Forza Horizon 6 Nails the Japan Setting. Everything Else Just Works.

If you’ve been waiting for a Forza game that understands what makes Japan special to car culture, Forza Horizon 6 finally delivers. The new open-world racer, launching May 19 on Xbox and PC, relocates the festival to a stunningly detailed recreation of Japan—and that setting alone might be enough to drag every Horizon veteran back into the fold. But here’s the thing: outside of the location, this is still recognizably the same game Playground Games perfected five games ago. Whether that’s a feature or a limitation depends entirely on how much you already love the franchise.

Japan Changes Everything (Visually, At Least)

From the moment you hit the cherry-blossom-lined intro race in a Nissan GT-R NISMO, FH6 leans hard into the Japan appeal. The map is five times larger than Horizon 5’s Mexico city, packed with touge mountain roads, dense Tokyo streets, snowy peaks, and bamboo forests that actually give the world visual variety. Previous Horizon games always felt like beautiful backdrops for car nonsense; Japan feels like it was built specifically for that nonsense to happen in it.

The new “Discover Japan” progression system is the smartest design move here. Rather than locking all progress behind festival races, half the game’s unlockables—barn finds, houses, special cars—are tied to actually exploring and engaging with the setting itself. That means you’re rewarded for scenic photography, food delivery side gigs, and talking to NPCs, not just winning races. It’s a quiet but meaningful shift that makes the world feel slightly more lived-in than previous entries, even if it’s still fundamentally an empty playground built for cars to tear through.

Side quests scattered across the map help sell this vibe. Some are charming (a drift club storyline with a fictional English driver), others are star-studded (an actual appearance from automotive photographer Larry Chen), but they all give you reasons to care about the world beyond the racing calendar. For players burned out on pure festival grinding, this is a genuine quality-of-life win.

550 Cars, Endless Customization, Same Physics Problems

Launch roster includes 550 licensed vehicles, split between returning Forza stalwarts and a handful of new additions. You can snag abandoned collector cars from barns, discover used cars scattered across the map (some modded, some stock), hunt down barn finds, and grind through the auction house. The economy works; if enough players download your custom paint jobs, tuning setups, or garage layouts, you’ll earn credits back. It’s a system that’s been proven to keep players engaged long-term, and FH6 doesn’t mess with success.

The new garage editor is dangerously addictive—players are already building Jurassic Park-themed shops and Nissan Silvia shrines—and the underlying customization is familiar. You get the usual wheels, body kits, and engine swaps, but depth is inconsistent. A Miata with turbos where its pop-up headlights should be? That’s a special car, not a general customization option. Exhaust upgrades still don’t always update visually. Look under the undercarriage and you’ll find a flat black void instead of mechanical detail. It’s the same half-finished customization promise Horizon has been making for years.

The physics remain what they’ve always been: slide-happy and fun for cruising, but occasionally at odds with faster, more serious machinery. A Mercedes-AMG One designed for planted high-speed cornering feels loose and twitchy in ways that don’t match real-world behavior. The new “Simulation” steering mode helps, but it’s a band-aid on an engine—ForzaTech—that’s been around long enough to qualify for historic plates. Interior camera views are robotic. Steering-wheel animations look canned. You notice it most when you’re looking for realism, but forget about it instantly when you’re drifting a twin-turbo Cadillac XTS limo through a mountain pass. That’s where Forza Horizon lives: absurdity first, simulation second.

The UI Finally Got Smart (Sort Of)

One genuinely important improvement: the new “What’s Next” menu. Horizon 5 players were drowning in seasonal menus with no clear direction on what to actually do next. FH6 fixes that by presenting a curated list of available activities, clearly flagging which ones tie to the main campaign and which are optional. It’s not revolutionary, but for veterans worn down by menu fatigue, it’s a godsend. You’re not forced toward DLC events immediately, and the progression system feels genuinely “play at your own pace” rather than gated.

Campaign progression itself is more structured than it’s been. You earn wristbands by completing festival events, and each band unlocks access to faster, more serious cars and races. Unlike recent entries where you could take any car into any race, FH6 starts you in kei cars and gradually escalates the machinery. It’s a tighter narrative frame, but it never feels punishing or grindy—you can still upgrade your way through if you want, and completing the story doesn’t force you to abandon cars you’ve spent 100,000 credits customizing.

New Time Attack events deserve a mention too. These road-course-style challenges are genuinely difficult, genuinely exciting, and the way leaderboards appear on real in-world billboards instead of floating UI is immersive as hell. It’s exactly the kind of small-but-meaningful detail that makes open-world racing feel less gamified.

What Horizon Still Doesn’t Get Right

The NPC traffic is still broken. Cars corner without visibly turning their front wheels, moving like horses on a mall carousel. Traffic is weirdly sparse for a Tokyo-focused game—you’d expect dense Alphard taxi vans clogging every street, not the scattered mix of Honda e’s and Jeep Wranglers that populate the roads. It’s one of those things that pulls you out of immersion every time you notice it, and you will notice it.

The radio and dialogue lean hard into British English (“let’s get cracking”) rather than Japanese car culture flavor, which is tonally jarring when you’re literally racing through Shibuya Crossing. There is a Japanese radio station with a Japanese-speaking host, but the other channels sound like Cadbury Egg infomercials hosted by overeager enthusiasts trying too hard. The solution? Mute the dialogue, crank the engine sound, and enjoy the twin-turbo Caddy’s exhaust bark.

And here’s the real issue with FH6: racing against AI still isn’t as fun as it should be. The series has always been about exploration and chaos over pure racing, which is fine, but when you’re forced into campaign events with preset vehicles against predictable AI on fixed courses, you’re reminded that Forza Horizon’s core strength isn’t racing—it’s everything else. If you came here expecting the depth of Gran Turismo or even traditional Forza Motorsport, you’ll be disappointed. The series remains an open-world playground first and a racing game second.

The Bottom Line: More of What Works

Forza Horizon 6 is the safest, most competent entry in the franchise’s modern era. Playground Games understood the assignment: make Japan gorgeous, give players 550 cars to collect and customize, pile on side content that rewards exploration, and don’t break what’s already working. The result is a complete game at launch that feels lived-in despite its emptiness, rewarding in its randomness, and exactly what the franchise’s devoted audience wants.

Is it revolutionary? No. Does it look or play substantially different from Horizon 5? Not really. But that might not matter. Forza Horizon’s genius has always been knowing that scenery is enough—relocate the festival, add some new cars, tweak the UI, and players will show up. Japan is the perfect location to test that theory, and based on what’s here, the formula still works. If you’ve skipped a Horizon game or two waiting for something different, this won’t be it. If you’re a franchise faithful who just needed a new reason to spend 50 hours collecting barn finds and drifting limos, welcome home.

Sources: Car and Driver · Road & Track · The Drive