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Expectation is the enemy of success.
It is an apt description of the wildly popular Forza Horizon racing game franchise’s relationship with Japan as a place to stage its open world.
For the past 14 years, Microsoft has bounced its acclaimed Xbox, PC and, more recently, PlayStation series between Colorado in the US, southern France and Italy, the UK, Mexico and, of course, Australia.
Yet for the same period of time, fans have called for an iteration set in Japan, a hub of car culture, racing and drifting on spectacular roads and scenery, and the source of many of the video game generation’s favourite sports and performance cars.
That time has finally come. Forza Horizon 6 will take players on Xbox Series S/X consoles and the PC to Japan when it is released May 19 for $109.95 Standard and $159.95 Deluxe Edition customers, or May 15 for buyers of the $189.95 Premium Edition.
As with every new Forza title, there is the usual set of superlatives in the brochure. The largest map in Horizon history, more detail, improved graphics, more than 550 cars on Day One, new races, an all-new campaign, and plenty of other features and mechanics to play solo or with friends.
What we were most excited to explore upon launching Forza Horizon 6 for the first time is whether it can revive the soul of the franchise that made early iterations – Horizon 3 in particular, especially for Aussies – so good.
Forza Horizon 5’s Mexico also claimed to be the largest map in the franchise’s history on release in 2021.
It impressed in its first few hours, wowing you with its sheer scale, open roads, and mix of barren deserts, stunning beaches, dense jungles and old-school city of Guanajuato, but the more time you spent exploring it, the more Mexico proved… boring.
Designed for the Eliminator game mode – picture Hunger Games for cars – it was attractive, but felt empty, flat (one mountain aside) and the diversity evident at its extremes was split by kilometres of non-descript fields and deserts.
Japan is a return to form for Forza Horizon maps – and 'fixes' the trajectory of the franchise, as far as locations are concerned.
The highlight, for me, is Tokyo, the first modern metropolis in a Forza game since Horizon 3’s Surfers Paradise. It feels like a scaled-down version of the real-life version, with skyscrapers and tight shopping lanes to take photos with, a sprawling expressway network to race around, and a massive dockyard for drifting and stunt driving.
Tokyo icons like Shibuya Crossing and the Akihabara hobby shopping district are faithfully recreated, as is Daikoku, an outer Tokyo car park under an expressway junction that is famed for modified car meet-ups (more on that shortly).
A need to give players space to unleash 300km/h supercars without feeling like a peak-hour traffic jam means the roads are wide, even in the centre of Tokyo, and there isn’t much traffic. It is an understandable compromise, but a gripe nonetheless.
The highlights continue beyond Tokyo. Open countryside with rice fields, gorgeous coastal roads, a wide highway for testing your car’s top speed, a space centre, and, of course, a remarkable number of mountain roads with a sense of elevation that Horizon 5 could not dream of.
It is topped off – literally – with a mountain that’s much bigger than Mexico’s equivalent and, unlike the prior game, snow-capped in all four of the game’s seasons. It’s not Mount Fuji, if you’re wondering; that’s off in the distance, not accessible to players.
The world feels far more alive than Mexico, too. Dotted around the map are myriad lookouts, Japanese temples, and even convenience stores – with their own car parks for displaying your vehicles or taking cool photos – that encourage you to slow down, take in the sights, and appreciate the love that’s gone into creating this.
The in-game counter will tell you there are about 670 roads to drive in Japan, compared to a figure in the high-500s for Mexico, but that ignores dirt paths and country-road lay-bys that aren’t on the map.
Time will tell if Japan is the most diverse and enjoyable setting in the Forza Horizon series, but for me it’s up there with Horizon 3’s small but diverse and vibrant Australia for the crown. Developers say they didn’t want to take this series to Japan until it could be done well; that was a good decision.
Not all of the map can be accessed on Day One. Locked until the final stage of the game is Legend Island, which opens once players become a ‘Horizon Legend’ and collect their final ‘wristband’ as part of the campaign.
In response to criticism of past games having a lack of meaningful progression, dropping players into supercars in the first hour of play, races in Horizon 6 are locked by performance class, with the cars you’re allowed to drive getting faster the more events you complete and wristbands you earn.
Think of the wristbands as chapters of the game, and each is unlocked through a flagship event, which range from racing a giant robot in a Honda NSX to challenging planes in a Porsche 911 Dakar. A bullet train gets in on the action along the way, too.
