I'm enjoying the game but it is a fairly redundant release overall with very little new to offer. It's mostly a case of Ghost Games fixing the mistakes of the past 2 games over the course of 4 years. While doing so, they've managed to make more of a throwback of many parts of NFS over the course of its history post-2003, but struggling to find relevance today.
Thing is, it's a good game but it doesn't do anything particularly great. The visual customization is great, but limited across different cars, especially no major updates to existing cars over the past 4 years. Handling is slightly improved, but the garbage off-roading is still there, as are some fairly brand track designs with corner cutting. The day/night focus is very clever but once you've reached max-rep, racing at night is kind of pointless as you earn money only during the day, bar story missions. Speaking of story, it's not cringey but it gets in the way often with its mission structure, instead of just going up a blacklist or finishing actual races dotted across the world.
There are clear problems too like the world feeling pretty lifeless during the day with extremely limited traffic. It makes sense at night but ironically, I feel like there's more traffic at night. The side activities are extremely dated and the actual online PVP isn't there. You'll just have to play with friends in PVE as randoms rarely want to join your races. I also feel like the police chases are deliberately made the way it is to force you to bank your rep or get busted. Which is fine, but the cops are absolutely brutal and unlike Rivals, no real way to fight them back. Only resist them until you eventually run out of repairs.
Generally speaking, this is Ghost Games best NFS since 2013, and that's 6 years ago. It's also the best NFS since Hot Pursuit 2010. It's just nothing special to write home about and definitely a bargain bin game, even if you're thirsty for a racing game, especially on the PS4. We should expect more and better at $60 in today's market and this is what we should've gotten in 2015's reboot. While this is a right step towards something better for the series future, given the lack of marketing and general lukewarm reception, it may be the last NFS we see in a while. At least it's a half decent game and the series didn't go into ice with Payback.