Test Drive Unlimited Solar Crown Review (Xbox Series X|S)

Disclaimer: Test Drive Unlimited Solar Crown has been suffering from some major server issues since its early access launch on September 5th, and given that the game is always-online, we’ve deducted an extra point off the score as a result. Without these issues, we’d be looking at one point higher than what the game has ultimately scored in this review.

Test Drive Unlimited Solar Crown is finally here. After more than four years since its announcement, and 13 years since the last Test Drive Unlimited game, series fans have certainly had to be patient to embark on their new journey to Hong Kong Island. That island, with all of its twisty backroads, neon soaked highways and secret meeting spots is a massive highlight – in fact, it’s one of the best racing open worlds we’ve cruised around in for some time. However, numerous server issues (some of which are ongoing), progression bugs, graphical glitches and an overall lack of polish mean we can’t recommend picking this one up yet, even if there’s fun to be had with Solar Crown when everything works.

Let’s start with a few positives, shall we? First off, TDU:SC’s map must be mentioned again here. Hong Kong Island is massive, and developer KT Racing has packed lots of variety into the game’s sprawling open world. You’ll start your Solar Crown career in some of the game’s more built up areas, which have a very Need for Speed vibe; especially during night scenes where the rain’s pouring and the only light you see becomes a high-speed neon blur. However, once you stray from the main city areas, you’ve got fantastic twisty roads that lead to hidden mountain temples, vast open highways that cut through the game’s more rural landscapes to the south of the map, and plenty of off-roading opportunities for you 4×4 lovers.

What’s more, we really like that Solar Crown’s open world contains loads of little secret areas for you to explore. Even if you’re sticking to the map’s marked roads you’ll have plenty to discover, but so many times we’ve just wandered down a little side lane to see a dotted track appear on the map; often harbouring its own wee digital treasure at the end. We can’t really talk to the map’s authenticity to the real Hong Kong — we’d wager it’s quite different in real life — but that hasn’t stopped us massively enjoying our time razzing around KT’s digital rendition. It really is a great open world racing playground.

The driving mechanics aren’t half bad either. Off-roading has its issues, which we’ll come back to in a bit, but asphalt racing feels slick and satisfying – and the game’s sense of speed is fantastic as well. Solar Crown is a ‘sim-cade’ affair, not too dissimilar to Forza Horizon – so we’re talking those sort of mechanics rather than something more over-the-top and arcadey like Burnout, or say, The Crew Motorfest for a more contemporary example. You’ll be fighting a wee bit of understeer is all we’ll say, but it’s often easily countered with effective use of the handbrake and a bootful of gas.

There’s definitely a solid base to Test Drive Unlimited Solar Crown, then, but unfortunately, the game rarely manages to make good on those promising intentions. We’ll address the server issues now because they’ve plagued the game’s early access launch, but thankfully, the most egregious internet-related errors do seem to have been fixed. We’re logging in okay 99% of the time now — it’s been that way since a day or two after the Gold Edition launch — which is good news at least, even if we fear for the base game’s public launch on September 12th. We are still getting booted out of racing lobbies every now and then, and are coming across errors when trying to post a lap time in some of the game’s online events, so our fears with an always-online world haven’t been totally put to bed.

If these server issues were the extent of Solar Crown’s most obvious flaws, we’d perhaps be a bit more forgiving here, but that sadly isn’t the case at launch. As we’ve moved through the digital world of Hong Kong Island, we’ve begun unearthing some much more deep-rooted issues with this game, and the tech it’s built on.

One of the game’s most irritating issues right now is the AI. Obvious rubber-banding is in play here, where drivers using the exact same car as you will fly past in situations where it’d be physically impossible to gain so much speed in such a short space of time. When you head off-road, the same thing happens but with sheer grip instead. Even if you’re using a cross country vehicle in Solar Crown, the off-road physics are incredibly loose and slidey, but the AI has no such issues with gaining grip; leaving you in their dust in the process. Every now and then they just veer straight off a dirt road cliff though, which is always amusing, and helpful when you need to gain a space or two after being unfairly left behind. This issue seems to get worse as you progress through the game, with races getting tougher as more high-end car classes are unlocked.

