Forza Horizon 6 Review – Japan Was Worth the Wait

Playground Games is back with another entry in the Forza Horizon franchise, and they are finally taking us to Japan. That’s right, Forza Horizon 6 finally delivers the setting that longtime fans such as myself have been asking for since the very beginning of the series.

Thankfully, this trip to Japan was well worth the wait, even if it doesn’t deliver the Fast & Furious-style experience that some players were hoping for. So, why do I love it so much? Let’s break it all down in The Outerhaven’s review of Forza Horizon 6.

Game Name: Forza Horizon 6
Platform(s): Xbox Series X|S, PC, PlayStation 5 (scheduled for later)
Reviewed On: PC
Genre: Racing, Open-World, Driving Sim
Publisher(s): Xbox Game Studios
Developer(s): Playground Games
Release Date: May 19th, 2026 (or 4 days early for Premium Edition)

What Is Forza Horizon 6?

At its core, Forza Horizon 6 continues Playground Games’ blend of open-world exploration and arcade-inspired racing while introducing its most requested location yet: Japan. From the neon-lit cities and winding mountain roads to countryside villages and coastal highways, Horizon 6 delivers a map that feels tailor-made for car culture enthusiasts.

Thanks to its varied locations and the return of changing seasons week to week, Forza Horizon 6’s Japan provides a significantly more balanced Horizon experience across its different race types and activities. Unlike Forza Horizon 5’s Mexico, which heavily focused on off-road racing, Japan feels far more evenly designed around the full range of Horizon activities.

Japan does have its own set of events that feel more appropriate for the setting, but it still offers all the race types you know and love. From road races and cross-country runs to dirt races, street races, and more, everything you could want from a Forza Horizon game has made its way to Japan. Better yet, the map manages to balance it all extremely well without ever overwhelming you.

What Makes It Feel Like Japan?

There are some neat additions that give the world a very distinct Japanese feel, from the regional mascots, often shaped like different Japanese foods, to a showcase event involving a giant mech and more. This world feels exactly how I expected Playground Games’ take on Japan to feel, so in that regard, they nailed it.

That isn’t all the additions Forza Horizon 6 provides. The big one this year is an estate editor that allows you to build onto and customize player houses. From giant race tracks to simple customized garages, the possibilities are huge. As you explore Japan and progress through the game, you will gain access to additional locations and items to make use of.

This incentivizes exploration and progression more effectively than any previous Forza Horizon game. Especially when you require in-game currency to purchase these items, and don’t worry, there are no microtransactions involved. All your credits are earned in-game, and if you purchase the wrong item for your estate, you can delete it for a full refund.

As a result, I found myself trying to create builds that naturally blend into the existing world. In my case, that basically meant building a temple. That said, I can’t wait to see what crazy ideas people come up with.

Same Great Gameplay

When it comes to gameplay, the truth is that not much has changed. The racing and driving feel similar to how they have felt since Forza Horizon 4, but honestly, I think that’s one of the game’s greatest strengths. It allows the focus to remain on the systems that support the moment-to-moment gameplay.

For example, progression has been completely revamped, moving away from the collect- a-thon aspects slightly and back toward the more structured progression found in earlier entries in the franchise. This is done through the introduction of wristbands that require you to gain a specific amount of Horizon Points before unlocking additional events. You can earn Horizon Points by completing races, speed traps, danger signs, and more.

Alongside the wristbands, you also earn stamps for discovering Japan. This is done by smashing mascots, completing story missions, general exploration, discovering barn finds, and more. The best part is that as you complete the Discover Japan goals, you’ll earn rewards, but these are slightly different from the credit rewards you’ll receive for Horizon Festival goals. That’s because discovering Japan rewards you with new cars, customization options, horns, and more.

The additional progression systems combined with the big new estates feature make Forza Horizon 6 feel fresh and deeply engaging while maintaining the great gameplay we have come to expect from the series.

Somehow, Playground Games has managed to keep all of the activities fun to play without feeling mindless. Every time I had to find a barn or treasure, I was fully engaged in doing just that. What’s nice is that Mascots and XP boards continue to provide a nice detour while going between events, but they never become so distracting that you forget what you were on your way to do.

The Cars Shine Once Again

Of course, the key to any driving-focused game is the selection of vehicles you have available. Forza Horizon has always been known for having a great selection of modern cars, supercars, classics, retros, cars are so expensive that we’ll never be able to drive in our real lives, and even brand-new prototype cars to choose from. Forza Horizon 6 is no different here with around 550 available at launch which is admittedly a step down from what is currently available in Forza Horizon 5.

However, it’s important to remember that many of those cars were added via post-launch updates. Forza Horizon 6 definitely has more to come down the road, but all your major manufacturersare represented this year. In particular the Japanese manufacturers like Toyota, Nissan and Honda have a great selection of cars. If you’re a long-time Xbox fan, you’ll be happy to hear that the Halo Warthog makes its return again this time around, that one is a particular favorite amongst us here at The Outerhaven.

That being said, one of my favorite things to do in these games is find a random little car and upgrade it as much as possible to turn it into a flying machine. In Forza Horizon 6, my vehicle of choice is the 1971 Meyers Manx, once fully upgraded it’s just hilariously fun to drive. Due to its lightweight hitting even the smallest hill at a decent speed can send the Manx flying. Adding to that, the tuner aspect is alive and well, and every vehicle can be upgraded and tuned to your heart’s content or share what you’ve made with your various friends on the internet, for a fee.

Multiplayer Functions As You’d Expect

During the review period, I was able to test out the game’s multiplayer convoy system with a few members of The Outerhaven Crew and it was a lot of fun. That is once you actually get joined up, for some reason on PC the in-game convoy invite system doesn’t appear to work correctly. We had to use direct Steam invites to enter a convoy but once we were in a group all the in-game invites for races and other events worked as intended.

