Test Drive Unlimited Solar Crown Season 2 Ibiza review: A step in the right direction

To say that it’s been a bumpy road for Test Drive Unlimited Solar Crown is an understatement. After years of anticipation, Solar Crown launched with glaring graphical glitches and severe server issues preventing players who paid extra for early access from playing the game.

As an apology, Nacon and KT Racing are offering a free Porsche 911 off-roader and cosmetic stickers. This poorly judged compensation continues to haunt the developer, with constant ridicule from the community.

After a long 13-year break, Solar Crown should have been a triumphant return for Test Drive Unlimited, a beloved franchise that pioneered open-world racing long before Forza Horizon. Instead, its troublesome launch is ruining the franchise’s reputation.   

Three months later, Season 2, which is out now on all platforms, is an opportunity for a fresh start, bringing a free map expansion, new cars and a raft of gameplay improvements. With Season 2 arriving a few weeks earlier than planned, it feels like a desperate attempt to boost Solar Crown’s worryingly low player numbers.

Welcome back to Ibiza

Season 2’s most significant addition is a free map that takes players back to Ibiza, the iconic location of Test Drive Unlimited 2. Incidentally, it comes around a month after Solar Crown’s main competitor, The Crew Motorfest, received a free map expansion set on the island of Maui.

Accessing the new location requires reaching reputation level 12 and joining a clan. You’re then invited to fly to Ibiza and compete in a new ‘Selene’ clan race competition hosted by Tess Wintory, who returns from Test Drive Unlimited 2.

Since Hong Kong Island is on a completely different continent, the two maps aren’t connected like in The Crew Motorfest, with you fast-travelling between locations from a heliport.

It’s worth noting that the map only covers Ibiza Town rather than the entire island from TDU2. As a result, the map is smaller than you might expect, though out-of-bounds areas surrounding the city hint at possible expansions. These restricted areas respawn you if you try to enter them.    

When you first arrive on the Balearic island, you’ll visit the new Selene headquarters, which is a vast improvement over the sterile Solar Hotel.

It acts as a social hub where you can meet other players, change your clothes, and admire other players’ cars. With dancing crowds and loud music, the hub has a raving party atmosphere.

As it’s a smaller hub than the Solar Hotel, you’re more likely to meet and socialise with other players than before. With up to 16 players in the same hub, Solar Crown has never felt more active, but whether this can be sustained after Season 2’s launch period remains to be seen.

Mercifully, we didn’t experience any server issues despite the increased player count, but an offline patch is still urgently needed since the entire game requires an online connection.   

If you played TDU2 13 years ago (yes, it’s really been that long), driving around Ibiza’s sun-soaked streets feels nostalgic once you get used to driving on the right side of the road. With its ancient architecture, stunning scenery and warmer lighting, Ibiza has a different vibe than Hong Kong Island, providing a fresh experience for returning players.

Despite the map’s small scale, there’s a good variety of roads to explore, from narrow villages with cobblestone roads and steep elevations to wide open country roads, highways and off-road trails.

That said, while developer KT Racing has done an admirable job capturing Ibiza’s ambience, it feels empty with no pedestrians roaming the streets – especially in a city famous for its vibrant nightlife.

It’s not just the location that has a different vibe. Clan races in Ibiza are sanctioned events with custom tracks, crowds of spectators and no traffic.

This gives them a festival atmosphere similar to the Forza Horizon series and The Crew Motorfest. Granted, festival racing feels derivative by now, yet it feels fresh in Solar Crown. It’s a stark contrast to Hong Kong Island’s traffic-filled Clan events, which play like illegal street races.

Race routes in Ibiza are challenging and fun to navigate. Some are so narrow that they feel like tight rally courses harking back to KT Racing’s WRC games. Events also frequently rotate with new car requirements and routes, keeping things fresh.

Beyond the races, Ibiza features 23 new speed traps and 65 collectables to hunt.

This encourages you to explore for a while, but there’s not a lot to keep you occupied in the small map. It doesn’t help that most races require high-level supercars, hypercars or tuned cars with high PR levels, so even experienced players may not meet the entry requirements.

Season 2 also brings some welcome quality-of-life improvements. Steering wheel animations have been improved, with the wheel turning up to 1080 degrees – something Forza Horizon 5 still lacks.

It makes driving in cockpit view far more immersive, with the driver’s hands matching your controller and wheel inputs more closely.

Elsewhere, opponent AI has also been rebalanced. AI racers no longer cheat or get magic speed bursts, making them easier to beat on higher difficulty. Races feel fairer as a result, but there’s still no option to adjust the AI difficulty manually.     

Nine ‘new’ cars…

Season 2 introduces nine new cars to tear around Ibiza – but only a few are technically all-new models.

Headlining the lineup is the Ferrari California. It’s a clear callback to TDU2, as Ferrari’s V8 convertible was the first car you drove in the last game. However, since it costs two million credits and requires a reputation level of at least 60, it’s unobtainable for most players. Grinding and feeling like you earned your cars is a key part of TDU’s appeal, but these requirements seem too steep for an entry-level Ferrari.

The California is joined by the Lamborghini Aventador SVJ Roadster Xago Edition, limited to ten examples in real life and designed to promote the manufacturer’s Ad Personam personalisation division. This isn’t the only new Lamborghini, as the Diablo VT is unlocked for reaching level 25 in Season 2’s Solar Pass.  

There’s also a new Solar Crown competition with live events to enter. Achieving the Solar King/Queen rank will unlock the Bugatti Chiron SuperSport 300+, the customer version of the first road car to break 300 mph.

Someone at KT Racing must have a soft spot for Bugatti because this is the fourth Chiron variant in Solar Crown. Both cars have appeared as AI rivals, but this is the first time they are playable.

The remaining five cars are special ‘Selene Editions’ of existing models. These are tuned versions of the Abarth 500, Alpine A110 Berlinette, Chevrolet Corvette C1, Alfa Romeo 4C Spider and W Motors Fenyr SuperSport, sporting custom liveries and enhanced performance.

Some also boast mechanical modifications. For example, the Abarth 500 Selene Edition is now rear-wheel drive instead of front-wheel drive, making the lightweight hot hatch even more enjoyable to hoon around.

The lack of truly new cars is disappointing, and the Selene Editions feel like expensive padding. It’s perhaps a result of KT Racing having a smaller budget than big-name studios like Playground Games and Polyphony Digital.

If Season 2 is an indication, we can probably expect a couple of new cars in each season every few months, much like Need for Speed Unbound’s volume updates. It’s a shame, because Solar Crown’s car list already felt dated at launch and needs expanding sooner rather than later.

A long road ahead

With a new map to explore and some welcome quality-of-life improvements, Season 2 is a step in the right direction, but there’s still a long road ahead.

Solar Crown is steadily improving, but it still feels like an Early Access game at this stage. Several fundamental TDU features are still missing, namely missions, houses, and casinos.

KT Racing is keenly aware of this, with the French studio cancelling its original plans for Season 3, instead focusing on adding core features that “speak to fans of the series” and “make sure TDU truly becomes TDU again.”

There’s hope, then, that Solar Crown can still be saved after its disastrous launch. The trouble is, only the most dedicated fans will probably stick around to see it thrive.