I wish I could give this a positive review, but I can't.

The game is fun, don't get me wrong.

But Forza Horizon 6 is, from top to bottom, a copy-paste cash grab.

Large portions of the game, from both UI/UX to gameplay to visuals, are identical or near to identical as Forza Horizon *3*, a game that released in 2016.

And thus it's no surprise that when driving around, especially in Tokyo, everything just feels bland and flat. Which for one of the most vibrant cities on the planet is almost an actual crime. Corrugated walls that should at minimum have lighting tricks applied, if not be properly fully modeled, are instead flat textures on flat models, without any lighting gimmicks other than simple shadows applied. Transitions between pavement and non pavement surfaces are clean, hard edges, the kind of texture transitions you'd see in the freaking *2000s*. Think about that. A game renowned for it's visual fidelity is using graphical standards from legitimately 25 years ago. I was TWELVE when this was the standard.

The cars don't even look THAT good, when comparing to other racing games. Asetto Corsa for example. iRacing. Automoblista 2. And given the pretty cars and their prettiness is one of the main selling points of the Forza series....

And somehow the game doesn't run smooth, despite needing so much in the way of graphical resources, while looking somehow worse than RDR2, a game that is 7-8 years old. Games like Subnautica 2, Black Flag Resynced, Halo Campaign Evolved, all look better, run smoother, and don't require me to turn settings down like in FH6. Granted, it's only 3 settings, and each only gets turned down one notch, but that's also helping to prove my point given which settings they are: both Ray Tracing options as well as Shaders. Turning each down one level from full has negligible impact on actual visual fidelity or overall look, but has MASSIVE impact on performance. That doesn't really make sense by itself, but given that in no other modern game with a reputation for intense visuals, do I have to adjust ANY settings, and it all runs butter smooth... FH6 is also the first and only game I've had to fiddle with anything in the Nvidia Control App to get it to run smooth, and it took a LOT of fiddling (partially because the devs would release 'fixes' that broke more than they fixed).

Then add that the devs intentionally made a broken in game economy, forcing players to resort to exploit farms to make the game feel properly rewarding, then nerfed those exploits to the point it affected the base economy and requiring an overhaul of the base payout system (that didn't really help much, just restored the old status quo), all the while putting out 'performance patches' that made the game run worse, still unwilling or unable to address the accuracy of challenge goals (eg. "Complete a Spec Race" actually requiring a win, not just a finish).

Pre rendered cutscenes are locked to 30fps. Just....why? In 2026, legitimately, BLOODY WHY is this still a thing??? Sure there may not be a lot of them and they're all pretty short but a) it's still just so jarring to go from 30 to 60, especially when some of the cutscenes are directed to be transitions between the scene and driving b) just...there's no excuse in 2026. 60fps has been the standard for so long, even consoles are capable of it now. Just....why?

Simply put, the game from top to bottom is lazy, partially broken, frustrating, prioritized/optimized for consoles from 2 generations ago, and ill-managed; and it seems clear at this point the Forza Horizon series is going to die a very slow death if they keep on this path.

At least the actual driving is fun?

A very tenuous yes vote. This is one of those times I really wish Steam would give me the ability to do a 'Maybe' or 'Mixed' vote. I would say most people should largely pass on this one or wait for the inevitable half-off sale.

It's probably the best game of the franchise that I've played for sure and it comes off to me as a DLC to Forza Horizon 5 in the long run of playing it for about 55 hours. There were also numerous glitches and crashes at launch that I wasn't a huge fan of that have largely been ironed out since its release.

Did it really offer anything new or exciting since Forza 5 and Motorsport? No, not really. There were some interesting aspects of the story that were there but it was pretty much an automated portion of the experience with no real depth or challenge.

Anything that tended to be challenging, in this game, was purely by terrible design choice. I'm still pretty sure they haven't fixed the endgame races from being absurdly hard such as The Goliath being pretty impossible to most people from normal difficulty on up due to the way the AI can corner in this game. Not a lot of thought was put into that. Just difficulty. Which is no fun to anyone.

It leaves me in a weird spot - I like what I see but there's just only so much keeping me here. Nothing really driving me to play. Even Motorsport felt better in terms of retaining with its online in comparison. I just feel that with all the quality of life improvements this game offers that in the same token we have a lot of things just take a step back or not really get improved at all.

Same as every other forza horizon with some new roads. There are just way too many cars that I don't care about, I was thinking that being in japan, they would bring their car culture with them and have all the jdm classic cars. There are so many cars that it does not even feel special to drive, I have 100s of cars in my garage that I have never even driven. I could give you a list of cars that we want in the game, but they keep adding cars we never even heard of.. Then how can we go through 6 horizon games and still use the same customization from the first forza motorsports, when every year we scream at you saying this...

If you want to aimlessly grind out races for cars that you will never use, be forced to watch the exact same style of cut screen every time you think you're going to get some story, but nah it's just some soulless girl trying not to offend anyone, feels like ai writing. I get more of Japan's story from watching a car youtube channel go to japan....

idk why I get hyped for forza when it's going to be the same thing....