There has always been this disconnect for me when it came to the Forza Horizon series. After you complete the prologue, which is just a series of races to set the stage, there is always this moment. Your character arrives to meet with the somewhat local character designated for this game. They then give you a vague spiel about how beautiful the country this game is set in is, how much culture they have, and how amazing the people are. These are vague, nondescript platitudes, but they have to be; otherwise, you might start to ask questions when moments later you’re getting asked to do donuts on an agricultural site for a sick cover shot to promote the Horizon festival.
This doesn’t temper what a well-made racing sim is, but Forza Horizon 6 obeys this rule to the T when you get your introduction to Japan. This time around, you play somebody who is trying to qualify for the Forza Horizon Festival, structuring the main campaign around completing a checklist of things to qualify for the next set-piece race to get the following wristband. Each of these opens up Japan further and further for your driving pleasure.
On the one hand, I actually like this approach. There is always something fun about starting at the bottom and rising through the ranks, though ultimately, the presentation bears very little difference from previous entries. It’s all a means to an end anyway. In practice, this approach is a step back in my view. Forward completion is made by finishing tasks on a checklist. There are races in this list, of course, the primary loop of completion. There are other, more mundane tasks to complete, like the speed taps or trying to snap a photo of every car in the game for minimal reward. Let’s just say I ran out of races before my wristbands were complete, forcing a lot of minimal progress tasks in the late stages of the game.
What worsens this is that they split certain tasks and races between two checklists, with the second serving as side content as barn finds are unlocked. This means while you might still have plenty of races left by the end, it only adds to a secondary completion system, which kills your momentum. Of course, completing barn finds can net you cars that offer some minimal reward towards that first checklist, so they manage to feed into each other in some small capacity.
In truth, why this is so annoying is that Forza Horizon 6 continues the franchise’s requirement that you attempt to navigate a main map eventually covered with tasks. You have no real idea what matters and what doesn’t to what you are aiming to accomplish. The completion checklists even track the races and speed traps but don’t allow quick selection from there. Thankfully, fast traveling has never been easier, allowing players to select any task from the main menu and appear right there, cutting down travel time by a lot. This is something I wish I had figured out earlier, instead of driving across the map for the next race.
One of the things that I have always loved about the series, and a feature that remains with Forza Horizon 6, is just how easy it is to get cars. Park at a gas station to go to the bathroom, and you are just as likely to unlock a wheel spin as literally anything else you do in the game. Gaining levels is easy; many tasks reward you with one with no effort involved. Of course, these are random, so there is no guarantee of anything, but I was unlocking cars this way very early on. The game might even break the mold and unlock a high-tier hypercar an hour into your journey, giving you options. There are over 500 cars in Forza Horizon 6, and that kind of roster would be worthless if you never got to touch it without a painfully unpleasant grind.
You will unlock these cars for completing race strands as well, plus the seasonal events will have reward cars, so you are always working towards what you really want to earn in a racing title: cars, cars, and cars, baby. All the races around the map constantly emphasize swapping around what you’re driving, as you never feel stagnant, either. If you don’t have the car you need, the game typically makes it easy to acquire one on the spot, so you don’t feel the obligation to outright grind for currency. That said, there are criticisms that can be leveled at how slowly you acquire, if not a top player. On top of all this, though, is a new function where you can buy secondhand cars that literally pop up all the time as you drive around and could offer a steal too good to pass up.
Forza Horizon 6 does keep the franchise’s excellence when it comes to driving. The reason you want to hop into the next race is that they are just so satisfying to run over and over again. I started playing at midnight when it was released, and honestly, I was saying, Just one more race, until it was 4 in the morning. Turning is tight, speed is satisfying, and drifting is dreamlike when you have the right car. I would have lodged this against previous entries, but hypercars, anything S1 and above, remain inconsistent if they will drive more or lock up at the lightest tap of the thumb stick.
There were a few cars that, once they were in full swerve mode, I had to race miles in which I just kept veering right, then veering left, with even a complete stop not enough to center the car to drive straight. Again, this is mostly hypercars, which isn’t accurate by the craziest standards these cars might set. Forza Horizon 6 remains accessible, though, through their Drivatar system by having a multitude of difficulties when the only real punishment is less currency; the easier you make it (hence my statement above about being top tier). I only spent a little amount of time in the sim setting, but they are very solid, though I prefer playing Horizon like an arcade racer, with low stakes. Features like rewind and braking assist are staples to help players begin their journey but can be easily cut out for more reward when ready.
I never really understood the Drivatar system, if I am being honest. One friend of mine continued to be my rival as his car always outpaced me, but I know he spent maybe 30 minutes playing the game, nowhere near enough time to set a baseline. Given that you can quickly and effectively change the difficulty of all these drivers, they really are just AI with names you recognize. I know you can see them driving around the world as well, but it’s the same thing. Challenging a random Drivatar to a race, though, is a fun way to break up the mundane when you are driving, looking for something to do.
