn. I feel like this offering is forcing me to learn proper-like. I feel like the devs and I are laying the groundwork for a great relationship.

you can't change KMH to MPH. what a joke. "b-but KMH is better!" no it isn't you clown. KMH literally doesnt mean anything. it's a made up, arbitrary, baseless speed measurement, meanwhile MPH is objective and intuitive.

For now it has a passable (probably good) Core of the game. But almost no content and persistent physics problems (braking, steer lock, slip angles and sliding, and so on). Will be back in a year or so, and will check again. If its gonna be good -> will change the the review to a positive one. I gave you my money. So, get to work. p.s. Oh yeah, i forgot to tell that. Years of RSF RBR, in SRM tournaments and alike. Year+ in EAWRC, couple of years (not stable ones) in Dirt2.0. So, i have some opinions, i guess.

First you will crash, again and again. Then will fall in love! It's a high quality racing sim that landed with serious intent. We need a Roadmap for development.

This is not EA WRC or Dirt Rally. The handling here is on a completely different level, far more realistic, far more detailed, and honestly a bit overwhelming at first. I did struggle in the beginning until I adapted to it, and that’s coming from someone who has spent a lot of time with sim racing games. Once it clicks, the physics feel incredibly natural and everything the car does makes sense. The graphics are amazing. I’d honestly say this is the best-looking sim racing game out right now, even better than AC Evo. The interior camera is so realistic that when I was screensharing on Discord, someone genuinely thought they were watching a real onboard video. The scenery and the laser-scanned stages are another major highlight. The environments feel carefully built instead of generic or repetitive. Terrain changes, elevation, vegetation, and road texture all have a level of detail that makes every stage feel like a real place. Overall, this feels like a true 10/10 release. It is polished, ambitious, and extremely rewarding once you get into the flow of it. Easily my game of the year so far.

WARNING, keyboard users do not buy! As someone who has played numerous sim racing games before on and only plays on keyboard, although this game has keyboard settings, it is UNPLAYABLE on keyboard. Input is so delayed and heavy that you cannot take an easy turn without spinning. I will probably get hate for this by wheel players but to each his own.

Drove into a group of eleven spectators at 170 km/h, group B is so back. Quattro when tho

Can't even assign keyboard arrow keys as steering keys... wow

I have been in many different gravel rally cars in real life. These cars suck in comparison which they shouldn't, they have no side grip, they don't stop, they take bumps like a pogo stick the only thing they do well is accelerate only if you're straight. I have spent most my time changing the setup and nothing works. I know wales is notoriously loose. It's like the car weighs way too much and tries to fill every bump and dip there is and then smashes through the stroke of the damper and bottoms out, if i'm up it sideways round a corner the front corner of the car should not be falling into the dip in the inside of a corner. Does the start order do anything to to change the sweptness of the road? Is the tyre pressure in setup supposed to be the hot pressure? Because you'd never start with 32 psi in a gravel rally tyre. The cut penalties are harsh for an average cut in a rally in real life. It needs some from of vertical axis camera dampening it's like the drivers head is fixed to the car. The car sounds are brilliant. It looks good. The tarmac side is good which you'd hope so from these guys but the gravel side is dog water. I will continue my hunt for grip in the setup. Edit: There is 4 of us that all partake in rallying, and we all agree with what I have said already.

update -i cant seem to update the game i restarted steam and my pc many times. at the moment the steering is messed up (the inputs are consistently jittery) and my shifter wont bind to anything every time i try to bind a button it automatically binds to some random button. im honestly just sad i just really wanna play Does not work on g920, was excited to play this but got let down, the logitech should atleast have support not everyone has direct drive wheelbase. We'll probably change my review if support is added for logitech wheels.

Crazy driving, crazy physics and no brakes = fun.

game is so hard to play on a controller they need to update the setting so you can control more of the cars suspension and steering settings

Clearly the vast majority of people reviewing Assetto Corsa Rally POSITIVELY have never taken a car 'off road' in anger, and I wonder if they have ever driven a car at all. Yes some element's are on point, but in general the handling and feel is way off, awful in fact. I'm astonished a driving sim so unrealistic in terms of feel and handling has come from the Assetto Corsa stable. Being a huge fan of Assetto Corsa, Assetto Corsa EVO, and Assetto Corsa Competizione I had no hesitation in buying Rally, thinking the handling and feel of the cars would be on par with those titles. It isn't... it sucks... Graphically the game is stunning. No doubt about it. I live in hope the developers put some effort into putting the game right.. It really could be amazing!

Unplayble on gamepad. Steering Assist on gamepad kill any countersteer move and can't be disabled.

THE GAME SUCKS !!! VERRY BAD STEERING FEELING ALL NEW GAMES ARE JUST 1day games plsy 5 hours and DELETE !!!!!!!!

Hitting the perfect handbrake hairpin is like sex but better.