Do you use a wheel?
IMO. TDU2 feels horrible with a wheel. Lifeless, boring, empty. The FFB is spotty at best, non-existent at worst.
I want to love the game, because it's such a great idea and environment. However, it all seems wasted due to a lack of focus on driving. When I think about how much time was spent on crap like plastic surgery, furniture, clothing etc., it makes it hard to believe the same people who made the first one were involved with the second one.
I do use a wheel and my biggest gripe with TDU 2 is the FFB. Unless you're on a windy road, you don't really feel the FFB. It's annoying. I find increasing the damping to the max that you can stand helps but I agree it's spotty.
For me it's still not enough to ruin the game though. Not only do I like the idea of the game, I just love racing point to point routes that I don't know. It's really exciting because you have to pay attention. Sometimes it can be super frustrating, especially some driving challenges where they want you to drive the route better than perfectly and if you make too many mistakes it'll disqualify you.
I also love the graphics. Some of the building look bad and the trees don't look great but everything else looks awesome and especially when you get into the more scenic places it's just really immersive and cool to play.
Also, I love the car selection. It's missing some really obvious stuff but it also has a bunch of cars I can't get in any other games so that's another reason I really like it.
What made me want to get the first one was my second favorite car, the Chrysler ME 412, and what made me want to get TDU 2 was my 5 veyrons, ariel atoms, koenigsegg, caterham superlight, Aston Martin One 77, etc.
I think TDU 2 gets a bad rap because the first one was better but really, aside of maybe driver san fran (which I haven't played more than the demo), I really don't think there's anything even remotely better in that genre. All the NFS games suck horribly, burnout sucks, and so does midnight club.
TDU 2 isn't perfect but it definitely beats the other options in the arcade genre, and as a sim racer fiend, I like to divert my attention here and there. TDU fills that need perfectly