Thank you 3DClouds for sending us this game for review!

Formula Legends is an ambitious project that attempts to condense seventy years of open-wheel racing history into a single, stylized package. Developed by 3DClouds, it sits in a curious middle ground: it has the "chunky," toy-like aesthetic of a casual arcade racer, yet demands the strategic focus of a serious motorsport simulation.

A long time ago… no wait, not gonna say it…. But a while ago, I was really hooked on a particular racing game, and I spent many hours a day playing it. I would build tracks for that game and even became one of the top designers of tracks. Needless to say, I was pretty good at that racing simulator. I would get lost in that distraction because it included multiplayer races and even player interaction via texting. I finally had to quit because it was taking up too much of my life. Then recently, I was asked to review a new sim-racer based on Formula One or ‘F1’ cars and tracks. It sounded intriguing. At first glance, Formula Legends is an arcade-style racer where the player is positioned behind the car in various views, either zoomed out of the car in 3rd person, or zoomed in to the cockpit of the car in 1st person view. Actually, I think it feels like your sitting right behind the driver, because all you see is the driver’s helmet and the front of the car and the tires. While driving in that close view, you can see the tires spin and the driver’s helmet lean and tires move when the car turns on the track. It is an interesting design choice, that the view of the car changes as you progress thru the different eras of the game.

Formula Legends starts out with the Tutorial, which is very helpful to learn the basics of the controls and aspects of the game. I then went to “Race Mode” with a car from the Late 60s era, because they are the slowest and easiest cars to maneuver around the tracks. As I got better at handling the cars, I progressed through the different eras of cars, as each era produced more powerful, faster and more maneuverable cars, so reflexes have to be quicker as the cars advanced. The first race I won was on one of the English tracks, by at least 5 seconds; not sure how that happened, but I’ll take it. During a race, there are two options that can be set called “BRS” and “WRS.” BRS stands for Brake Recovery System and can be activated at key moments to improve acceleration and top speed. The "WRS" stands for Wind Reduction System, which acts as the game's version of the real-world Drag Reduction System (DRS). It is a player-activated mechanic used to reduce drag, increase straight-line speed, and facilitate overtaking when within one second of a preceding car.

The undisputed crown jewel of Formula Legends is its Story Mode. It takes players on a chronological journey starting from the cigar-shaped racers of the 1960s all the way to the high down-force hybrid monsters of the 2020s. Within Story Mode, you re-live the history of Formula One cars from the early 60s to the modern era and unlock new rewards. The story mode takes quite a bit of time to go through: I calculated that the entire story mode is 102 races, with each race approximately 10 to 15 minutes long, depending on the length of each track. That calculates out to about 1000 to 1500 minutes or at least 25 hours of play for one story run. There are also many options you can change after completing each era, including the difficulty of the racing. The harder the racing, the more competitive the AI cars become.

There are other sections on the main menu, which includes Time Attack, where you can try to set record times for yourself on each track, and Race Mode, where you can practice on each map that is unlocked with various cars that are unlocked from each era-specific period. You can also make adjustments to the game on the Settings menu, such as Audio and Video settings, and you can make changes to controller settings as well.

I have played Formula Legends for 70+ hours to date, and I have finally completed a Story Mode run in the game, and I have unlocked all the maps in the game. I was racing in the Mid 70s at one point, and while driving on the Carnival Track, which believe is supposed to be in Brazil, I was actually leading the race and lapping the slower AI cars. During the final lap, my car blew a tire and I was passed by a lot of the cars and finished in 8th. This makes it very important to pit at some point and watch your fuel levels and your tire wear. If you watch the track overview in the lower left corner of the screen to see the positions of the other cars, you can see when the NPC cars are pitting during a race, which is usually about half-way or more thru the race. At the start of each section of each era-specific period of the Story Mode, you can make a few changes to settings of the race, such as how many qualification laps are required for each race, which will allow you to qualify at the front of the field of cars, depending on your qualification time. In some of the tracks, I would qualify at the quickest time, while other tracks, I would struggle to complete the qualification laps and finish in 14th position. Just for fun, I would intentionally qualify in last position, just to see how far up I could finish the race and pass the NPC cars.

One thing I noticed about the NPC cars is that, during the race, the cars will stay in the line of each track that is set as ‘the best race line.’ When you try to pass one of the cars, they will stay in the path, even to the point of bumping you out of the way and off the track, so the car can remain in the path. I was bumped off the track on more than one occasion because of the AI design. The NPC cars will brake VERY hard when coming up to a turn, and if you’re following too close to one of the cars, you will hit the car in front of you.

