Japanese Drift Master Steam Charts & Stats

Developers ! Please Read! Enable Cloud Saves! Completed the game in less then 18 hours, Got all trophies under 21 hours. Please don't give a negative review because of your own skill issues with drifting, or the fact your low end/medium end PC from 5 years ago isn't up to scratch, loading off a Hard drive or an old SSD with slow times, or the fact you can not run the game at 100 fps because you have it in ultra and think your 2070/1660 should be able to run games of today in max, or because you think it is too blurry because you don't know how to adjust the settings correctly. That's not fair. People like me sit and look at the reviews before buying and i almost passed it up due to seeing all the negatives before i saw any positives due to the way steam is. I know a lot of you rush to make negative reviews rather then being honest because you rather sprout hate and garnish clicks rather then being constructive but you literally ruin it for developers and in the end, for the players. I am glad i bought it in the end. This game is about drifting, if you can not do it in other car games you may struggle here and it may not be for you, but once you nail it, it feels great. The Music is great,plenty of radio stations from EDM to Synth wave, Rock even k-pop if your into it, something for everyone, i leave it on EDM or Synth wave. The graphics for an Indie game are fantastic. If we look at self proclaimed Ubisoft quadruple A game, The Crew Motorfest, they was missing rear view mirrors and side mirror reflections at game release, and they are also capped at 60fps! Here, we have an unlocked frame rate and all the bells and whistles. It looks amazing for an Indie game. Performance is smooth for the most part, i have had a few stutters, but not like people have made out, i get a stutter every now and again when going somewhere different.My game isn't blurry, I have DLSS set to native! I have frame Gen off! i am running 1440p, reflection, global illumination and anti-aliasing at High, Environment and detail quality at max, everything else High Plus. This nets me over 70 fps and rarely dips below 60. I am running a 4070ti, 6400MHZ 32g ram, off a samsung evo 980 2 tb with a 14700k with a ROG Mobo.

It probably should have stayed in the oven and baked for a bit longer. It's a fun drift game, very bare bones, probably not worth $30, but scratches the drifting itch.

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.

Game still needs some serious work. AI is atrocious, will just randomly spin you out mid combo, leading to some extremely frustrating moments. Also for some reason the game doesn't recognise my Xbox controller? Also if you're playing manual on a pad, don't map your shift up button to A, because it's also the same button you use to get into events. So if you try to pull away from neutral and you're on an event marker, it'll just put you straight back into it. I know this will all be patched out eventually, and the game looks and sounds great. But be aware that it is still SUPER janky in places.

TLDR: Absolutely amazing game with a room to grow. I played this game when it had a public demo and many things are vastly improved. The team is really working hard. The good: - Amazing graphics - Epic landscapes - Lots of cars and customizations - Different styles of radios - Top notch gamepad experience - The team is updating the game nonstop The bad: - The performance could be improved, which I am sure the team is working on - Lack of cloud and continuous saves. I have gone to one side of the map and next time I start the game I start at the garage. Conclusion: This game scratches the itch I needed scratched. You feel great car control but it is adapted for gamepad and feels natural. And most of all - the scenery as absolutely amazing. Yes, performance is not top of the line right now, but it is hardly as bad as some whiners suggest. I run this game on almost max graphics with 3070Ti. My advice: Buy the game, support the developers and have casual fun.

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).

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.

