Among this year's May blockbusters, Forza Horizon 6, set in Japan, is undoubtedly a must-play for driving simulation enthusiasts. Thanks to Microsoft's invitation, I have already experienced the full content of the official release. As the benchmark of "open-world racing games," its first impression on me is undoubtedly excellent and exciting. However, after more than a dozen hours, I found that evaluating this game might be much more complicated than expected.

This article is solely based on the author's subjective feelings after about ten hours of experience with the official version, and inevitably reflects personal preferences and expectations regarding Japanese car culture. If you just want to crack open a drink on the weekend and drive aimlessly in the virtual world for an hour, Forza Horizon 6 is still the most fun racing game on the planet—that has never changed.

Forza Horizon 6 is the largest and most technically mature entry in the series so far—there's almost no room for debate on that.

If measured purely from the most straightforward dimension of a "racing game," it can still indisputably claim the highest score in this genre: an unprecedented scale of map, speed performance that leads the entire generation, a sufficiently rich variety of race content, and a comprehensive and detailed customization system... Especially when gripping the wheel and speeding through the night scenery at the foot of Mount Fuji or Tokyo Bay, the immersive feeling players experience is unique—I believe that so far, almost no other game of its kind has achieved this.

From a game development perspective, I think Forza Horizon 6 stands on the most unique and profound soil of global car culture, choosing the safest and most conservative creative philosophy. But for a player like me, who had been looking forward to the Horizon series coming to Japan for many years, I find that there is an undeniable gap between my initial expectations for this title and what it ultimately presents.

This is probably my own problem—but I have to admit that after a complete experience, I indeed feel a certain lingering sense of disappointment.

I think it's a shame; Forza Horizon 6 could have been much more interesting.

First, it should be noted that as a standard open-world racing game, the map provided by Horizon 6 is naturally not a 1:1 replica of Japan. Instead, it condenses a limited space with highly representative landmarks, terrains, and cultural symbols from various parts of Japan. This technique of "spatial compression" is nothing new—the series has always reconstructed real geography in this way.

The map in this installment is not only about a quarter larger in area than the previous game's Mexico, but it also captures the dense, mountainous depth unique to the Japanese archipelago. Compared to Mexico's open, flat terrain dominated by deserts and farmland, Japan's mountainous landscape is far more complex. Endless ridges, steep canyons, and narrow plains surrounded by coastlines forced the development team to fold important visual cues and driving routes into an extremely compact space, much like the art of Japanese flower arrangement.

Thus, compared to its predecessor, Horizon 6 elevates the joy of "cruising and sightseeing" to a new level: Tokyo's urban area is about five times larger than the previous game's Guanajuato, with elevated roads, underground tunnels, ports, and commercial districts interweaving, giving city race sections a three-dimensional quality never before achieved in the series. Whether skimming across the sea surface at 200 km/h on the Rainbow Bridge, or gazing at the glowing Tokyo Tower in the night from among neon-lit skyscrapers, this uniquely Japanese visual spectacle is undoubtedly the most "one-of-a-kind" among all current racing games.

The changes in terrain elevation also bring an incredibly rich visual layering to this fictional Japan: for instance, a route extending from the foot of Mount Fuji to Tokyo Bay can, in just a few dozen minutes, link snow-covered passes, slopes in full cherry blossom bloom, dense mountain forests, and the suddenly open capital expressway.

This kind of experience was almost never seen in the series' earlier designs, which favored more open terrain.

Of course, when it comes to the joy of driving in Japan, we must mention a special type of track—the mountain roads inspired by places like Mount Haruna and Hakone. With their series of low-speed corners, narrow slopes with significant elevation changes, and limited visibility, they create a compact yet challenging driving rhythm. And it is precisely this essence of Japan's unique "tōge" roads that this game captures.

The term "tōge" (峠) literally means a mountain pass, but in the context of Japanese car culture, its meaning has long surpassed the geographical concept. It is on these mountain roads that Japan gave birth to a unique "tōge racing" culture: downhill duels, tire management, the millimeters of braking points, and even the well-known "drainage ditch drift"—through works like *Initial D*, the Japanese have showcased to car enthusiasts around the world tales of breathtaking mountain road racing.

Playground Games has clearly done extensive research on this. Not only have they accurately recreated the physical form of the Tōge roads, but they have also impressively incorporated the driving experience of "seeking ultimate control in narrow spaces" into the track design itself. While exploring the map, players can start a standard Tōge race at any time and feel the traditional Japanese racing experience deep in the mountains at night.

But this is just one part of the driving experience in Forza Horizon 6. When you leave the Tōge and enter the city, the driving experience immediately shifts to a completely different rhythm: weaving through the neon-lit intersections of Shibuya, or cruising on the Metropolitan Expressway while dodging relatively dense traffic and enjoying the night scenery. And when the wheels leave the city and head into the countryside, passing through rice fields and coastlines lined with wheat fields and single-family homes, it offers yet another entirely different visual experience.

The previous title, Forza Horizon 5, was criticized for its vast flat deserts and farmland. While that openness was realistic, it diluted much of the driving enjoyment. This time, Japan's diverse terrain fundamentally reshapes the driving rhythm: the mountain roads feature continuous sharp turns and elevation changes, the city has a layered structure of elevated roads and inner streets intertwined, and the countryside offers wide straights and rolling roads.

In the previous titles of the series, players were often seeking the joy of driving; but in Horizon 6, no matter the terrain, the thrill of driving is always proactive and ever-present. Frankly, I think Playground Games has reached a level of mastery over open-world environments that is almost "fully refined."

