Forza Horizon 6: First Impressions

I don’t buy many games at release these days and of those I do, very few am I willing to pay for ‘premium’ editions. But, in the case of Forza Horizon 6, after absolutely loving the previous Forza Horizon 5 and its post release content with nearly 200 hours clocked on Steam, I figured – why the hell not?

Forza Horizon 6 is bigger, better looking, better feeling to play and features an absolutely fantastic map of Japan to explore. In fact, a significant chunk of my current 20 or so hours with the game has just been spent driving around and seeing all there is to see in each region of the map. The map is large, yet feels densely packed with a variety of terrain and features.

You might think each region is its own ‘island’ as far as terrain goes, but you’d be wrong. Every single region is like a varied, densely packed little map in its own right. It’s one of several aspects of Forza Horizon 6 that just feels so effortlessly perfect. But it likely wasn’t effortless at all – clearly a hell of a lot of design work went into this map to make sure that no matter where you are or what you’re doing, you’re going to love every second of it.

Because it’s not just an open world map – it’s race tracks. Road racing, street racing, dirt racing, cross country – the map had to facilitate not only a fantastic open world environment to explore, but also accommodate dozens of varied and engaging race tracks. The fact it does this and does it so well is pretty damn impressive, and probably not as appreciated as it should be because – as I said – it just all feels so effortless.

Forza Horizon 6 just oozes quality. It’s so polished and smooth and so packed with content that you might not know where to even start. But that’s what I like about this new (or old, I suppose if you’ve played some of the previous Forza games before 5 – I haven’t) wristband system that slowly unlocks new events as you progress. It also restricts many early races to specific car grades or classes.

Some might find this too restrictive, but it serves the purpose of preparing you to build up a varied garage of vehicles that are each tuned at different levels and serve different needs. And I feel like that’s even more important in Forza Horizon 6 than I did in 5 because compared to Forza 5, Forza Horizon 6 feels like it leans more heavily into the ‘sim’ part of ‘simcade’.

You really feel the difference in terrain and road surfaces. You really notice the difference in grip and tyre type. You come to see how some races favour cars turned for handling and acceleration and others for speed. There have been races where I struggled to finish within the top 6, only to make a few key adjustments to my car set up and then immediately breeze through the race on my second try.

Proper tuning and car parts for the tracks never quite felt as important in Forza Horizon 5 as it does so here, particularly once you start bumping up the difficulty. I started on Average but have since progressed to Expert where, provided my car is properly tuned I can still win fairly comfortably. That said, there are still odd tracks where the difficulty spikes wildly at times which was also a problem in Forza 5, although I’m sure they’ll all be balanced more over time.

Now, this is only a first impressions post, so I don’t want to get carried away, as tempting as it might be. But as you can probably tell, I’m already loving what I’ve played so far. The game runs absolutely beautifully. I was actually shocked at not only how good it looks but how smoothly it runs. I haven’t dared touch the new customisable ‘Estate’ feature yet – I fear I may end up spending all my time building stunt tracks rather than racing so I’m saving that for later. There’s plenty more for me to see and do. I love the little ‘Explore Japan’ tours that you can go on in particular. I should have a full review up next month – if I can drag myself away long enough to write it, of course.