Japanese Drift Master Steam Charts & Stats

Really good game however, when the grip races start, you need to get an AWD car to do well and it is a lot of grinding to get. Would like to see more AI drifting when i'm just driving around as well as more side missions. All round a good game that I am excited to see progress with devlepment.

I really want to love this game, but the wheel physics for drifting feels way too forced and the car refuses to slide. While i respect that it is a simcade the least they could have done was make the physics a little more natural. If you are a controller player you will love this game. If you are looking for a fun drifting experience as wheel players, just go back to AC. But nevertheless give it a shot, you might like the unrealistic drifting experience.

Fun Casual driving game, love the graphics and drifting. I dislike the racing parts and wish it was only focused on drifting personally. I will be honest I skipped every cut scene and I am not in to the story at all but I just like driving around its cool. Don't take this game too seriously and you will have a good time. I have only played on controller so I have no insight into the racing wheel complaints I am sure they are valid they just don't apply to me.

Nigh on unplayable with a wheel. I played for 3 hours, tried so many different settings and it was just impossible. The accelerator is either way too sensitive or not sensitive at all. The steering is either snapping hard or the most sluggish thing ever. Yet to play with controller but I bought this game to play it with a wheel. Disappointed at the moment.

Game is fun but flawed and with more time it could be really good. For a little team it's definitely worth the price imo, but it has some big issues atm. Graphics are great, runs fine (but I have a 4090), no suttering on my rig (it's an UE game). Playing with a wheel is very hard, I'm not really good in drifting and I had to practice for like 2hrs before winning the first race (and setting the game on easy)... this shows my main issue with the game and that's the balance : you are thrown in a race with a bad car and no experience at all, it's very frustrating and it keeps happening. After that you get your own car and you have to do a Drift contest, except your car is stock and almost can't drift while your opponent has an overtuned drift car... you can see the issue. The AI is also really bad, traffic or opponent it's the same. Apart from that, map is gorgeous and varied, finally a game with real narrow roads. It might be the best map in any arcade racing game (played most of the others). Lastly OST is glorious, eurobeats is so good it feels like I'm in intial D. Love it !! Recommended.

This was a great game until it was updated. The games main story now has segments that are censored. I purchased this game before the update, I am a consenting adult, and i don't appreciate a developer treating its customers like children. Change the rating if you have to, but this is some of the crap from developers that people cant stand. Don't censor, or rewrite your game stand by it. They made something beautiful, something that is fresh, and new. To me its tainted to change the story to satisfy the easily offended, or because they realized they couldn't sell it to a younger audience. The racing is great though, they nailed the driving, the sounds, the music. I want to recommend, but they took a part of the game away after it was already purchased. Now i'm sure a watered down updated version will come. Update. Thank you for your response. Unfortunately all you did was solidify what i said in your own carefully chosen words. I went ahead and spent the extra 5 dollars for the supporter pack. Started up the game and what do you know censored lol. I tried uninstalling and reinstalling what do you know still censored. I hope you enjoy my 5 extra dollars though.

This is the most weeabo game I've ever played. Polish devs made a game about a polish guy that goes to Japan to drive cars and bang Japanese girls. 10/10

