After spending a bit of time with CSR Classics, here are some tips on how to get a decent amount of fun out of it, while not spending much money.
As mentioned previously, the primary means of real-world monetary extraction is the "secondary currency" trope, here called "gold". But before we get to that, let's look into the primary currency, "cash".
Cash
With cash, we can buy a fairly large number of cars, we can fully restore them, and we can get some customisations as well. You get cash for winning drag races. The races themselves give some amount of reward, but the big item here are "decals".
Decals are more-or-less decorative stickers we can put on our cars, and for some reason, they trigger a bonus when winning the race, which can more than double the amount you make.
Now, there are decals you can get for cash, and then there are those you can get for gold. Obviously, the best ones cost gold.
Gold
Which brings us, really, to the one most legitimate use of the sparse "free gold" the game is giving you: get decent decals. The extra cash doesn't seem all that important at the beginning, but it is essential to get anywhere without spending gold on stuff (which the game obviously tries to make us do).
Cars are divided into five tiers, and there are five levels in the game, with their respective bosses along the storyline. Each level has a couple of story races, special races, and the most important one: "regulation" races, which are infinite, and that's where we do our farming.
Goals
Considering that the tier five cars can easily cost millions in total to upgrade, that extra cash is really essential. So here's what we want to do:
Get a tier five car with the best possible decal
That'll give you about 20k cash per regulation race. On a single tank load, that's 200k, which takes a couple of minutes to get. With that kind of income under our belt, we can unlock most of the cash-only contents in the lower tiers easily.
Strategy
The primary means of getting there as fast as possible is focus. The game tries its best to distract you, with seemingly "high prize money" special races, multiplayer races and so on.
Don't fall for any of this. The brand-specific races, while giving relatively high cash rewards, actually require a far bigger investment into upgrading a particular car to the level required to win these. It's a net loss.
Multiplayer gives almost nothing in terms of cash rewards, compared to what you can make on regulation in stage 5, while trying hard to get you to spend gold.
So, here it is: Focus on the story mode races, maybe spend some of the gold from the initial level-ups on a good decal early on, but save as much gold as you can for the stage five car.
I've gone with the Ford GT 40, but just pick whatever you're most comfortable with.
Upgrades
There are six areas you can upgrade your car:
- body : this unlocks decals, get it up to stage 4 as a priority, otherwise you're just wasting money with each race
- wheels : better wheels stop spinning earlier, which means you can nitro earlier. This is the second upgrade, after body, that affects the looks
- engine : stage 4 is essential here, as it increases top speed
- gearbox : quicker shifts
- carburettor : more engine power (acceleration)
- exhaust : the same, really
- nitro : longer boost times
Sometimes cheaper upgrades give you better results, so it's always a good idea to see if you can throw in an exhaust upgrade or similar.
That's it, really. Once you've got the cash income, you can collect, start making a bit of gold in multiplayer, finish up the remaining race types and so on.
I honestly got a bit bored with the lack of gameplay in the end, but it's a fun and pretty little game to kill some time occasionally.