While we didn’t get the chance to try out any of the more bespoke multiplayer modes. We did a ton of stuff throughout Japan. From races, and danger zones to finding treasure cars and barn finds.

From the experience so far, multiplayer seems to have exactly the same limitations as previous games. Only the convoy leader can start events and set group markers on the map. It would be really useful if everyone in a convoy had the ability to see each other’s markers. The number of times my co-op partners wanted to mark something for me and couldn’t is unbelievable. It’s something that feels like the only genuine oversight in the game’s design.

Looks And Sounds Better Than Ever

If you’ve played one of the Forza Horizon games before, then you know just how amazing they look and sound. What shocked me about Forza Horizon 6 is that Playground Games has actually managed to improve the already stellar presentation.

Visuals are more vibrant and varied than ever before, thanks to the stunning locations and unpredictable weather of Japan. Speaking of weather, it is a real highlight of the visuals in Forza Horizon 6. From the fog that slowly creeps in, causing your vision to be nearly obscured, to the individual beads of rain moving down your rear window, and the massive puddles on the road that even Spider-Man would be jealous of. But seriously, if you have a PC that is capable of maxing out the visuals, the game will look better than it should. It’s almost photorealistic at times.

The weather and environments look better than they ever have in a Horizon game, and lighting is another highlight of the experience. In particular, I noticed the improved lighting during transitions from driving through tunnels into pure sunlight. It can feel disorienting, but it also feels like pure magic every single time.

Tunnels also highlight the exceptional audio presentation. In so many games, you drive into a tunnel, and everything sounds the same, but not in Forza Horizon 6, there is a distinctly different sound to every aspect of driving. Engines have an echoing reverb that they don’t have in outdoor locations, while the screech of tires sounds louder and more aggressive.

These moments showcase just how dynamic the audio design of Forza Horizon 6 truly is. Every car and engine type sounds more unique than ever before, continuing the franchise’s history of best-in-class audio design. Our EIC Keith Mitchell has stated that the game really comes alive when using 5.1 surround sound, putting a smile on his face when he drives his favorite cars.

Excellent Accessibility

When it comes to accessibility, Forza Horizon 6 continues the amazing work that Playground Games did in Forza Horizon 5. In fact, almost every accessibility option found in Forza Horizon 5 is available at launch. The only exception is sign language support, which will be added in a post-launch update and will once again support both American and British Sign Language.

Of course, Playground Games didn’t stop there. They have added a full high-contrast mode, and given ANNA, (Automated Natural Navigation Assistant), the digital voice assistant of the Forza Horizon series some much needed attention. But before you roll your eyes, hear me out. ANNA was widely considered a sore point in the prior games, but Playground Games has made some notable improvements under the hood, so to speak.

Sure, she’ll still recommend races and events, but she now comes with a major new feature: Auto Drive. Simply mark a destination on the map and ANNA will drive you there. If there’s a fast travel point nearby, she’ll use it first and then take the wheel, which is a fantastic addition that makes tracking down bonus XP boards and other collectibles much easier.

But that’s not even the best part. ANNA can also run races for you, which is a welcome option for players who struggle with the near-perfection some events demand. Just start a race, engage ANNA, and tell her to Auto Drive, and she’ll activate what’s called Race Mode, letting players sit back while she does all the work. While some may consider this a cheat, it’s far from that as she performs at an average to above-average level, so cranking up the difficulty won’t give you much of an edge over your competition.

Still, it’s a thoughtful addition that shows Playground Games was listening to feedback from Forza Horizon 5. ANNA has gone from an afterthought to a genuinely useful companion that will make the game more playable for so many people.

Forza Horizon 5 already had arguably the best accessibility features in gaming, and with Forza Horizon 6, Playground Games has only continued to build upon that excellent foundation.

Mostly Fantastic Performance

When it comes to performance, Forza Horizon 6 is a mostly rock-solid experience. On my PC, I was able to achieve a consistent 60+ FPS on the game’s Ultra + Ray-Tracing preset at native 4K resolution. It looked fantastic. However, after a while, I opted to go with the game’s recommendation of Extreme settings without Ray Tracing to achieve a higher framerate experience, and it didn’t disappoint, delivering a stable 90+ FPS that felt perfect on my VRR-capable display.

You’re probably thinking that sounds great, so what’s the problem? Well, the game crashed on me twice while playing, and while I lost no save data, that is always a concern when a game crashes unexpectedly.

The error I received referenced GPU memory, but on my NVIDIA RTX 5090, that really shouldn’t be an issue, considering the card has 32GB of VRAM. Leading me to believe this could potentially be a memory leak issue, but given that it only happened twice, I can’t say for certain.

Making sure you are on the latest drivers can help solve the issue it seems, at least it did in the case of our editor-in-chief Keith Mitchell. However, I wasn’t lucky as one of the crashes I experienced did happen on the latest driver.

Hopefully, the incoming day-one patch resolves this issue because, outside of those crashes, I had a flawless experience.

Summary

With Forza Horizon 6, Playground Games has done what I thought was impossible and improved upon the near-perfection of the previous two Horizon games. Thanks to better presentation than ever before and revamped progression systems, Forza Horizon 6 comfortably takes the mantle as the best open-world driving game ever made. If you love cars, driving, and racing games, this is absolutely a game you should be playing. And on the chance you don’t, this could be the game that changes your mind.

If you enjoyed this review, explore more of our in-depth video game reviews across PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X, Nintendo Switch, Nintendo Switch 2, and PC.

Review Disclosure Statement: A copy of Forza Horizon 6 was provided to us for review purposes by Xbox. For more information on how we review video games and other media/technology, please review our Review Guideline/Scoring Policy for more info.