It seems they were going for a 90s driving-themed action movie kinda vibe, and they pretty much succeeded. The camera, the sense of speed, the particle effects and the music are all aligned with that vision.The handling is a huge step up from the previous games too, and allows for that adrenaline-infused racing with crazy maneuvers that require quick reaction.

The music is a mix of various electronic genres, which fit really well with the general aesthetic, although the quality of the tracks ranges from mid to good, and never quite stands out from its competition. The graphics, on the technical level, are very advanced for the PS1.

However, I don't really like them from the aesthetic perspective. They go for this romantic cinematic style with realistic colors and tons of sunsets or other types of sun flares. In addition, there aren't many tracks, so they often repeat, and this hurts the visual variety that is sorely needed here.

The tournaments allow you to earn money, buy and upgrade cars, which gives you the motivation to replay the same tracks sometimes. But I don't think the difficulty is well-balanced, because I found myself grinding sometimes just to be able to upgrade my car and beat the new tracks.

The Pursuit mode is not very fun imo. I think NFS games didn't really get it right until Most Wanted. The collision model in this game is okay for regular races, but once you have cops that constantly ram you, it becomes an exercise in frustration. To make things worse, you can't play as your upgraded cars from the tournament.

I ended up abandoning the game. Like, it's fun, but not that fun. I was feeling like I'm investing way more time than it deserves.