There are quite a lot of settings available to make adjustments to Formula Legends, like screen resolution, changes to the in-game heads-up display, and you can make adjustments to audio and graphics settings. The graphics are not bad for a smaller game; I understand that they lower the resolution of the scenery so that they can take advantage of the actual drivability of the cars and make that a lot more realistic. You can set the graphics to ‘Low’ if you have a low-powered machine, or to ‘Ultra-High” for higher powered machines. I set the graphics to ‘Low’ to see how it looks, and it is strange, because as you race around the track you have “texture pop-up,” and the scenery is automatically created around the track, then disappears after the cars go by. This works great if you have a low powered computer or older generation consoles so that the game minimizes stuttering. I usually put my video settings to the highest possible for the game, since I have pretty high-powered computers.

Formula Legends works great in Windows and Linux, and in my opinion, it actually runs better in Linux. The graphics in the game, while not considered even close to the realism of high-budget AAA racer, are good enough to be enjoyable to look at, although you really are not looking at the scenery while racing around the tracks at high speed. What makes this sim-racer work is the attention to detail in the evolution of the sport. The era-specific tracks are very entertaining and are not static as the eras change. A vintage track might be lined with hay bales and surrounded by rolling countryside, while its modern counterpart is a sprawling, high-tech track with advanced safety barriers. The visual filters are unique for added style to the game, which uses clever designs and optional filters (like a grainy film look for the '60s or a CRT effect for the '90s) to ground you in each decade. Since it lacks official FIA licensing, Formula Legends uses "off-brand" names that will make F1 fans chuckle. You’ll be racing for teams like "Ferenzo" (Ferrari) and "Bonton" (Benetton) against legends like "Al John" (Alan Jones) and “Luis Hammerton” (Louis Hamilton). The same goes for track selection, so the names of the tracks are close to the real tracks; like “Riviera Street” (Monaco) in France; or “Golden Dunes (Abu Dabi) in the Emirates; and my favorite, “Roulette Streets” (New Orleans).

While the concept of this game is stellar, the execution is currently uneven. Many players have reported a "laggy" steering feel. The cars often suffer from heavy understeer, and there is a slight delay between controller input and the car’s reaction that takes several hours to get used to. The AI difficulty is polarized. "Easy" is often a cakewalk, while "Normal" can feel like an elite-level challenge. On certain tracks (notably the version of Monaco), the AI's speed seems supernaturally fast compared to their performance elsewhere. Currently, the game only offers solo racing. The absence of split-screen or online multiplayer is a significant miss for an arcade-style racer. Another nice addition would be the inclusion of a replay mode during or after a race.

In my opinion, Formula Legends is really good. I really like it. The versatility, the functionality, the various and plentiful settings are truly remarkable. I've been playing it for a few weeks now. It took me more than a while to get used to racing in this game. Although, I am not used to using a controller, so it did take me a long time to get used to driving with one. I used a Turtle Beach Rematch Core Wired Controller for Xbox, which is supported by Formula Legends. The driving is limited by my controller and the set turning radius of the cars. I'm sure, if you're using a wheel, turning radius might be a lot tighter and driving should be much more fluid. It's more like an arcade game than a realistic driving simulator. You have a lot of options you could choose from; I feel it's really quite remarkable.

Formula Legends is a "love letter" to Formula F1 racing without the annoying FIA licensing. It is an earnest, charming, and content-rich homage that will delight F1 history buffs. However, its wonky physics and unpolished AI means it isn't quite the "Mario Kart for F1" it appears to be on the surface, but it is getting close. 3DClouds has a very active discord server and actively interacts with players that not only find bugs, but offer up suggestions. All of this shows in the recent patch 1.3 that was just released for Formula Legends. The patch 1.3 introduced many new updates to the game, including “full steering wheel support,” with complete input remapping of controls. They added a completely rebuilt collision system showing actual car damage. Before this, when a collision happened, your car would end up hitting the wall, but no damage would be visible. The patch also updated various audio and video settings to “improve the overall racing experience.”

Bottom line, if you are a die-hard F1 fan who wants to experience the evolution of the sport in a stylish, casual setting, then this racing simulation game is definitely worth it. Formula Legends is a charming, budget-friendly "love letter" to Formula1 history that balances arcade fun with surprising strategic depth. It is very fun and worth your attention and time, once you get used to the controls and the lower level graphics, which do not detract from the fun of the racing experience that 3DClouds offers with Formula Legends.