Forza Horizon 6 is the first time I’ve ever preordered a digital “premium edition” of a game. That’s right, I spent over $100 on a promise. A promise of not only a great game, but also high quality post-launch support. What’s even more wild? I made this preorder BEFORE reviews dropped.
The reason I was able to take this risk was complete and utter confidence in developer Playground Games. I have loved every single game in the Forza Horizon series, and this edition being set in Japan was all I needed to know. After spending pretty much the entire weekend with the game, I’m happy to honestly report that my confidence in Playground was not misplaced.
I’ve played about ten hours of Horizon 6, and while I haven’t experienced anything that dramatically moves the series forward, everything here is beautifully designed and refined. You’re still doing normal Horizon things: driving around a giant map to find new roads, XP boards, races, and challenges, but this time, the map is Japan, which actually makes a huge difference. While it lacks the licensed locations and brands of the Yakuza series and despite the fact that (weirdly) no one in the game seems to speak Japanese, Forza Horizon 6 still manages to feel like Japan.
The first way it does this is via the soundtrack. Most of the usual Horizon radio stations return, but with Japanese artists sprinkled in. It’s some stuff that I’m familiar with (YMO, Band-Maid, Utada Hikaru, Babymetal) and others that are brand new to me (almost everything on Gacha City Radio, the J-pop / city pop station). The map is inspired by both the cities and rural areas of Japan. While it’s not a 1:1 recreation of any region, it does a nice job capturing small details like architecture and general layouts. You can even hunt down and smash regional mascots for bonuses.
Everything in the game, from controls to progression to soundtrack curation feels meticulously crafted. The Horizon series is definitely its own thing, but there are moments in 6 that call to mind racing classics like Burnout, Ridge Racer, Project Gotham, and even OutRun. It’s easy to get sucked into the “one more thing” gameplay loop and have four hours fly by without realizing it (true story of my Saturday).
But Forza Horizon 6 is not perfect. Once again, the characters and festival premise are forgettable at best. And while the game looks gorgeous and runs beautifully on my PC at max settings, the initial boot up load times are painfully long. Between the logos, initial button presses, “optimizing for your PC,” and then having to fast travel to your next objective (another loading screen), I began to dread launching the game. I eventually just installed it on my Xbox Series X (thanks Play Anywhere) so that I could use Quick Resume between sessions. The game loses FPS, ray tracing, and general visual fidelity on console, but in performance mode seems to be pretty consistently hitting 60fps and looks generally good enough.
Ultimately, these complaints are relatively minor in the scope of how wonderful Forza Horizon 6 is overall. This is a game I not only see myself going back to immediately after I publish this post, but for months and years to come. Good thing I bought that premium edition.
All screenshots captured by me on PC (AMD Ryzen 7 7800X3D CPU, 32GB RAM, GeForce RTX 4080 Super, 1440p resolution).
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