Forza Horizon 6 Review
Developed by Playground Games and Published by Xbox Game Studios, Forza Horizon 6 is back and this year, Horizon Festival is taking place on Japan. After our journey in Mexico, we will visit Japan and race on the streets where Sakura petals fly all over it. As a hardcore Forza Horizon 5 player, I will share all of my thoughts about Forza Horizon 6 and compare them. Before starting to our Review, I want to thank developers for delivering us the game and letting us review their game. If you are ready, let’s get into Forza Horizon 6 and deep dive into Horizon Festival.
Horizon Festival But This Time, It’s in Japan
Horizon Festival is taking place in different country every year. After our great journey in Mexico, it was time to move onto another country and start the festival once again. Japan was the chosen country and we moved onto Japan to attend Horizon Festival there. At the start of the game, we drive our car into festival and we see warm welcome at the festival along with our other companions. I must say that was a beautiful moment, driving on the streets where Sakura petals fly all over it and then scene changes into snowy scene and watch air show at the same time. The opening of Forza Horizon 6 got me a lot. I impressed more than I did in Forza Horizon 5. That’s probably because I love Japan themed games. I was really so excited about Forza Horizon 6 and it didn’t failed me once, I loved every part of it.
After we attend to Horizon Festival, now it’s time to race with our opponents and win our races. This is where you start experiencing this beautiful world. Once you got into open world, you can complete events and activities in Horizon Festival. By completing events, you will level up your Wristband access, which will let you unlock more activities. At the start of the game, the Wristband Access starts from Rookie (Yellow) and it goes higher with your progress in the festival. The top level is Legend (Gold). Once you upgrade Wristband to next level, next Horizon Invitational event will be available. After finishing that race, more races and events will be unlocked. This Wristband feature is a good addition to the game, it’s simple and let’s player to explore the world along with accumulate points.
Just like in Forza Horizon 5, we have bunch of enjoyable events we can do. Speed Traps, Danger Signs, Speed Zones, Drift Zones, Trailblazers are also available. By completing them, you can earn 100 Horizon Festival points for your Wristband. All these events have 3 Stars you can earn. All Events have different time, speed and height requirements for their stars. If you want to earn full reward, then you have to get 3 star, otherwise you might lose some rewards. If you are not familiar with these events, I want to get into detail.
Speed Trap: You have to reach the required top speed at this location. This is one second event so you have to get to top speed before hitting that point.
Danger Sign: Danger Signs are generally including ramps that you can jump from. The highest jump means more point for you. The best tactic for Danger Signs are getting suitable vehicle and jumping from ramp with top speed.
Speed Zone: The difference between Speed Trap and Speed Zone is that you have to keep your speed in this area. When you reach the Speed Zone, you will get a notification to keep your speed until you reach the ending point. The highest speed counts for your Speed Zone record and you get the reward according to that speed.
Drift Zone: This is a location where you have to drift from start to end. I totally recommend getting a drift upgraded vehicle for this event. Otherwise you might have hard time properly drifting in this location. Also I want to remind that by any chance if you hit something while drifting in this location, you will lose your progress.
Trailblazer: This is an event which you have to rush from A point to B. You can take any route you want as long as you reach to point B.
These events are testing the capability of the player, most of them are not possible to do it in the first try. Even some of them are requiring specific car in order to earn 3 Star but you can always get these rewards. Let’s say you earned 1 Star in your first try. This event will be marked as you only got 1 Star and you can get back to it whenever you want. So you don’t have to rush it to get all stars in the first try. You might try it with different vehicle once you get or upgrade it.
As for the Race types, there are various of them. These Race Types are Road Racing, Dirt Racing and Cross Country Racing.
Road Racing: This is basically races where takes place on roads of Tokyo. Not getting into terrain, only roads. You can get speedy cars for these type of races.
Dirt Racing: This type of race is mixed between terrain and roads. Dirt Races are good for Rally vehicles, especially if you upgrade it well, you won’t have hard time winning this races.
