The map. The biggest Forza Horizon map to date, but also and most importantly one of the most fun to drive on. Aside the usual nitpicks I have about the road (see below), it is varied not just in terms of backdrop, like 5 was, but also and genuinely in terms of driving environments. Highway networks, urban centers, touge, all with real elevation changes.

The highway. No, it's not a 1:1 recreation of the Shuto Expressway, but it doesn't have to be one in this game. It feels believably Japanese - it isn't a long straight into nothing that divides the map north and south, but it actually properly circles the map and is elevated; you'll have to navigate it and find your entry and exit points.

The soundtrack. Any OST that combines Marshall Jefferson, BABYMETAL, Linkin Park, and Yellow Magic Orchestra in the same game deserves praise. If you belong to the vocal minority of whiners who are complaining that there isn't any Eurobeat, I implore you to listen to literally anything else. There's Gacha Radio and its un-subtitled Japanese-language DJ right there. That, alone, does more for immersion than FH5 ever did, with its barely curated soundtrack and complete lack of Spanish-language DJ.

The progression system is good. It isn't a full whole-hog return to FH1 but five games away from the series origins, it's a good thing they adopted the system that they did. You do need to progress through the wristbands to unlock more races, and many of these races are (thank GOD, FINALLY!) both car type and PI class restricted. Gone are the days of getting away with completing everything with the samey S1 tune. You'll even have to drive kei cars around a small drift circuit. Cherry on top of the cake: Circuits are no longer all 3-lap races.

The garage customization and Estate system. Genuinely the most unexpected thing to come out of FH6. I didn't know how much I wanted customizable garages with the EventLab prop placement system until I saw HokiHoshi demonstrate it. As soon as I got my hands on the game, I ended up sinking a good 3 hours just into garage customizing. If it's not to your taste, you can make use of the very best part of this feature: just download someone else's garage creation and enjoy it that way. Bravo, genius idea.

The proximity radar. THANK YOU. I've been ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ and whining about it since FH4. Now racing online while in cockpit view will finally be more tolerable.

The general car feel and handling (on tarmac). It's not a huge improvement over FH5 (which itself made strides over 4, where the competitive flavor demanded AWD), but cars feel a little weightier and more satisfying to drive, especially in lower classes. It does not seem like you have magic front grip, as you did in 5, and applying standard racing techniques (braking, cornering, accelerating on exit) seems to be better rewarded than the usual fare of late-braking and powering through. I believe this is most evident in time attack on the circuits, where racecraft matters the most.

Car audio. The audio system has seen some improvements, and many cars that have been here for a long time now sound better, clearer, more true to life. My beloved Impreza 22B sounds better than it ever did, and the same is true of many other cars.


AI opponents are a mixed bag, yet again. The difficulty is hard to describe in general. Their behavior has changed from FH5, as far as I can tell, but it's still not all there. I have noted that they make an effort to no longer just race in a single file (at least in official events, I haven't tried custom races yet), and it is a lot more likely to watch them bunch up and go 2-wide, 3-wide, or more. However, they remain pretty brain-dead; they still brake-check you, they are still easy to brake-check back. At least AI cars no longer feel impossible to push out of the way, not that you need to do it as often as before, as they'll often just move aside and let you pass. It's funny, this reminds me a lot of track behavior in FM 2023.

The general car feel and handling (off-road). As long as you're on dirt or gravel or sand, it's fine (they have learned their lessons from FH5 Rally Adventure), but full Cross-Country racing remains the worst part of Forza Horizon, and FH6 continues the sorry tradition. I just do not care for "track" design around jumps and hops and props, it's something to suffer through more than enjoy.

Car models. I'll preface this by saying that I expected it to be a thing, because this is Forza, why waste perfectly usable models. But the presence of Acura-branded cars that should have been Hondas, and the large number of left-hand-drive Japanese cars (some with speedos in MPH - looking at you RX-7 GSL-SE!) are genuinely immersion-breaking in what should have been the homeland for these vehicles. That is a bigger problem to me than the large number of American/European cars on the roster, which are completely fine to have and just as popular to Japanese car nuts as they are in their home countries.


The usual Forza-isms that have been here forever.
Missing a checkpoint is still as harshly punished as it ever was when there is no reason to ever do things this way.
There are still too many people speaking with British accents (really makes you feel like they haven't moved from FH3/FH4 and the Horizon Festival is really just a UK outfit...)
ANNA is still an annoying machine, many roads are still too wide (although not everywhere - was pleasantly surprised to find out that many places, especially around Tokyo, require some finesse to drive through, but it's still inconsistent)...
It's still impossible to complete CC races with damage on.
There's still no point turning on damage and tire wear because there still isn't anything like pitting or repairing your car.
There's still no "simulation-y" way to drive each vehicle, I still have to manually set the gearbox/ABS/TC/etc. to what it should be if I want an authentic(-ish) experience.
Difficulty w/ AI opponents is still ganked, AI still cheats/gets unfair advantages to make up for the fact they naturally suck.

Personally, I can bear with these faults, but if you're thirsty for something truly new, look elsewhere, this isn't it.


...It's Forza Horizon 6. It's what I hoped for and more, and as always, it is best enjoyed with friends. They encourage you more than ever to drive with other people - the LINK system, the absolute ease of jumping into a drag race or a time attack with friends, and so on, are all thought around banding together spontaneously.

But also, it's still Forza Horizon. It is, will always be, and will never amount to anything more than iterative improvements. If you are not prepared for that truth, you are not looking at FH6 or at Forza in general correctly, and you should be playing other racing games instead. For better or for worse, in spite of the fact I think this is the best Forza Horizon yet, it's an iteration, not a revolution. "Built from the ground up" will never happen.

But at the very least, I can feel the love that was poured in this game, I can tell this is the one the dev team wanted to make for a long time, and it was worth the wait and the extremely long string of DLCs on FH5. This is a game I'm happy to recommend and buy copies of to my friends.

Nobody EVER reads my reviews, So I'll Eat 1 table spoon of Сum for every Like this Gets!

Man arrives home tired from work.

Man enters the game.
Man turns on a great playlist.
Man chooses a vroom vroom and drives it around Japan = Happy man.
Man wins race = Happy man.
Man loses race = Man frustrated and angry, but goes vroom vroom and becomes happy.
Man + Vroom Vroom = Happy man.