I was hyped as fuck when playing the demo, waiting for a long time and finally able to play the actual 'full' game after several hours now felt really empty. The 'fun' or 'enjoy' factor almost hit zero whenever I finished my session due to how the story/missions works. Updated at 5 June 2025 my local time, and all points still stands (sadly I found some more new negative findings). [hr][/hr] [b]Short summary:[/b] Only buy if you want an enjoyable cruising/open-world drifting game (using money and level cheats if you don't want to grind) and/or spare money to use. Personally, the game is fun when I am not doing the story/missions. The game SHOULD BE using 'early access' label and have a lower price. Maybe the game is worth half the price than now, and current price more suitable when all the developer's roadmap fulfilled. Intro offer discount is listed @ IDR 424.150, which is kinda high. Detailed review: Bear with me, details below. [hr][/hr] [h1]The Setup[/h1] PC: Ryzen R9 5950X, Sapphire Radeon RX 6800XT, RAM Corsair 32GB @ 3600MHz, SSD Corsair MP600 @ PCIe Gen4, Mobo Aorus Master B550, Monitors x3 @ 2560*1440-170Hz. Controls: Controller Logitech F310 Game: Hard difficulty, exclusively using driver's eye cam, manual, simcade, all medium graphics settings, resolution full screen 2560x1440 @ 120, 4th chapter finished. [hr][/hr] [h1]The Good[/h1] Open world map, beautiful and vibrant, really catch the long awaited 'Japan' themed racing game. Has a little bit of everything: Touge (or whatever you call it), wangan, rally, circuit. Sound design is an absolute masterpiece for me. Most (if not all) OSTs match the game's atmosphere and personally every single of it is an absolute banger. Car sounds also hits the spot, probably the most accurate and satisfying racing game I've ever played. The details like how the car sounds during outside and inside camera is different, how each car's cabin (driver's cam) have different level of soundproofing (most obvious one about this is the sushi car/Nissan car that I forgot its name), how each car has its own unique and distinct engine sounds (including each car's turbos sounds different but this is subtle and may counts as way too subjective), notably the RB and rotary for me sounds really legit. All these making the game a perfect cruising game if you just want to drive casually while listening to the car's engine or synthwave during night drive (ofc after using cheats for the money and player's level if you don't want to grind). I really recommend to use a proper headphone when playing this game. The auto counter-steering mechanism helps when drifting, probably the first for me in racing games. The dynamic camera also felt great. The comics actually beautiful, mostly the ladies' introduced shows their charm really well. Actual licensed cars, albeit the lineup is kinda limited. [hr][/hr] [h1]The Neutral[/h1] [b]Things I found inside the game, but not crucial.[/b] World felt dead. There is no single person exists outside cars. Traffic AI is funny and honestly amazing since oncoming traffic can react by turning on their hazard lights just a moment before they think you would crash into them. The story is all over the place (pacing), and it makes me feel like that it doesn't worth my attention or worth to remember (storytelling). Car customization isn't as much as I expected. There is no manual way to turn off engine and/or the headlights (headlights keybind not working for me in the world). The same with traffic, they still turn on their headlights during the day. [hr][/hr] [h1]The Bad[/h1] [b]THE GAME[/b]: Should be an early access. Opening the game to see the dev plans (which honestly, looks very significant) for the next 9 months feels like an insult both for me and for every single devs out there that trying hard to release a finished high-hype game. [b]PERFORMANCE[/b]: My PC can't run this title in a stable fps in high or more, even using medium still causes spikes, mostly when starting an event (the countdown) and after finished an event, drifting in the rain, drifting in a lot of traffic in the mountains, and drifting in multi-cars drift event that produces a lot of smoke. This is <20GB game but my PC also can't load faster than 10s due to consistent long loading time at 95%-99%. UE really make a trademark for themselves, aren't they? The frequency of loading screens also made all these much worse, tuning cars after buying parts? Loading. Forgetting some parts? Loading. These steps happens in one place (the garage/tuner shop) and why it needs another loading? [b]PHYSICS AND (INCONSISTENT) ENVIRONMENT[/b]: Physics outside the driving is ridiculous. Crashing/touching any objects felt absurd, as the car will mostly (not always) 'bounce' back and there is no clear indicator which object that can be destroyed, which makes it feels stressful during events, for example several type of fence and traffic lights can be destroyed when got hit, while some don't (speed isn't a factor, and I hate the wooden stick and hydrant). Parked cars is static object and literally a concrete object painted like cars. Traffic cars' headlights is annoying, due to some of them visible from far in the night, while some don't, and most of them has zero visibility taillights during the night. Traffic cars either feels like a sponge or a tank when crashed on, while opponent AI cars during events felt like they had some glue or something and our cars feels like running on ice whenever it touches each other. [b]STORY PROGRESSION AND DRIFT SYSTEM[/b]: Why do I need to deliver sushi with style (even the tip is enormous) while I also need to take care of its condition? Why I need to pass 80k+ drift points during the drive with my gf when she just got called by a sudden matter to attend? These two is so unrealistic due to them being so contradictive, hence tbh kinda silly. Why reverse-entry drift is (almost) impossible (because the angle which the multiplier resets to x1 felt random) to get scored? Why hitting traffic/guardrail (once again, speed is not a factor apparently) sometimes fails my drift multiplier and sometimes don't? Why some main story events labeled as 'DRIFT' when actually it is time-based events? Why drift-duels only happens one-round and the player always as the chasing ones? [b]OPPONENTS AI[/b]: I know making racing AI is hard, and making them 'drift' is probably much more harder, but the way it is presented here is very annoying, mostly in drift face-off events. They are drifting very, very slow and 'cheating' since they can do this very slow drift while I can't. Drift face-off in hard is ridiculous, near the end of 4th chapter I had this battle with the mentally-ill dude antagonist and when I finished the event first it shows that I won by 5 points. He has ~26k points less than me when I was about to finish with ~10% track progress differences (he reached 89-90% when I finished). The game basically said "you better finish last during drift events or get fucked". https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3493324024 [b]USER EXPERIENCE[/b]: There is no 'quick-change cars' when trying to accept events (the mislabeled events make it worse). Custom-tuning cars doesn't show its effect on the metrics shown for the car. No tuning presets save mechanism during the game's release. Car levels actually differ if you have two of the same type, which is absurd. No option to hide UIs to have more immersive experience. [hr][/hr] [h1]Closing Notes[/h1] The game declares itself as "not as realistic, but not so arcade-ish", but all these findings make it position itself in a really weird position. Players get almost the same hassle and experience as a 'realistic sim' game would, yet completely not getting the 'arcade' racing game experience. A shame, really, as I really wish to like the game as a whole, but the negatives is way too impacting my experience. Sorry for the thumbs down (for now).

