I really wish I could give NASCAR 25 a neutral rating - I think it's a fine and serviceable NASCAR game that was made on a limited production time, and dwarfs the games that had come out years prior from Motorsport Games. I am going to keep playing my career save and I'm hoping iRacing Studio gives us some more updates. That said, this game has some truly baffling design decisions and missing features that I expected a NASCAR game to have.

The core driving and AI behavior are great and make the moment-to-moment driving some of the best in any NASCAR game. On a controller, it's lovely. However the career mode is so lifeless and monotonous that it makes me wonder where development resources went. The upgrade/sponsor path is very boring and the overall 'strategy' of career is kind of pointless. Customization is very limited - why can't I name my own team in a ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ singleplayer career mode? Or not have some faceless driver next to real driver portraits? Games back in the day used to have real teams offering your up-and-coming driver contracts, and I don't know why they couldn't do that here instead of making me drive for 'Rampage Motorsports' or some other awfully generic crap. Older PS2-era games had full weekly schedules of events, and now we get a 'pick between some money, rep, or mechanic points each week' and then go race. It's just so godawfully generic.

Furthermore, there's a lot of 'rules' content that is messed up or missing. No choose cone/rule, cars involved in cautions not moving to the tail end of the field, BS corner-cut penalties, black flags for getting spun into the pits, NO DNFS (HOW ARE THERE NO DNFS IN A NASCAR GAME, WHAT IS THE POINT OF WRECKS/DAMAGE IF EVERY CAR FINISHES NO MATTER WHAT), etc etc. For an 'authentic' NASCAR experience there are so many things just made wrong or straight up missing. AI is also cracked on restarts and pit cycles, though they have bad strategy logic that you can abuse instead.

Soundtrack slaps imo. Unreal Engine 5 performance kinda sucks too. Game is overly demanding hardware wise for some pretty PS4-era visuals.

Like I enjoy the game, and I'm still going to keep enjoying it, but something like Chase for the Cup 2005 is just more fun. It was just better then. How is a simracing juggernaut in iRacing and the largest domestic motorsports series not able to fund a better game than 20 years ago? I don't get it, and I really hope updates can fix some of this, though I fear we'll have to just wait for a NASCAR 26.

I cannot, in good conscience, recommend this title for anybody who wants to play this on a system that is close to the minimum requirements. On my Acer Nitro 5, the game stutters so badly at half the tracks (Daytona, Talladega, Watkins Glen, Atlanta, Bristol as examples) that I cannot compete in the career mode. I'm at the point where I have uninstalled and will wait until I build a better system. Even though I met minimum requirements, I can't enjoy all aspects of it. When the game doesn't stutter and has a decent frame rate, NASCAR 25 is absolutely amazing as a sim-cade game. Such a shame.

i hate to have to say this but this game should have never been released. lacking too many features and the AI suck. paint booth is lacking and leaves something to be desired, and the career mode is stale and boring, only thing the game has going for it is it drives somewhat alright on wheel and pedals after about 30-40a minutes of messing with settings. hopefully NASCAR 26 is better but im not holding my breath NASCAR games are most likely dead.