I decided to wait until I played about 200 hours to review this.
Would I recommend it? Yeah. It's fun even if you're not into cars, so if you're into cars you will definitely derive enjoyment from Forza Horizon 6. It sits close to a peak where many other racing classics do, if you ask me. Though, at that, it isn't flawless. I started with 4. played 5 mostly, and here I am sitting at 200 hrs of playtime for 6, the game I've played the least. Let's begin.
[h1]The Driving Experience[/h1]
Is the most important part of a game centred around driving cars. Forza is a blend of accessible "arcade" handling mixed with real life vehicle dynamics. You can consider it a stylized version of real vehicle dynamics, or "simcade" as is loosely understood. Cars handle consistently and are differentiated well. Cars are generally a joy to drive. This is great, they aced it.
[h3]Car Sounds[/h3]
Are of high quality. Some of the highest quality you will come across in the genre. This is especially impressive considering to breadth of the car selection, exceeding 500 cars. Some sounds do repeat though, you can sense that most inline 4s (an engine type) sound similar across the board. Some cars are individuated like the Toyota GT86 which is spot on with it's real life counterpart, whereas others like the Renault Megane (one of the newer ones) aren't quite as accurate. Overall, the quality is consistently high. This adds to the overall driving experience.
[h3]The Racing[/h3]
Has evolved...for better and for worse. You have couple ways to consider it. Online, offline, and across disciplines. There are about 4 disciplines. Road Racing, street racing, rally racing, and offroad.
[b]Offline racing[/b] is rough around the edges due to the AI. Recent updates have attempted to address this. They race very aggressively. That can be a good thing, as real life racing consists of attacking and defending for positions. Previous iterations were rather static in the sense they would always play it safe, give positions to you, and stay safely behind unless you really blundered a corner or two. This iteration's AI plays like it wants to win. That's good until they attempt to murder you. You will attempt to take corners properly and be punted off your line at times. Sometimes running a defense doesn't really change that, you'll still get punted. That can be very frustrating. Still, it's actually preferable to static opponents that meld into a certain kind of greyness of character. This is speaking of road racing. I am biased to this kind of racing, the other disciplines i don't really mess with.
Rally is better. It's more or less just road racing on the dirt, but the experience of sliding across dirt and general track design have improved.
Street racing is self explanatory. Offroad is....
Not a fun experience for me personally. I play from the cockpit view. The game mode clearly wasn't designed to consider this. Offroad features a variety of very, very, very large jumps. Larger than is reasonable. You'll be launched hundreds of feet into the air, at which you are at the mercy of luck to land properly. Also, sometimes the landings break your windscreen. Very annoying racing from the cockpit. To add, the large jumps make any kind of situational awareness impossible from that perspective. And to add to that again...the AI is literally designed suffer from none of this to stay challenging...
The design of the game itself acknowledges the problems vehicles have with these courses, why code the AI to land perfectly, then leave the player to flounder? Maybe it just isn't for me.
[b]Online racing[/b] is pretty similar to previous games, but you have some new editions. I've noticed spec racing and and touge in particular. Spec racing has been a fantastic experience more or less. The even playing field makes for closer and more competitive racing. Pretty fun, It's easy to lose a couple hours to it.
Touge has potential to be pretty good, but it's soured by the match making system. Essentially, you can't pick what class of car you want to race. It's randomized. I don't know why they refuse to change this. You will often wait a couple minutes for the game to match you with another player, then the game tells you which class (essentially speed) of car you two will run. If you get "S2" for example, the majority of players will leave at that point. It's too fast a class for many players to enjoy. Preferences are diverse. So, to get to play touge online, you will be queing over and over again for a non-trivial amount of time. [b]It's so bad, I gave up on it entirely. It was one of the things I was looking forward to most.[/b]
Finally on the topic of online racing, a safety rating would help a little bit. Yes, it's meant to be a casual racing game, but the community universally hates people who intentionally try to crash you out of the race. Forza is the game most infamous for this. The community wherever you go is totally vitriolic over it. [b] Please, do something about it.[/b]
[h1]Vehicle Personalization[/h1]
You can now paint on windows. It's pretty cool. I love the feature. An aspect I feel is underappreciated is the rendering for different paint types. The new finishes are beautiful, and extremely convincing. 200 hours in, and i still do stop to observe how pretty it looks. I probably won't ever stop.
As for changing the body work of the cars, saying this is like beating a dead sheep. I don't want to bleat about it, but, it is indeed a system that a lot of players are dissatisfied with. Me too, to be honest.
Let me tell you a story. I was completely addicted to the marketing for this game. Every bit of info I ate up, I even attended the dev QNA on discord. The new aftermarket parts for cars was a selling point for the game. The new spoiler and bumper, among other changes. They knew what we wanted to hear. They knew we were tired of the old system. The thing is, it's still that old system, with a different colored paint on it. It's no better or worse than the last iteration. I dare say it's practically the same. That's deeply disappointing. I will suggest this: Rear bumper diffusers and side skirts to accompany the spoiler and front bumper would be a good direction towards progress. Cars look very awkward with only those two parts installed. I think another core issue to attend to after that would be to provide "grades" of some parts. Notably, aesthetically and functionally, some vehicles don't need a whole GT wing. An in between would be nice.
To end positively:
[h1]Graphics and the Map[/h1]
Are absolutely astounding. The graphics are cutting edge, and the map of Japan is masterfully designed. The little otaku in me I hide away from society shudders with glee. It's one of the best maps I've driven on, paired with some of the best graphics I've ever seen. You guys knocked it out of the park in this regard. Did I mention the track design? Those are wonderful too, I really do wish for more, I am looking forward to future additions.
[h1]And the Music[/h1]
Is seriously, very good, Bass Arena, Horizon Pulse, and Block Party have some of the best songs I've heard in a very long time. They give Horizon 6 a strong identity.
[h1]In conclusion[/h1]
Thank you for this experience. I'll take it to my grave that this was one of the games that made me feel something. It's frustrating at times, but that seems to be innate to anything that inspires care.
