Forza Horizon 6 — Review

Score: 9.1/10

Every few years, Playground Games sets itself an impossible task: take everything that worked about the last Horizon game and somehow make it feel fresh again. With Forza Horizon 6, they've pulled it off by doing something the series has never attempted before — trading sun-soaked open plains for the density, verticality, and sheer sensory overload of Japan.

A Setting That Changes Everything

Where Mexico gave the last entry sweeping desert vistas and volcanic backroads, Japan gives this one something entirely different: scale through density rather than emptiness. Tokyo City alone dwarfs anything the series has built before, and Playground Games wisely didn't try to recreate it stroke-for-stroke — instead condensing the feel of the country into something that's unmistakably Japan without ever feeling like a sterile map exercise. Neon-drenched city blocks bleed into misty mountain passes, which bleed into quiet coastal roads and rice-paddy countryside, and the transitions between them are some of the most striking the series has ever produced.

Driving through it at golden hour, watching Mt. Fuji sit on the horizon while the city lights start to flicker on below you, is the kind of moment that reminds you why this series exists in the first place.

A Franchise That Rarely Misses

What's remarkable, viewed from this many entries deep, is just how consistent this series has managed to stay while constantly reinventing its setting. Since the original game planted the series' flag in Colorado, Horizon has bounced across Europe, down into the Australian outback, back up through the British countryside with its seasonal weather systems, and out to Mexico's varied biomes — and at almost every stop, Playground Games has managed to avoid the sequel fatigue that plagues so many long-running franchises. Each location has functioned less like a reskin and more like a genuine reason for the game to exist, from the seasonal changes reshaping event layouts entirely in one generation to the sheer biome variety of the one before this.

That consistency isn't an accident. Across a decade-plus of entries, the studio has quietly refined the same core pillars — approachable but satisfying arcade handling, generous but meaningful car customization, a drip-feed progression loop that never quite lets you put the controller down — without ever letting the series calcify into formula. Where plenty of open-world racers have tried to copy the Horizon blueprint and stalled out after one or two entries, Playground has kept finding new physical spaces and new mechanical hooks (seasons, biome diversity, now Touge Battles) that justify going back to the well again. Six mainline entries in, the series still feels like it has ideas left, which is no small feat.

Touge Battles Are a Genuine Evolution

The headline new addition — Touge-style mountain pass battles — isn't just a reskinned event type. Narrow, technical, elevation-heavy roads force a completely different driving discipline than the wide-open sprint races the series has leaned on for years. Precision matters more than raw horsepower here, and losing a drift line by inches feels genuinely tense in a way few Horizon events have managed before. It's a smart, culturally grounded addition that doesn't feel bolted on — it feels like the natural conclusion of setting a Horizon game in Japan in the first place, and it's the clearest example yet of the series finding new mechanical ideas that grow directly out of its chosen setting rather than existing independently of it.

A Roster Built for Car Culture Obsessives

With well over 550 vehicles at launch, the game leans hard into JDM culture in a way that feels authentic rather than token — kei cars, vans, and cult Japanese classics sit alongside the usual halo supercars, and the presence of the smaller, quirkier stuff gives the garage a personality earlier entries sometimes lacked. Whether you're chasing lap times in a modern GT prototype or pottering around backroads in a tiny kei truck, the range on offer means almost any driving fantasy is catered for. It's also a roster that rewards the series' long-running car culture obsessives specifically — the kind of players who've been asking for a proper, detailed take on Japan's kei car scene for entries now finally get one done with real care.

Familiar Systems, Refined Further

The core Horizon loop remains as immediately satisfying as ever — a constant drip-feed of new cars, festival expansions, and side activities that makes "just one more race" dangerously easy to say at 1am. The Drivatar AI feels noticeably better tuned this time around, offering a more believable sense of competition without resorting to unfair rubber-banding. Co-op and shared-world elements continue to be a genuine strength of the series, letting the world feel populated and alive without ever tipping into chaos.

The photo mode, festival progression, and collection systems all carry forward almost unchanged from prior entries, and that's a compliment rather than a criticism — these are systems the series solved years ago, and Playground clearly understands there's no reason to fix what continues to work.

A Few Growing Pains

It's not a completely clean launch. Some players have run into performance hitches and audio inconsistencies in the opening weeks, the kind of thing patches typically smooth out but that's worth knowing going in. The campaign structure, while polished, still leans on a familiar tourist-to-legend framework the series has used before — it's executed well, but longtime fans hoping for a completely reinvented narrative hook may find it comfortably familiar rather than groundbreaking. It's also worth noting the PS5 version isn't available at launch, a frustrating wait for a segment of the potential audience.

The Verdict

None of that meaningfully dents what Playground Games has built. Forza Horizon 6 takes a genuine risk with its setting and comes out the other side with the series' most visually distinct, mechanically interesting entry yet. Touge Battles alone justify the trip to Japan, and the sheer density of things to see, drive, and collect makes this one of the most confident entries the series has ever produced — and further proof that this is one of the rare long-running franchises that keeps finding good reasons to keep going.