Players can also progress through the main Horizon Festival campaign via the PR stunts spread around the map – speed traps, speed zones, stunt jumps, drift zones, and point-to-point ‘trailbrazer’ off-road challenges – as well as through online play.
The number of credits you earn still goes up quickly, especially with the VIP add-on in the Premium Edition – and fast cars aren’t all that expensive – but, initially, you’re locked to using them in freeroom, not in races.
Want to skip racing altogether? Consider the other half of the story, Discover Japan, which lets players progress by discovering new areas of the map, driving roads, buying vehicles, taking photos, and discovering cars in the world, either parked in the world – their location indicated by a single photo – or by scouting for barn finds.
The Discover Japan branch also augments street races – a Horizon classic, racing on public roads at night without closed roads – with Touge Battles: head-to-head races with another driver along twisting mountain roads.
You can also choose to work for a food-delivery business, piloting cute Honda trucks across Tokyo as fast as possible. Scout locations with famous photographer Larry Chen, join a drift club, or take ‘day trips’ with lead character Mei to learn the history of areas of the map and see sights.
We didn’t spend much time in multiplayer, as we tested the game before release – when the only other players were fellow journalists and YouTubers – but the racing is similar to Horizon 5, bar the addition of ‘spec’ races where all drivers compete in the same car.
Forza developers say Horizon 5’s maligned system of locking new, desirable cars behind a series of weekly challenges – which meant, once they were gone, they were gone – is no more, but it remains to be seen what it has been replaced with.
Also absent, at least at launch, are Infected and King of the Hill online modes from earlier titles – developers say they didn’t want to bring them back unless they could make them feel fresh, which is a poor excuse, in our view – as well as the old game’s ‘clubs’ system for linking up with friends.
Horizon 6 revives Car Meets, allowing you to display your favourite cars alongside friends in car parks around the map, between which you’ll find Aftermarket Cars: modified or rare cars for sale on the side of the road at discounted prices.
The house-buying system from earlier games has been expanded with customisable garages, with an editing tool allowing for props and car displays to be placed, as well as an ‘Estate’ that is, essentially, a plot of land for you to build a racetrack, stunt park or whatever else takes your fancy.
Of course, a Forza game isn’t complete without its cars. The 550+ quoted by development studio Playground Games isn’t as expansive as what Horizon 5 ended its run with, but it’s the most comprehensive launch line-up in a Horizon title.
There is the usual set of European sports cars, high-end supercars, American muscle cars, and variations of Supras, Skylines and other Japanese icons, alongside a decent selection of Aussie Holdens and Fords, and even high-performance Hyundai N cars.
New for Horizon 6 is plenty of quirky Japanese metal, from Tokyo taxis and a new LandCruiser Prado to a fleet of ‘kei’ cars, Japan’s pint-sized vehicle class, from the Honda Beat sports car to a little delivery truck.
The latter has customisation such as a widebody kit or high-revving motorcycle engines to make yours feel unique.
Car customisation is not on Need for Speed levels, but there’s plenty of fun to be had, complemented by hard-to-acquire Forza Edition cars, from a Subaru BRZ coupe on a lifted 4WD chassis to a Nissan S-Cargo van with a race-car spoiler.
Community-requested improvements include long-awaited overhauls for some (but not all) older cars with low-quality, ill-proportioned 3D models, and an interior camera view that shows the wheel turn beyond 90 degrees in either direction, a long-time Forza gripe.
The variety of machinery on offer is the cherry on top when exploring – and sinking hours into – what, on first impressions, moves the bar higher for an already-accomplished racing game series.
Even 20 hours of gameplay is nowhere near enough to explore every crevasse of the map, complete the campaign, and see what Forza Horizon 6 has to offer. There’s more depth to the game than prior iterations.
This is not an all-new game – the DNA is the same as Forza Horizon 5, with many of its traits polished rather than redesigned – and it’s seriously expensive to buy, even by 2026 standards, but the new map sells the experience.
High expectations can make success a challenge, but Forza Horizon 6 is proof that Japan was absolutely worth the 14-year wait.
Alex Misoyannis has been writing about cars since 2017, when he started his own website, Redline. He contributed for Drive in 2018, before joining CarAdvice in 2019, becoming a regular contributing journalist within the news team in 2020. Cars have played a central role throughout Alex’s life, from flicking through car magazines at a young age, to growing up around performance vehicles in a car-loving family. Highly Commended - Young Writer of the Year 2024 (Under 30) Rising Star Journalist, 2024 Winner Scoop of The Year - 2024 Winner
