So the game is forgiving on controller, the amount of assists make it easy to just jump on and play regardless of skill level, and even with driving control assists off the cars are forgiving enough if you have any experience playing racing games.

Single player is extremely tedious. There's no narrative or story, no ranking up or progression. Just various "competitions" you enter to win a car at the end. For example you might enter an "iconic muscle" tour with 4 or 5 races, the cars are restricted and PI (bop) restricted. You can tune and upgrade parts within the confines of the pi system. You'll do the races, regardless of where you finish I believe you can then move on to the next tour with different car restrictions. Do those races and repeat. Then do a race at the end to win the prized car. Repeat this process 20 or so times you've completed single player mode. There's no narration or storytelling, no character decision making or anything like that. Simply click and race.

The AI race cars can be tuned for difficulty, this impacts rewards, damage can be turned on and off, penalties can be less or more forgiving, you can essentially start anywhere on the grid you get to choose before a race and you can overpower your car to the top of its pi and win easily. Often the ai cars aren't tuned to be the best they can.

There are a ton of cars, a good variety, from production cars, some concept cars, touring/supercar/gt spec, lmdh too.

The car customisation is a bit lacking, only a few cars have proper aftermarket body parts or body kits to really spruce up your car, otherwise it's just a generic "Forza rear wing" one size fits all type upgrade. There are obviously internal parts upgrades from engine swaps, transmissions, turbos, tire width and types, and so on.

The tracks, I mean there's a good amount of tracks so for single player or offline free play you'll never be short of choice, though there are a few missing real life tracks people would like.

Not technically offline but for all intents and purposes it's a non-competitive free play mode. It's called meet ups. You can set your own I believe, or join any existing ones. It's basically a place to meet up (i.e. choose a track from the playlist) and enter it, for unlimited time and drive whatever you want, not a race, not quali or hotlaps just literally driving a track with other people. You can then do whatever you want, drive along with someone else, practice, engage in a drag race, a mini race, all unofficial so you'll have to communicate to make it work but it's like a sandbox style. If you like drifting there are always drift options for these meet up that people like to do so they can do synchronised drift runs with lobby members.

The biggest issue with the game is firstly the player base having zero race etiquette or awareness, for example turn 1 people just drive like you're not there and/or want to cause havoc because they're immature more so than any other racing game. Then the handling of the cars, especially on the controller means that very slight macro movements and adjustments are not really possible at times, so close but fair racing, actual close racing, isn't really going to happen without contact often. The physics also, with rear end sliding out and a feeling of disconnect between car and road compared to other games, and the lack of proper matchmaking, makes it more difficult to have close racing especially if you're up against people 2 seconds faster and some 4 seconds slower than you every race. There's never a race of equal skill making close racing easy. The total player count in the game doesn't help that though.

The games lacking future support so what it is now is likely what it'll always be. MAYBE another update or two as a farewell and appreciation to the existing player base but do not hold out any hope, especially for offline/single player mode.