There are numerous tasks you can get sidetracked with if it suits you, with barn finds and treasure hunting being the two that took up most of my time. The thing is, though, Forza Horizon 6 does not properly, or maybe I should say easily, outline how its map is structured for easy navigation. Going to the main map is just a big map, but there are several regions of Honshu you can explore. The thing is, especially when following clues to new cars, very often the one piece of information you get is the region you will find it in. Or if you are told it is under the train overpass in a certain region, first you must discern where that region is.
Among the elements that thrilled me the absolute least, that would be the story missions. These return from previous entries, where you get ‘some’ narrative to further your integration with the festival at large. These involve taking tours, helping get promotional photos, or other tasks. The issue is that while other games just jumped into the fun bit, these did not. Almost everyone starts with a long follow-the-leader drive, which in one case was 8 miles, before you even take part in the task that you can earn 1-3 stars in. If you fail, you can restart from this point, but if you get 2 stars, leave, and then return later, you have to do the boring intro again.
As a Forza Horizon 6 player, my experience is typically solitary since most of my friends hate racing games, but thankfully, I was able to get one or two good sessions in with a friend. Multiplayer can be annoying, especially if you don’t feel confident without some handicaps, like my friend; you lose them all, so he wasn’t having the most fun in straight races. Wandering the world and doing some Horizon Play setlists does manage to get our fun back on track, though. This is also, for better or for worse, at least for me, going to be a must to maintain the fun of earning everything to keep growing my car list, especially in the endgame. Maybe the more fun thing was constantly performing a P.I.T. maneuver on them when they least expected it. Well, fun for me.
The map is massive, with some interesting vertical slices of Japanese culture, like lakeside towns or temples. The sacred cherry blossom is the only tree that cannot be destroyed with love, less for cultural reasons and more because they were typically together, making wanton destruction through a forest less threatened by some random tree stopping a massive combo. This was one of the more frustrating elements of the previous game, so I was happy that it was course-corrected here, though if that is just a happy accident, I could not say.
Forza Horizon 6 constantly touted having the biggest city in the series in the form of Tokyo City, which, unfortunately, became my least favorite part of the world. Aesthetically, it appears to pull mostly from Shibuya and Shinjuku, so there are countless high-rises in its cityscape. On the one hand, I got a full nostalgia punch from the feeling, harkening me back to the likes of Ridge Racer or Project Gotham Racing, as you navigate a lit city past nightfall. On the other hand, there are so many aesthetically pleasing districts of Tokyo that would have been more enjoyable to speed through. There are 23 special wards, 26 cities, and several towns and villages that make up Tokyo Prefecture, and I can’t help but feel there were missed opportunities in there.
Whether you are racing in the city or the countryside, you can count on the Forza Festival playlists to set the stage. Every race feels like it picks out the perfect track, giving me another nostalgic punch from Burnout 3: Takedown. It isn’t all just like the likes of J-pop either, so it never feels one-dimensional. I was never a fan of Baby Metal, but both Creepy Nuts and Kana-Boom appear, and I have seen both in concert, so there was a lot for me to rock out to. It’s even better when YOU ARE TRYING TO FIND THE REGION A CAR CLUE POINTS TO!! Because then even when you’re lost, you have good tunes and good vibes that last throughout.
Verdict
Have I been waiting for Forza Horizon 6 to bring us to a country I watched far too many NHK documentaries about? Yes, yes, I was. Was it everything I hoped it would be? For the most part, also yes. Forza Horizon still has some of the highest quality open-world racing around, blended into a chock world full of things to do and a pretty robust end game once you are the cream of the crop. Forza also understands that players want a lot of cars to choose from, but it just shovels them over to you. You get a car, and you get a car, it says, until you have so many you have no idea what to do with them.
What the game really needed was a far less cumbersome map that easily outlines everything and doesn’t become literally flooded with things to do. Tokyo could have also benefited from a lot more personality than it was given, which was unfortunate, given how excited I was to explore it. At least you get to race a legally distinct Gundam-like robot and drive a lore-accurate 1985 Toyota Sprinter Trueno GT Apex (AE86), and in the end, isn’t that all we really want? I mean, what I really want is somebody in this series to throw out a number as to how much a competition where cars race stunting jet planes might actually cost, but I digress. I’ll settle for what we got; that’s pretty great, too.
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Reviewed on Xbox Series, also available on PC. Coming to PlayStation 5 2026
Developer: Playground Games
Publisher: Microsoft
Release Date: May 19, 2026
Pros:
+Same great racing mechanics Playground is known for
+Enjoyable world to drive around in
+Easy to aquire care collections
+Multiplayer helps enrich endgame
Cons:
-Weaker campaign and story missions
-Tokyo Bland compared to real life counterpart
-Some aspects could be better steamlined
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Forza Horizon 6