I am sad but i have to give it a thumbs down. The map is awesome with a great attention to details. The soundtrack got something for a lot of taste and it including Eurobeat (why did it take so long for a drifting game to include eurobeat?) The performance were good enough on my PC (only 1 crash to desktop and a "stable" 90fps on low graphics with a 4060) The main problem? The handling is bad and the scoring system force you to "wiggle" on straight because it score twice as much as a really good and clean drift corner. Worse, many race have unfair, and outright frustrating/broken, condition: Outrun a 350Z with the corolla in a straight line, if he pass you, you lose, if you block him and he touch you, you lose too. Win both score and time with the 2nd worse car in the game while car upgrades are locked. Win within the time limit BUT without passing the opponent, whose AI can sometimes not even make it past the finish line in the time limit. (2nd round of the drift championship so it's a score event while racing too) But what broke me was the 2nd chapter, it's entirely about Grip Racing. Drifting is bad, but grip racing with a RWD car is impossible. Car can't brake and giving even the slightest of throttle while turning engage the drift physics and kill your speed and grip. Sometime the AI will overtake you at twice the speed from the outside while your tyres are refusing to grip and turn. This game has a soul with good intent and i hope the best for it, but a drifting game where the driving is a chore and simply not fun is not a game i can recommend.

Yet another example of Unreal Engine taking a massive dump on what could have been a very good game. The driving physics are pretty good, the fact that there are licensed cars is pretty impressive, I love the radio and especially the setting. The performance however... Is not that good. Running the game at Native is not viable, upscaling and frame generation were enabled by default (at least for me), which to me seems like an attempt to cover up the poor performance. There is no adjustable sharpen filter which makes the upscaling/framegen issue even worse. There is no option to fully disable upscaling and temporal antialiasing. Due to that there is a lot of smearing, ghosting and overall loss of visual clarity, and even then the frames are mid at best. I am aware that I am most likely in the minority that is triggered by the upscaling and FPS, in my experience most people don't care/notice the artifacts. There is huge potential, we desperately need a good racing game, but please keep working on the optimization, keep working on the implementation of the upscaling, add adjustable sharpen filter, try to make the gameplay viable in native (if it is even possible in UE5) and at the very, very least give us the option to disable the temporal AA. Since a lot of people are asking for my specs: 7800X3D, 32GB RAM, RX 7800XT

