I got done cruising around all of the DLC tracks in 1h20. Feels like a straight robbery.
It's boring, devoid of anything other than "tracks" (the new rider gear is as uninteresting as it gets), and said tracks fail to differentiate themselves from the base game career tracks since they're in a location that's already got several base game tracks on it. The DLC tracks just look like your usual normal career tracks, whereas in past games' DLCs you really could see the difference between base game career tracks and DLC career tracks.
Fusion's DLCs had even less content, but somehow they sparked my interest more.
Felt the same way tbf half way through made me wonder if these were actually ripped from the story because South America, Africa and Australia aren’t even touched in this game but now North America just looks clustered af with tracks and you can’t click the new dlc extremes without filtering show everything aswell for some reason
Well, obviously opinions are different.
I for myself almost finished the DLC too thinking it was pretty good, not fantastic but good.
OK, the rider gear's not really my type also (which is as subjective as it gets obv, I've seen plenty of riders wearing at least parts of it).
In my opinion, the DLC is better than any on Fusion was (I don't have the comparison to Evo as I don't own DLCs for that). The game got expanded with many new tracks, and I like the difficulty. No easy stuff, just some Mediums of which I like most of, and then the Hard + Extreme stuff. So from my point of view, it's not only an expansion, but an upgrade also.
I don't know if the tracks MUST differentiate locationwise from the base game ones; as we know, the setting in the game bases on existing locations (which I really appreciate, future wasn't my thing also), and with getting on Route 66 I think they did a decent job. We shall see what the DLC which happens in not-yet-used places brings.
Maybe you're not perceiving the tracks as good because the level of track design etc. in the base game is pretty high already IMO and one thing which they did very good.
What I'm really missing right now is at least a new skill game and special bike gear (correct me if I'm wrong).
I liked the DLC's theme, plenty of new tracks and overall fun drivelines.
Stadium finals weren't too exciting but the rest of the tracks were at least Medium and above.
Some obstacles felt like a reference to previous games' , which isn't a bad thing.
Route 66 doesn't use new objects beside new decals, but that's okay, as a lot of the objects already in the Rising basegame weren't even used in the main game.
The next DLC is said to give 2 new bikes so might be a bit more impactful on the overall game, also said to be in Africa, South America, Antarctica so the map will have a few new areas filled in.
Fusion DLC had a lot more differences, but maybe that was extra visible because the basegame looked mostly so clean and shiny.
I won't comment too much about rider gear and bike parts as there are various bugs and issues with them, even for me.