Cross Country Racing: This type of race is takes place between off road routes and rough terrain. You have to keep up your speed but also control your car, one mistake and you might get into situation where you lost the race completely.
Aside from Horizon Events, there are also collectibles you can get when you explore Japan. XP Boards and Mascots. 200 collectibles each. XP Boards provides player Horizon Festival points. Mascots provides player Discover Japan points. Both rewards player with various items which can be tracked with journal entry. Mascots are designed differently in each location, you can see various of Mascot designed when you track them from your map. XP Boards are the same for all location.
Since we are attending to Horizon Festival and it’s taking place in Japan this year, we definitely need more ways to explore it, that’s what story chapters for. When checking on your map, you will notice few chapter long story races you can do. During these races, you might explore Japan closely but also witness another story along with it. After you start one chapter, the rest will be marked on your map and you can continue from there. After you finish one story chapter, you can unlock Stamps. On top of that, if you want to do something different than racing, you can try out Food Delivery quests. You can get more rewards by increasing your reputation as food deliverer and try something different rather than racing.
Rewards, Discounted Vehicles and More Customization for Players
I want to talk about some cool features from Forza Horizon 6, some of them also included in the Forza Horizon 5 as well. First of all, the Wheelspin. There are two type of Wheelspin in the game. Normal Wheelspin and Super Wheelspin. Normal Wheelpin awards you with one reward, but Super Wheelspin includes 3 reward at once. You can get chance to spin a Wheel by leveling up, accomplishing certain challenges. You can also get Wheelspin chance by getting certain houses, some houses grant players Wheelspin chance every time you log into game. These houses are highlighted in the map. If you are a V.I.P. Membership, you will also receive Super Wheelspin every week.
Speaking of changes, I also want to mention that you can also get discounted vehicles when you visit For Sale icons in your map. Some vehicles are on sale in certain places with Discounts. You can also Test Drive that vehicle before buying it. I really loved this feature, you can get it with discount but also try it out, if you didn’t like the performance, you can just ignore it and get another vehicle. I totally recommend you to visit and see if these vehicles are good for you or not.
When you checking in your map, you might notice purple circles and wonder what is that for. This is for treasure cars. Treasure Cars also have a special tab on your pause screen. By visiting that page, you can get clues for that car and how to find it. Smashing Collectibles let’s you get more clues about Treasure Cars. Eventually you will get picture of that car and you can visit that location to find it. These Treasure Cars are hard to find and good addition to the game, saving that vehicle from that place and eventually tunning up is really enjoyable and good feature that added to game.
Another new feature added to the game different from Forza Horizon 5 is that you can actually build up your Estate. Meaning build up is actually you can decorate it with preset materials. You can delete materials to free up space and select between materials to put, arrange them however you like. Other players can also visit your estate. After purchasing any house or Estate, you can also arrange your Garage with your favorite cars. All houses have different Garage, so you can display different cars in each house. This feature is well thought. Before we couldn’t showcase our cars outside of races, now we can showcase it in our houses and player might visit and check on our cars.
Since we are talking about Garage and arranging cars, I also want to talk about tunning cars. Tunning car is an option to make your car more stable. In the game, there are Classes for Cars as A,B,C,D, S1, S2, R. From moving bottom to top, these classes mean these cars are faster and tuned up before. But tunning up doesn’t always mean it’s faster, if you haven’t tuned up your car carefully, you might even ruin the performance of your car. Because of that, tunning a car is difficult if you haven’t done before. One suggestion for me is that prioritize to not lose too much stat when increasing other stats. Try to make it equal as possible so you can stabilize your car easier. If you focus on one stat too much, the other stats will be lower and most likely besides that stat, your car won’t do anything and probably make you lose control of your car when driving. If you think you are not able to tune up yourself, there is also an option to use Auto Upgrades. If you don’t want to mess with these stats, you might use preset upgrades but it won’t be like you did with Custom Tunning. Auto Upgrade might lose some stat to make the car faster but also hard to control on the road. That’s why I recommend learning the tricks of Custom Tunning.