This game has a really good foundation, but the actual game part is supremely frustrating at times due to terrible AI and progression. The mission objective can be counterintuitive, and the progression doesn’t allow for much individuality while the interesting stuff happens in the first chapter. Why are you asking me to drift for points (which is slow), while also racing a fully built car (which is much faster) with the requirement of coming first, in a clapped-out AE86 that I can’t upgrade, not because I don’t have money, but because apparently my level isn’t high enough to swap my transmission so I can tune it. The game isn't hard, it's just not enjoyable to drift a car with a dead 3rd gear and a short second. The actual types of missions are all rather diverse but there could be better execution with a lot of them. For instance the sushi delivery car is a mess to drive with brakes made of cardboard. The tandem events are a mess with random HP for the lead car, terrible lead lines, and no opportunity to set a line yourself. The drift and grip events are the only events with no problems and that's because it's hard to mess that up. Then there’s the actual drifting. It’s another game where the scoring system rewards those weird little back and forth wiggles (they are not manjis). If you’re used to drifting using perfect sweeping lines, hitting flawless transitions, and getting the most out of every corner, you’re going to get less points than someone just shaking back and forth in third gear pinging back and forth between the extremes of the “angle meter”. The game just doesn’t reward enjoyable drifting. Then there’s the grip racing which is just a terrible under steering mess. Being unable to upgrade your car due to levels instead of financial constraints has to be one of the most frustrating features in games like this. The whole point of customizing a car is you do it your way. You prioritize what’s important to you first. If you want to put way too much horsepower in a car that doesn’t have the suspension or tyres to handle it? You should be able to. Let me be creative with my builds. Don’t set me down a linear path, forcing me to attempt to enjoy a stock car that I would only ever buy to modify because it is worse than what I have or has some critical issues like a droopy 3rd gear. (Looking at you Miata NB) The game is beautiful, and the physics are decent enough. But the progression system is frustrating for anyone who wants the JDM dream. Let me choose from more than one car to start with. Let me upgrade what I can based on money, not an arbitrary level. Then there’s the AI. They move you like a balloon but are a stone. Initially, this may seem like it’s only a problem if you pass by ramming, which I don’t, but when you realize that the opponent can just send you flying mid-drift with a tap, it feels a little less than satisfying. They’re also usually in faster cars in the first chapters, so expect to get hit a lot if you pass them. They need some avoidance coded in so when they try to pass you, there’s some actual attempt at race craft and not just a barge coming through mid corner using you as its brakes. Introduce some other cars that aren’t fully built JDM dream cars. My car has rust all over it, why am I racing a TT 350z making at least 500hp in a clapped car making about 175hp? It not only feels unfair at point, but also makes it seem like everyone I’m racing just sucks and only has money to build their cars, yet can’t actually drive them. Which is entirely counterintuitive to the actually enjoyable story they have going on. With all that said, I’m not recommending it for now, unless you just have money to throw at games. This WILL be worth it at some point and I WILL update my review when that day comes. You can really tell a lot of love went into the map and the handling characteristics. But for now the game is still in need of some work outside of the driving physics and the impeccable visuals. THIS IS NOT A BAD GAME. It’s just not as enjoyable as it could and will be. If you’re not in a rush, wait a bit so it can make an even better impression. Also they should’ve beat the fuck out of that guy who slapped that lady in front of them. Just sitting and watching angrily is not what a strong person does. At least call the cops, don't just let him beat women in public. For those of you saying skill issue, where did I say I was struggling? I beat the first two chapters without upgrading my 86. All I did was change the rev limit. My first purchases were a FD and R34 purchased simultaneously at the start of chapter 3. I simply said that the cars you race against ramp up too quickly to actually make sense from a story perspective. The game actually lacks challenge as a whole (remember I beat the first two chapters without upgrading my car). I have also already completed most of the story and am now dragging my feet so I don’t finish all the content. Also the Kaori tandem battle is the worst mission I’ve ever done in a driving game. She does the entire track in first gear. Edit: Just finished chapter 4 (At this point only 1% of people have so keep that in mind when reading reviews. The story has gone off the rails. The amount of weeabo stereotypes is off the charts. It's still enjoyable but is rather immature and a little egregious at times. The Jiggle physics on all the women says a lot about the motivations of the devs, though those physics are also questionable a lot of the time matching the cars. The tandem events are absolutely awful and completely disregard all of the important aspect taken into account by most competitions to keep them fair. The map really is the best part of this game and then the cars and customization. Acceptable driving physics can be attained but it lacks the smoothness of forza or the reward for proper lines like carx. If I had to give advice to the devs it would be focus on the physics feeling satisfying before anything else. Stop automatically clutch kicking when I use the handbrake, the whole point is I'm trying to kill speed. It even does it if I clutch in. Let people see the adjustment to top speed and acceleration when tuning their gears. Have less barriers between testing a tune and adjusting it. Let us switch cars at events since most of them aren't labeled properly. A chase is not a drift battle. A race is also not a drift battle. Let us tune the sushi car so it doesn't have so many terrible aspect or let us create our own sushi car that we have to use their livery on, Update the scoring system to let me throw huge backies. Edit 2: I've finished the game (So before you say skill issue be aware less than 1% of people have done this at this point). By the end the story is just completely off the rails. It feels like we started at Tokyo drift and are now in fast 8. The missions as a whole drop in quality. it's a lot of tandem drifting and drifting the same tracks, which really underutilized the incredible map. I enjoyed most of my time, but probably won't pick this back up unless there's a major update. The physics just aren't good enough to do the map justice which is really a shame because it's incredibly detailed and has some really cool areas to drift. The car tuning also needs a lot of work. I found myself just compensating for the lack of ability to get cars to feel how I want with speed and huge initiations, but the game doesn't like it when you go super deep into a drift and I've lost some really big combos mid drift because the game thinks i'm too backwards, even though I'm going 50 Mph and heading into a hairpin. Not sure what would have to happen to bring me back, but I hope they manage to find it because this map deserve more time spent on it