Please note this review is temporary until they patch the game and fix the issues I will mention in this review. The Good: - I like the graphics. - Cool manga story in between the missions. - The atmosphere is very good. The Japanese vibes pop off! - The map is cool with many tight, winding, mountain roads. The Bad: - Traffic is sometimes wayyyy too dense, especially when doing an underground drift session. It sucks to lose money because RNG acted like it's rush hour... in the middle of the night. Also, the roads are too tight for the amount of traffic the game generates sometimes. I feel this is a bug, cause it usually happens on certain parts of the map and you will see a long string of cars all of the sudden. - Handling feels off sometimes (understeer while drifting outta nowhere). The Ugly: - Driving in the rain sucks the joy out of this game. It's like driving on ice and you can't control the drifts anymore. Verdict: I really, really want to like this game, but I'm gonna wait for a few updates. They really need to fix the handling issues.

This is one of the least enjoyable games I have ever played, which is extremely sad because I was so hyped for it and I really really wanted to like it. It has so much potential, and it does a number of things well (which I will mention later in the review), but the actual gameplay is just the polar opposite of fun. Driving on a wheel and pedal setup is very much not a good experience, but I had no interest in driving on a controller so I stuck it out and tried to accommodate the game's extremely limited handling model... only to find the very first real event after the tutorials to be near impossible, due to some very poor choices from the development team. The game gives you a stock AE86 as your starting car (which is awesome - I have one almost identical in real life, so I was very keen to drive it on the game), but then it promptly puts you on a track that is waaay too fast for a stock AE86 to drift. Big, sweeping corners that are too wide to drift in second gear, yet the car doesn't have enough torque to drift it in third gear either. I cannot imagine a worse matched track to be the starting event with such and underpowered car. The only way to beat the event is to wiggle the car back and forth along every straight and corner, looking like an absolute fool, not following any kind of ideal drift line or anything. THAT IS NOT DRIFTING!! The game even tells you something about drifting being all about flow and style, yet when it comes down to it, their useless drift meter rewards the most disgusting driving ever, and does not reward good realistic drifting. Nor does it even make good realistic drifting even possible with the starting car. The second or third event is even more insanely difficult, thanks to the game's mediocre handling model and abysmal scoring system, but after doing the game's one-and-only kind of side-quest a bunch of times I managed to level up and upgrade my car enough to win that drift event. Then we have the mini-boss, where the game gives you conflicting instructions and expects you to meet both of them. "Get more drift points than your opponent and cross the finish line first," it says. ARE WE DRIFTING OR RACING? BECAUSE DRIFTING IS NOT FAST AND RACING IS BETTER IF YOU DON'T DRIFT. THESE ARE OPPOSITES. NOBODY IN THE WORLD IS INTERESTED IN DRIFT-RACING, IT IS NOT A THING! PICK ONE! The opponent AI will also straight up kamikaze into you if you are in front of him, which will absolutely send your car flying, but will not negatively affect him at all, thus making this event the least fun thing I could possibly imagine. So, I thought maybe I just need to upgrade my car more. No, sorry, because the game has now taken away the one and only side-quest (sushi delivery) that existed to make money, so now I'm just locked into a point where literally the only thing to do is win this event, but the event is borderline impossible to win. Sure, MAYBE I could spend a heap more time trying this one race over and over to win, but honestly why the heck would I want to do that? Maybe for the people who like a challenge, I could understand making it this hard, but I don't have the time or patience to put that amount of effort into a 'simcade' game. I play on easy difficultly, because