Another bug we’re experiencing right now is a sort-of progression glitch. Basically, we’ve been doing as much island exploring as possible; discovering almost all of the car dealerships, meeting spots and gas stations along the way (you need to drive to each of them first to be able to access them from the map). However, some of this progression isn’t sticking when we log back in. We’ve now visited a good handful of interest points where they become locked again when booting the game back up – even though the road discovery mechanic is working fine and says that we’ve driven right past them. This isn’t game-breaking, but we still can’t get it working for certain points of interest, so for now we must keep driving to them every time we play.

That isn’t our only gripe with TDU Solar Crown’s progression either, even if our other issues aren’t related to bugs or glitches – more the general gating of content. After playing for more than 15 hours, and unlocking the game’s ‘Grand Tourer’ car class, we’re starting to struggle to find things to do that’ll meaningfully progress the campaign. High-end cars, races and clan activities are locked behind certain XP levels, and at this point our most effective way of gaining XP is simply driving around Hong Kong Island and discovering its roads; each percentage point of discovery nets a healthy XP bonus. We’ve started to run out of races and other events to gain decent amounts of XP from, especially when you factor in those AI issues that are preventing us from being particularly successful in some of these races. We quite like the idea of having to work for your cars and experiencing that sense of progression, but it all needs tweaking right now, even if just to make it feel like there are effective ways to progress through the game beyond aimlessly driving about.

We’d like to talk more in-depth about some of the game’s other features, like the returning car dealership experience and walking around your apartment; trying on new clothes along the way – but we’ve just not had a ton of experience with these elements of the game so far, to be honest. After 15-20 hours of play we only have three cars — one of which is the starter vehicle — so we’ve only been to showrooms and bought a couple of cars since; that works very much like old TDU where you can wander around and choose rims/interior trims etc. before either test driving or buying rides. As for clothing and character customisation, well, we’ve done none of that beyond the initial character creation screen. The game hasn’t mentioned character stuff since and we’ve had no real reason to go and explore that side of the game so far!

Visuals and performance wise, the whole thing is a bit of a mixed bag. Playing on Xbox Series X’s performance mode, we’ve had generally stable frame rates at 60FPS, which is a nice bonus – and we absolutely recommend this mode on Microsoft’s more powerful console. The game’s visuals are definitely dated though — Solar Crown looks like a TDU sequel that launched must closer to TDU2’s 2011 release than in 2024 — with noticeable pop-in, distance shimmering and uneven lighting – oh, and sometimes cars just randomly disappear and reappear. Solar Crown looks pretty good at night time, but the game’s presentation in daylight has some odd quirks that make it feel a bit ‘eurojank’ in the main. If you’re not sure what that means, look up the term, you’ll see what we mean!

Conclusion

Test Drive Unlimited Solar Crown is a really tough game to sum up in its current state. The game’s vast open world and asphalt driving physics give the title a solid base to launch from, and we definitely think this series still has something to offer that differs from the likes of Forza Horizon and The Crew. However, Solar Crown’s issues run deeper than launch-week server load, and the game needs quite a bit of tweaking to feel properly finished. Nacon and KT Racing are intending for this to be an ongoing live service game, and as long as the teams stick with it, we definitely think this new Test Drive game will be hugely improved months down the line. We can’t recommend Test Drive Unlimited Solar Crown right now, but if you’re into your big open world racers, we definitely think this one is worth keeping an eye on as it gets fixed up and improved – you should be able to get it on discount that way as well.

Solar Crown is yet another rocky launch for the franchise after similar issues plagued TDU2 back in the day – but that game did go on to become a bit of a cult hit, so there’s hope for this Test Drive Unlimited title yet. It just needs a bit more time and attention for its solar crown to start to shine.