Formula Legends is a cute, charming racing video game that powers you through the golden eras of single-seater motorsport.
Very definitely not Formula 1, nope, not F1 at all, ahem, so you’ll be driving as Hans Troll, Luis Hammerston or Dave Coulthsoft, all in miniature form and in age-appropriate settings.
This is a magnificent experience, right up until you hit the racetrack…
Releasing on 18th September 2025 for, deep breath, PC, PlayStation 5, PlayStation 4, Xbox One, Xbox Series X|S and Nintendo Switch, Formula Legends is developer 3DClouds’ most promising title for driving enthusiasts.
Unlike its previous games, among them All-Star Fruit Racing, Hot Wheels Monster Trucks: Stunt Mayhem and Transformers: Galactic Trials, this is aimed at a real-world racing fan, attempting to cash in on the global appeal of a sport at its peak of popularity.
Heck, there are Lando Norris Monster Energy drinks, Oscar Piastri in Android adverts and a near-endless stream of Lego F1 cars.
Whoops, did I say F1 again? Sorry, I meant “open-wheel style racing”. This is not F1, remember.
To appease those who are already into the racing game genre, you can turn off the anti-lock braking and traction control systems, and doing so sees the cars writhe around suitably. In fact, the creation team states that Formula Legends “walks the line between simulation and arcade.”
There is also dynamic weather, tyre wear, fuel usage and damage to manage, all condensed down into shorter races. Reminding us of 2006’s Formula One Championship Edition, the pitstops include a mini-game. Essentially a quick-time button press process, the quicker you complete the prompts, use the shoulder buttons to refuel, and then click in the analogue sticks to release the car, the shorter your stop.
On top of all these authentic driving tickboxes is a career structure and reward system that has clearly been created by people with a genuine interest in the actual sport.
You have seven decades, from the 1960s through to the 2020s, with blocks of events in each. You don’t have to earn each era, so you can start with races in the 1980s, or 2000s if you wish, but the early, mid and late elements of each 10-year block are unlocked through race progression.
As are cars and drivers, through multiple means. Every time you earn points for a race finish, the game is tallying up a total, and hitting milestones may open up a driver. Completing a race at a track in the career will allow it to be used in time trial. Completing story cups on certain difficulty levels or driving set distances with specific models will also add cars and drivers to the available roster.
Of the drivers available, Freddie Irpine and Malf Shoemaker are among our favourite mangled titles, alongside a Pentault powered by ‘Enstone’ engine that is very definitely not related to a real competitor.
Sound and Vision
Each car is a Micro Machines interpretation of historical vehicles, allegedly. Despite their diminutive nature, the models are exacting in detail, with engines and transmissions visible out the back of the early stuff, and then more complex systems such as the adorably named ‘Wind Reduction System’ (WRS) for the contemporary machines.
In the 2000s, the V10 wail is euphoric, a staggeringly accurate recreation.
The same attention has been paid to the tracks. The completely-unrelated-to-Spa-honest Ardennes GP has straw bales and zero trackside kerbing in the 60s, plus a colour filter, whereas fast forward a few decades and the appropriate safety upgrades have been made. Great Britain, or ‘Old Prestige GP’, has unique layouts through the years and your car information HUD changes in step with the year.
Again, this shows that there are people involved in Formula Legends’ creation that really, truly, care. Yes, the small aesthetic is adorable, but beneath the skin, it’s an F1 purist’s dream.
With over 30 cars, 60-plus drivers and 14 track locations, combined with the suitable vibe, accurate models and on-track feature list, the £19.99 / $19.99 price seems like a relative bargain.
But…
However, there’s a catch. A big one.
The fundamental vehicle handling, collision physics and AI rival performance are all subpar. These are linchpins of a great racing game, which are sadly missing here.
It’s like a pork pie without the pork – the crust alone isn’t a complete snack experience, and Formula Legends isn’t a complete game.
We’ll start with the driving dynamics, which feel akin to a first-generation PlayStation game pre-analogue sticks. You’ll find yourself tapping the left gamepad stick like a D-pad, trying to make tiny changes in tack, much like an old TOCA game.
Unlike those Codemasters titles, however, it’s as if there is input lag. Whether it’s that or just sub-optimal physics or inputs that aren’t truly analogue, either way, the net result is an apparent and frustrating lack of precision.
Contrasting the likes of Circuit or Karting Superstars – which it feels like were an inspiration for Formula Legends – the learning curve never stops. With the Original Fire games, you can adjust to its handling, learn to time an entry turn in, and know when to let off the steering.
But here, all too often, you turn in too early and receive a corner cut penalty, or continue turning after the apex once you’ve let go of the stick.
Admittedly, stick to the more modern machinery, and this is less of an issue, but the handling is plain weird, and maddeningly, it doesn’t appear to behave the same way for your AI-controlled rivals.
Which we must also address, and is perhaps the biggest miss here. We went from lapping the entire field on the normal difficulty level – there are three: easy, normal and hard – to qualifying three seconds off the back of the next race.
There is less balance to the competitor performance than an elephant sitting on one side of a playground seesaw or teeter-totter.
Their speed is never consistent, peaking at one race, leaving you nowhere to be seen, and then flatlining the next for a dominant victory. They also seem to be able to take tighter corners better than you, no matter what you try, as if you’re afflicted with a slower steering ratio.
But then on faster, more open corners, they are too tentative. And goodness me, the collision physics in some cars can be cumbersome. More often than not, you get flung off the track at a strange angle, or you get stuck to them.
There’s a track reset button mapped to Y/Triangle, and we can’t help but think this is included because the developers knew you’d end up in an unorthodox tangle.
It’s unfinished
So, colliding with rivals is awkward, their pace is unpredictable and the handling is as sharp as a plastic knife. It all leads to restarting races over and over, before a lack of motivation seeps in.
There is a litany of smaller bugs, which we hope are teething troubles that can be patched, such as the 2020s cars sometimes losing the engine sound, leaving you with a Formula E-style whine, or the track textures popping in during a weather transition.
While using dry tyres on a wet track sees you spin out, and using wet tyres on a dry track sees rapid wear rates, the latter doesn’t seem to change your pace through corners enough and the grip in the rain seems too high.
And while we’re at it, the percentage of races that feature rain seems to skew towards dampness more often than not, and you can be in a race labelled as ‘clear’, but it’s pouring down.
Which is a shame, as the progression structure of unlocking items is rewarding, and later on, you earn vehicles with perks attributed to them, such as better braking – although, perhaps a competing game, New Star GP, does a better job here by letting you select your perks.
If Formula Legends drove tighter, sharper, with not necessarily more realistic AI performance, but just less scatty, this would be a highly commendable effort, with PC mod support to help elongate your play time. We even found that it plays well on Steam Deck.
But as it stands, it’s not that. The driving is too frustrating, and with no online or split-screen multiplayer to avoid racing against either dimwitted or Verstappen-level dominant AI, our score is a six out of 10.
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