I want a fun, relaxed gaming experience, and yet still the game is so unbalanced that you could have convinced me this was the hardest difficulty setting. And by the way, I'm not a completely hopeless driver either - I am far from the best, but I can drift fine on Assetto Corsa, a game that is supposed to be actually somewhat realistic and should therefore be harder than a 'simcade' game like this. I'm almost convinced it would be easier to learn to drift IRL than to win this event, and that's the biggest issue with this. Games, on easy mode, should not be so hard that it feels like you would have an easier time learning the skill in real life. I understand that some people want the challenge, and that's great, but that's what harder difficulty modes are for. Not everyone wants that. Not everyone wants to restart the fourth event in the game countless times just to finally win and make it onto the next event, which is likely to be just as bad, if not worse. That's not fun. Especially when every restart means another nine years of loading time. WHAT ARE YOU EVEN LOADING?! I WAS LITERALLY JUST THERE, AT THE START LINE TEN SECONDS AGO! The worst part is, I don't think the game is like this intentionally. I doubt they meant to make it impossible even on easy mode. I think they just so thoroughly messed up the balancing of the AI and the scoring system, and the result is the complete ruination of an otherwise promising game. It also is extremely stuttery at times, which is less than ideal. The gearbox just randomly pops out of gear every so often, presumably due to poor support for sim shifters. It randomly yanks the steering wheel to the side during the loading screens. The force-feedback and wheel behaviour in drifting leaves a lot to be desired. There is no obvious consistency in what objects you can drive through and what objects are rigid immovable objects. I hit a traffic cone once and it stopped my car dead. The traffic do not make any attempt to avoid hitting you, they are all asleep at the wheel. Night time is way too dark in some areas, even after turning up the brightness well past what the game recommends, and headlights are way too dim (both mine and the oncoming cars'). But all of these lesser criticisms are things I could have overlooked if the actual gameplay and events were enjoyable. Visually, it looks quite beautiful. The environments are awesome, and the cars look great. I like the idea of this game very much, it seems to be inspired by NFS Underground 2 which I absolutely loved. I even like the idea of doing a manga as a way to save money on things like voice-acting and cut-scenes, since it's a small studio game. That's cool and creative, and evokes a very Initial D feel, which is obviously what they were going for. Visual customisation is okay, but not amazing. Extremely limited in paint options - I can't even paint my wheels?! Also can't adjust the wheel width or offset, so the AE86 is stuck with the most hideous narrow wheels ever even if you change the style of wheel to something that should otherwise look cool. I guess these things might get fixed/improved in future updates. Performance mods and car tuning are okay, but not great. Small complaint, but why are we able to adjust the rear camber on the AE86, when those cars are solid rear axle? Also why can I visibly see that it has a different rear suspension setup to the real life version? I know it's a very small issue, but you get better attention to detail out of Assetto Corsa mods that some random dude made for free in his spare time. Still, we've had far worse oversights than that in far bigger games in the past like NFS, so again, this is obviously not a game-breaker. The only game-breaker is the catastrophic AI opponent difficulty balancing, which really does completely ruin the game. And unfortunately, until that gets fixed, it is basically unplayable. It is impossible to progress any further without devoting a stupid amount of frustrating and unenjoyable time into beating this race... and then the next, and the next. But frankly, that's not a grind I see any value in pursuing, so I highly doubt I will ever play this game again. Maybe in a year if the devs manage to sort the issues, but until then it's a complete waste of money and storage space.