American Truck Simulator: graphics come up 2.6 times as often as usual in Japanese-language reviews
Graphics and art direction appear 2.6 times as often as usual in Japanese-language reviews. The sample covers 401 reviews written in Japanese between February 2016 and October 2026.
Own research by 648 News. Every figure in this article was counted by us from 401 Steam reviews written in Japanese, collected between 2016-02-03 and 2026-10-14.
Collected approval rate mirrors Steam totals
383 of the 401 collected reviews recommend the game. That is a positive rate of 95.5 percent. The confidence interval ranges from 93.0 to 97.1 percent. Steam lists 384 positive reviews out of 402 total reviews for the whole history of the game. Both figures show a positive percentage of 95.5 percent. The collected sample covers the exact same approval share as the platform total.
The numbers
Graphics and content dominate the praise
Reviewers mention graphics and art direction in 26.2 percent of classified reviews. That share is 2.6 times higher than the typical game baseline of 9.9 percent. Players writing reviews in Japanese also discuss the amount of content, length, and replayability in 44.1 percent of reviews. This is 1.7 times the usual rate. The classification model sorted 323 of the 401 reviews into topics. The mean sentiment score across the collected sample is 77.4. Reviewers note that the open world features detailed cities and natural scenery. They praise the ability to customize trucks and explore freely generated missions. The collected reviews span from February 2016 to October 2026, which coincides with the game's release date and subsequent updates. Fewer reviewers talk about the story or scenario at just 0.2 percent. They also mention performance, optimization, bugs, and crashes in 6.0 percent of reviews, which is less than the usual 14.5 percent.
ゲームはただトラックをひたすら 走らせるだけですが、 とにかくリアルなので
The game is just about driving trucks endlessly, but it is very realistic.
Difficulty and bugs divide the two sides
The reviews that do not recommend the game raise difficulty, balance, and performance issues far more often than the recommending side. Players writing reviews in Japanese who do not recommend the game mention difficulty and balance in 27.8 percent of their reviews. That is 1.8 times the usual negative baseline of 15.3 percent. The gap between recommenders and non-recommenders for this topic is 23.6 percentage points. Non-recommenders also cite performance, optimization, bugs, and crashes in 22.2 percent of their reviews. This topic splits opinions by 17.0 percentage points. Players writing reviews in Japanese also criticize the user interface and controls in 16.7 percent of non-recommending reviews. Japanese localization and translation quality appears in 11.1 percent of negative reviews, while PC port quality and Steam Deck support appear in 5.6 percent.
アメリカやボンネット型トラックにこだわりがないならETS2の方が良いと思う。
If you do not care about America or cab-over trucks, Euro Truck Simulator 2 is better.
Long sessions match short sessions in approval
The quarter of reviewers with the least play time wrote their reviews after playing up to 11.6 hours. 93 percent of that group recommends the game. The quarter with the most play time started their reviews after playing at least 130.6 hours. 94 percent of that group recommends the game. The difference between the two groups is 1.0 percentage point with a p-value of p = 0.774. Both groups talk most about gameplay, combat, and core mechanics. The high playtime group mentions the amount of content and length in 50.0 percent of their reviews, compared to 33.0 percent for the low playtime group. Both groups list graphics and art direction as their third most discussed topic. The median playtime across all collected reviews is 42.6 hours.
Methodology and sources
Data
Steam user reviews, retrieved with Steam's public review listing between 2016-02-03 and 2026-10-14: 401 written in Japanese. Steam's own all-time totals for American Truck Simulator were read on 2026-11-13.
How the reviews were classified
Every review was read by a language model, which rated how positive it is, how much concrete detail it gives, and which of 15 fixed topics it talks about. The counts and percentages in this article were then computed from those labels in ordinary code, not by the model. Automatic classification makes mistakes, so single percentages should be read as approximate. Reviews of fewer than 15 characters were not sent to the model; they count as positive or negative from the reviewer's own recommendation and carry no topic.
Limits
People who write a Steam review in Japanese are not a representative sample of everyone who plays in Japan, and the language of a review does not establish where its author lives. Steam's default filter for off-topic review activity was left on, so periods Steam marked as review bombing are excluded from the counts in this article. Reviews that arrived after the retrieval date are not included.
Links
Data from Steam. Steam and the Steam logo are trademarks and/or registered trademarks of Valve Corporation.