Exo Rally Championship isn’t an easygoing kind of racing game, as our review found it to be a cut-throat and demanding title, the type that requires you to map out your next license attempt before attempting each challenge.
Racing games like Forza and Need for Speed are how a lot of people decompress after a tiring day. Drive around aimlessly, favorite song playing, scenery rolling by. Exo Rally Championship takes things in a very different direction. At its core, Exo has more in common with Rocket League or Dakar Desert Rally than with the typical racing formula.
The Exo Rally Championship is much bigger than just being a racing sim. With high-octane Rovers that require complex tuning and care to function, this off-road racing game forces players in not-so-serene terrains that racing games are otherwise known for.
The Good:
- Progression feels rewarding, with an engaging challenge level
- Advanced tuning opportunities allow for deep customization
The Bad:
- Visually dull
- Can be difficult to get into as a new player
Review details
- Reviewed on: PC
- Platforms available: PC
- Official release date: June 8, 2026
Exo Rally Championship is punishing, in a good way
Exo Rally Championship gets under your skin. It’s harder than the average racer, but you’ll keep coming back to it anyway, turning corners over in your head at work, replaying your last wipeout on the commute. What pulls you in is the game’s progression system, as it makes you actually learn Rover tech, most of which you’ve probably never seen in a racing game before.
The game has a simple license system, at least on paper. You start with a Class D license and the humble UTV, and the only way up is to earn license points by actually driving well. Players must finish stages cleanly, hit checkpoints, and survive environments that range from inconvenient to actively hostile.
If you continue to mess up, the game takes your points back. Hit the threshold, and you unlock the next tier, which opens new planets, harder stages, and more advanced rovers like Exo4, Exo6, and Mining.
New Earth is where it all begins, and if Exo Rally Championship isn’t your first rally game, you may enjoy it right from the startt. But first-timers may find even the game’s easiest stage to be annoyingly difficult. This is because UTV requires extensive tuning to actually function like a car. At first, the tuning may seem cumbersome, but it slowly grows on you.
Exo Rally Championship offers excellent per-rover customization, which is genuinely necessary since no single tuning setup works across every terrain in the game. As you move from Dhool Rally to Tensei, the environments get progressively brutal, throwing earthquakes, meteor showers, and worse at you.
The UTV looks like it shouldn’t survive any of it, but you’ll be surprised by just how robust that little buggy actually is.
The best part about the game has to be its tuning options. Even if you’re a complete layman who’s never popped a hood in real life, the tuning menu will quickly make you feel like a seasoned motorsport engineer, because the options on offer are remarkably accurate and refreshingly complex. Learning the ropes of all this is going to be more than worth your time in the long run, because Exo Rally Championship’s progression loop is genuinely addictive once it sinks its hooks in.
The game’s real forte is its RCS system. Instead of using the same controls to flip or right your rover mid-air, Exo Rally Championship hands you dedicated thrusters for the job, and here’s the catch: RCS is a limited resource. That means if you find yourself stuck on the final stage of Tensei with 0% RCS left in the tank, good luck clawing your way to the next license.
Exo Rally Championship does offer solutions for being this cut-throat, but only if you’re really paying attention.
Before each series kicks off, players get the chance to thoroughly study the terrain ahead and drop their own custom markers along the cleanest and safest routes through it. Some of those routes will absolutely cost you time on the clock, sure, but in Exo Rally, survival almost always takes precedence over raw speed.
What likely would’ve pushed the game to a better position is some improved scenery and rovers with slightly more forgiving handling out of the box.
The visuals here are generally lacking. The best that can be said about the game’s dull environments is that they aren’t likely to distract players from their driving tasks.
The tuning menu is intimidating when you first open it up. Making the starter UTV easier to control before players have to touch a slider would have gone a long way toward keeping new players from bouncing off in the first few hours.
If we had to give one piece of advice to those new players, it would be to avoid crashing the rover when you’re just starting out. RCS is a goldmine, and it will take you a long way if you treat it as one.
Players are also advised to spend plenty of time in free roam, tinkering with tuning until they land on a setup that feels right. This is one of the few racing games on the market where being the fastest can actually hurt you more than help. Clean driving and smart tuning are what earn licenses here, not lap times.
The Bottom Line: Exo Rally Championship can be a rewarding experience for players who love a driving challenge and don’t flinch at a steep learning curve, though more casual players looking for a quick race or a relaxing cruise may find it overly punishing.
Score: 7.0/10
