Review
Played on: Xbox Series X
Released: 2026
The massively popular open world racer is back; leaving Mexico behind and arriving in Japan. A much-wanted location by many fans through the years. It's a country baked in a tradition of car culture with massive brands like Toyota, Nissan, Honda, Subaru and Mazda. A perfect setting to be exploring all the various race types and cars Forza offers.
Japan is also a country which fascinates westerners with its distinct culture and style; an iconic setting which has been used a lot in recent years through various games. This is modern Japan though, crammed into one massive map. Each part of the country is connected in a mini version of itself. From snowy mountains, open fields, through traditional villages, bamboo forests and all the way to massive city centre of Tokyo and it' surrounding dock areas.
While FH5 depicted a beautiful Mexico, it felt perhaps like a less iconic as a map compared to the mini version of Britain in FH4. It also felt somewhat like repetition of the structure FH4 offered. So, will Japan be more interesting and bring back some Forza Horizon magic?
Let's get turn on the engine and find out!
There's clearly a lot of work done to homage Japan through the classic Forza Horizon style. From cute, anime styled, mascots you can smash, down to a whole dedicated radio station for Japanese music, complete with a Japanese radio host. In addition, there's plenty of Japanese songs on the other channels too. Even a car meet spot is taken from a famous and popular one in Japan, truly homing in on the car culture there.
Although a lot of the cars are taken over from earlier Forza Horizons and Motorsports, expected as car models are so detailed they can be reused, they've gone an extra mile to add a lot of Japanese cars. Not just brand-new ones, like the stunning cover car Toyota 2025 GR GT, but lots of regular models too.
From 90s classics like the Toyota Soarer and Chaser, to lovely a 1985 Mazda RX-7. There are small cars too, like Civics and Corollas, charming for those like me which prefer the lower powered regular cars. Although races are divided into power classes, there's plenty of opportunities to drive whatever you prefer rather than being forced to race cars you don't care for.
There's a lot of famous landmarks, buildings and recognisable locations condensed together; from famous castles, Tokyo's Shibuya crossing to a space rocket launchpad! Spread across a mini version of Japan, just like how each Forza Horizon has been doing since FH3. It's charming seeing the diversity of the country being represented in various corners of the map.
You can never drive far before spotting something that typically reminds you of Japan, this development team truly make each map unique. Even the iconic and beautiful cherry blossom trees get centre stage during spring!
The map, ah yes, what a stunning map! Once again Playground Games have outdone themselves when it comes to outperforming the previous title. There's tons of detail! From massive hills, villages, a city centre, a skiing resort and so on, with immaculate detail all the way down to the tarmac which has small cracks and patched potholes. Then there's all the foliage of trees, fields, and flowers, not forgetting the rolling mountain hills of snow or the reflective surfaces of rice fields.
The open world map is one of the most stunning maps I've seen in any game, even looking past the racing genre. The sheer draw distance is incredible too. The seasons change each week too, adding variety with typical spring, summer, autumn and winter colours and weather.
As if that wasn't the cherry on top, the team have truly outdone themselves in delivering beautiful graphics and image quality. My Xbox Series X offers two options; performance and graphics. The latter adds some kind of raytracing, but I couldn't really see the difference outside the 30 vs 60 fps framerate. The performance mode is the way to go; it looks stunning and runs rock solid at 60fps!
Not only is the image quality stunning, but there's also an insane amount of detail thrown alongside the roads. It really blurs the lines between close circuit racers and open world ones in terms of visuals. With so many stretches, roads and corners to choose from you can enjoy a stunning looking race in any place on the map.
Weather variety brings out the best in the engine too, allowing for sunsets, rain and lovely night scenes. It's not a revolutionary step up from the previous instalment, but a one that visually brings things even better together in variety and detail. Adding icing on an already stunning cake.
Daring to make Tokyo so large too, shows that the franchise is ready take on urban areas just as well as the countryside! It's welcome for an open world racer to vary between city races and country ones.
Overall, just one of the prettiest games of the year and probably one of the best looking racers to date.
I have few complaints though. There's quite a fair bit of reused ideas carrying over from each game in this franchise, with the same set of race types. Cross Country makes an unwelcome return in my opinion, as I really don't like the chaos of just driving over massive fields trying to hit the checkpoints will sliding and jumping all over the place.
Torque races are new and make a small debut, but rather than being about drifting they are just about racing the quickest down a mountain and don't really stand out compared to regular races. In general drift events should've been a competition thing outside the regular drift zones scattered on the map. Although drifting CPU competitors are hard to make, maybe even a highest points competition would've been fine like we have seen in racers like Grid Legends, review here.
Compared to Forza Motorsport's more dynamic and consistent CPU cars, I feel Forza Horizon suffers a bit from rubber banded competitors. The difficulty setting is unreliable as such, even race son normal can feel incredibly tough and unfair, and suddenly in another type of they are quite easy to beat. Luckily, an update has fixed some of this.
In general, there's a sense of recycling many ideas from earlier releases, and yes, I get that they can't reinvent the wheel at this point, but do they have to have the awkward cutscenes and limited selection of avatars still? While most of its fantastic, on the sixth release of the franchise it kind of feels like I've seen most on offer before. For those new to it all, it's perfectly fine!
Overall, it's a massive package or racing fun, like most others I'm especially excited with the Japan setting and there's a ton of races to dig into both in single and multiplayer, choosing which car you mostly prefer yourself. It really shows off Japan in a cool way, and it's been interesting speeding through typical landscapes of that country, as well as soak up some of the culture.
It's a welcome sight to see rare and old cars added with a focus on Japanese car manufacturers, leaning into the strong car culture the country has. And if it wasn't clear already; what a stunning looking game! Each corner, surface, roadside detail and topped with an insane draw distance is just in a class of its own!
I just wish they'd mixed things up even more, leaning more into the drifting and making the narrators and festival sights feel more Japanese. We need more race types instead of just multiplying the ones we already have. There's a familiar structure and presentation here on the sixth instalment, which is perhaps a little too familiar?
While it doesn't feel like a revolution in any way, Forza Horizon 6 yet again an incredible, top-quality racer as always. If you're new to the series, you're seriously in for treat, while us veterans will see a lot of familiarity but have tons of fun regardless! Breathtaking, Playground games have once again outdone themselves.
