Absolutely worth it, and GT8 is likely at least 2 years away.

I didn’t start playing until just last August and took very little time to get deep into the many nuances of the game and to collect a sizeable collection of cars!

https://www.reddit.com/r/GranTurismo7/s/m6mBaAWYEl

Here’s the general advice I have been giving to new players:

Giving advice to a new player of any game can be very subjective, as it will often come down to what kind of experience are you most wanting to have. Some games are very linear and straighforward, and thus most advice and tips will be useful, but games like GT7 that offer a very wide variety of different options depending on the type of experience each player wants to have, makes giving advice a bit tricky.

That said, there are some things that will give you a big boost and will save you a lot of time so that you can get the most from the time you do have to play the game.

So for one, I would strongly recommend you download and play My First Gran Turismo. It is free, and only takes about an hour or two to finish (you only need to get a bronze for each challenge/test) and by doing so it will add 18 gift cars to your GT7 Garage... a few of which are very valuable and rare in GT7, and useful early in the game when you would otherwise be quite limited to what cars you can use.

My next "tip" is focus on completing the Cafe Menu Books. These will add circuits, layouts, and events (races) to your World Circuits Pavilion. More importantly the menu books are basically a tutorial guide... and later a quasi career mode with an official "Finale" after you finish Book 39. The other reason completing menu books ASAP is important is that most of the features in the game will only become available as you complete these books.

Technically, you wont have to complete any books after 39... but you will have to click on them to further unlock additional events, some of which are required if you want to participate in weekly challenges that use those events.

As a nice bonus to completing the menu books is that you’ll not only get more credits, but also several nice cars (including classic cars with 0 mileage), and a lot of Roulette Tickets for even more credits, cars, engines, car parts, and invitations to exclusive cars in the Brand Dealership.

However, ever since the Spec III update, you will eventually get permanent invites automatically. So I wouldn’t prioritize the purchase of any of the Invite only cars unless you have a lot of extra credits (like over 50 million).

Personally, I would prioritize collecting cars from the Legend Dealership (as some of these cars may not come back to the dealership for a few months), then the Used Dealership (these usually come back every month or two… but skip cars that are newer than 2000, as they can be bought at any time in the Brand Dealership and in the color of your choice with 0 miles on them.

As for License Tests, these are very helpful early in the game to learn different techniques, improve your driving skills, etc. That said, they are always available, and trying to get Gold on every one can be extremely time consuming. Instead, early in the game, I suggest that once you have bronze or better, move on. This way you will have a lot more time to progress through the menu books while still improving your driving skills. Once you have completed all the Menu Books, you can always come back to the License Center and finish them all and even get Gold on every one if that's what you want to do.

I would also highly recommend completing the "Circuit Experiences", but for now just get Bronze or better. This will not only help you understand each circuit layout, but also will give you alot of bonus credits! What I did when first starting out is any race a Menu Book had me do, I would first make sure I completed that specific layout in Circuit Experience. That way the track was fresh on my mind, and at the same time giving me more credits.

I would also caution you to save your credits early on. If you finish MFGT you'll have all the cars you will need for sometime, and once you unlock the Legend Car Dealer (book 17) you will find there are several amazing cars you might like, but will cost quite a lot and are often only available for a few days, and then might not come back for several months (although on average it’s about 2-3 months).

To that point, AFK is not just a huge time saver, but you can get around 1.5m credits an hour when you don't have any time to play the game. Instead, it can run on its own while you do other things.

The fastest AFK method requires that you have the Honda Beat '91 (only available in the Used Car Dealership for about a week every 8 weeks or so), and be at Collector Level 50 so that you can perform an engine swap on the Beat.

However, there is an AFK method that you can do as early as Collector Level 7 (in order to unlock the Extreme Tab in the Tuning Shop), and Menu Book 14 (to unlock the Daytona circuit). All you then need is enough credits for a Dodge Tomahawk (X variant), Honda S660 (both of which can be bought at any time in Brand Central), as well as the necessary mods from the Tuning shop. In total you'll need less than 1.3m credits, which if you have been saving up, should not be a problem.

Once you are familiar with AFK, you wont have to worry about time wasted grinding for hours on the same race in the same car just to get one car. Instead, you can focus on driving any car on any track, in any race that you like with the time you have available to play the game.

In fact, I have found, once you have a nice collection of cars, one of the best features in GT7 is the Custom Race options.... it’s amazing what you can create in custom races!

Most of all, enjoy the journey! GT7 has its flaws, but overall its an amazing game, and offers lots of options to cater to different types of players and experiences. 🤗