Aside from Custom Tunning, you can also change the color of your car and make designs. In the same page in the Cars section, you can either change the color, make new design for your car or apply other people’s designs to your car. If you designed something yourself, you can also upload it and other people can download it as well. Making your own design is kinda tricky, I did try making my own design but result wasn’t my favorite but you can try it out and see if you can make something good. You are free to shape your car however you like, you have custom plate, custom colors, design, tunning options. Everything is at your free will, this freedom offered from Forza Horizon games are one of the best features.
Since we mentioned customizing, it’s a small detail but worth to mention, you can also customize your character whenever you want. At the start, you won’t have much of a choice to choose from, so you will make simple character and move on but after incresing your level and collecting more stuff, you can also make your character pretty. There will be bunch of options to choose. From head wear to shoes, you can customize your character however you want. As I said, it might sound insignificant since we are in race game, it’s mostly focused on cars but I’m sure everyone would love to have a pretty looking character when cutscene starts.
While scrolling around in Japan, you can also take cool sceneries with Photo Mode. Photo Mode is a lot detailed, you can change weather, day of time or even you can pose with your character if your car is parked. These poses can be unlocked by Wheelspin or from rewards after you accomplish something. There are bunch of options to edit if you want to take screenshots. You can also share your screenshots with community. Just click Save button and the rest will come after.
I also want to point out that Festival Playlist and Eliminator mode is not included. When we check on the game, it says it will be in the future series. Back in Forza Horizon 5, we could buy special cars with our Forzaton points and Vouchers. It was like a mini shop that refreshes every week. It will probably updated in the future upgrades and many cars will be available there. Looking forward to it. As for the Eliminator mode, it was a mode similar to PUBG, where you have to stay in a certain area but also upgrade your car to better one. Once the circle is small enough, all players had to race to certain place and the winner gets the high reward, the rest awarded less. It looks like Eliminator mode is not back with Forza Horizon 6 but maybe future updates might bring it back. I must say it was a cool PvP mode.
Well Designed Driving Mechanic, Best Racing Game
If you are in a game where mostly focused on racing and driving a car, driving mechanic has to be good, not feel clunky. Car needs to move on the road smoothly, but not too fast or you might lose control easily. Forza Horizon 6 keeps that balance perfectly. Driving feels so good, even if you are driving slow car, it doesn’t feel like a torture. Once you get some momentum, you can move smoothly even with slow car. That balance is important if you are creating a game mostly focused on cars.
That aspect makes everything perfect and increases your enjoyment in the game. Racing never gets boring because you have too many options to do, you don’t have to drive into empty road, you can admire the scenery, smash some collectibles, finish some events or even deliver food at some points. If you feel like you want to race a little, open a race that fits you, choose your car and hit the road. Forza Horizon 6 is not boring the player with only one option, offers tons of things you can do.
Forza Horizon series added another taste to race games with it’s variety and changes. Other race games were only about hitting top speed and drifting around. With Forza Horizon, it’s changed as becoming part of Horizon Festival and witnessing every beauty of the country festival visiting. You can race either solo or with other players, enjoy the scenery, listen to amazing musics in the radio, challenge yourself with activities and collect fancy cars along with it. If you have spare money, you can even design your Estate. Forza Horizon 6 offering much more than just race. It’s offering different experience comparing to other race games, your only goal is not winning the race, it’s witnessing the beauty of that country and exploring it yourself.
If you like cars, racing and beautiful scenery, Horizon Festival is the event you should visit. I’m sure every player will have splendid time in festival. Start hitting the road after game launches and take place in countless events offered in the festival with your fancy cars. The Horizon Festival awaits you. Forza Horizon 6 will make it’s launch on May 15 for Early Access, May 19 for initial launch. You can purchase the game from here.
Score: 9/10
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