Before discussing the gameplay of this installment, I kept pondering one question: Why has the Horizon series, as a spin-off, become an indispensable name in open-world racing games over the past decade? What is its core difference from other racing games?

The answer might lie in the fact that from the very beginning, this series chose a completely different path.

Horizon has never sold itself on strict realistic physics models, nor does it require players to master precise racing lines or throttle control. What it does is take "Car Festival" as a core concept and build a rich and concrete content system around it. Here, driving is not about defeating opponents but a way to interact with the world.

Bringing this understanding back to "Horizon 6," I found its quality still astonishingly high — a vast map, diverse tracks, and plenty of collectible elements. Compared to the previous focus on lively events centered around the "Horizon Festival," this installment adds a parallel gameplay path called "Exploring Japan": the former emphasizes proving driving skills through road races, off-road rallies, and festival events, while the latter encourages players to collect mascots and billboards scattered across the map, participating in "day trips" to famous landmarks like a tourist, exploring iconic sites everywhere.

In fact, these two parallel routes give players greater autonomy: racing enthusiasts can focus on single-player or multiplayer competitions, while casual players can set autopilot on mountain roads, leisurely cruise along, and incidentally discover legendary cars hidden in barns, crash into mascots representing local characteristics, or catch a glimpse of used cars with "for sale" signs by the roadside — seeing those "discount" placards, I felt this really has a Japanese flavor to it.

Compared to its predecessor, which immediately threw the entire open world at the player, this game's regions feel more like they unlock gradually as you progress through the Horizon Festival events. While you can completely ignore the system's guidance and freely go anywhere on the map, at least the early stages don't leave you feeling overwhelmed. Another notable improvement is the "fast travel" system—once you've visited a location, you can instantly teleport back to it for free at any time, no longer requiring extra resources like in the previous game. Clearly, Forza Horizon 6 aims for that "unrestrained" sense of freedom: go wherever you want, whenever you want.

From the moment the "Horizon Festival" used "wristbands" as a progress indicator, I could already sense that Playground Games wanted to make Forza Horizon 6 a "collection of the series' best features"—the wristband system was originally a classic design from the first Forza Horizon, and the races also adopt the first game's approach of restricting car usage based on track and event type. For longtime fans of the series, this return carries a nostalgic charm, and it further fuels the desire to explore the game itself.

So when experiencing Horizon 6, I can't help but feel the familiarity that comes from this "grand synthesis." Whether it's the driving feel, the festival's mission structure, the qualification system, or the various challenges scattered across the map, this game largely continues the framework of the previous two titles. Apart from race types like road racing, off-road rally, and off-road racing, new additions such as Touge duels and delivery missions are just icing on the cake—players who have played previous titles won't find them unfamiliar.

To be honest, for a series with total sales of tens of millions of copies, this continuity itself is not a problem—after all, no one would easily change a core experience that has been proven successful, especially when that core experience is something no other studio can replicate.

What truly sets Horizon 6 apart from its predecessors might be those things that only work in Japan.

For example, the "giant mecha racing" level previously revealed by the official, or the scene of racing side by side with a Shinkansen. These contents can be said to be the most distinctive elements of Horizon—its temperament is never serious and restrained, but lively, extroverted, and even carries a bit of a circus-like carnival feeling.

Think about racing against a jet fighter in Forza Horizon 4, or going head-to-head with a giant transport plane on the runway in Forza Horizon 5... These over-the-top spectacles have long been a staple of the series. I feel that Forza Horizon 6 is filled with Playground Games' imagination of Japan: JAXA's spacecraft, the bullet train speeding by, and the popular J-POP radio station. All these elements together certainly make for a bustling and exciting experience.

But I can't help feeling a bit conflicted.

I understand that this is just how Forza Horizon expresses itself, and I admit that it makes perfect sense in terms of entertainment. However, when these elements are so heavily concentrated in the context of Japan, I feel they come across less as the result of deep understanding and more like a British stereotype of Japan: giant robots, the Shinkansen, cherry blossom trees — these symbols are indeed part of Japan, but when they are presented to me so densely and so cliché, the intention screaming "Look, this is Japan!" feels a bit too on the nose.

In other words, it is indeed trying hard to present Japanese car culture, but all I can feel is that it merely puts on a Japanese shell. The core could be swapped to any other country and it would still seem to work.

For example, the abundance of left-hand drive cars in the game is a case in point. Japan drives on the left, and vehicles in real life are right-hand drive. This detail is not insignificant for a title that prioritizes immersion. You can go overboard with the spectacle, keep the story lighthearted, and offer all sorts of flashy itasha decals — but when it comes to "cars" themselves, a carelessness that shouldn't be there is revealed.

Of course, I understand that creating right-hand drive versions of all vehicles exclusively for the Japanese market would require considerable resources. But the issue is that this is the same studio that meticulously renders the refraction of raindrops on windshields. So for a game that celebrates the freedom of driving, where exactly should the line be drawn when it comes to the treatment of "cars"?

As I write this, I realize that this "sense of contradiction" may stem from the JDM culture I initially envisioned, which is not present in *Forza Horizon 6*.

To convey the weight of this absence, I feel it's necessary to first elaborate on JDM culture itself — not just what it is, but more importantly, why it has exerted such a lasting and profound appeal on car enthusiasts around the world.

JDM, which stands for Japanese Domestic Market, literally refers to vehicles and parts intended for the Japanese domestic market. However, in the context of global car culture, its meaning has long transcended a mere market category, evolving into a unique aesthetic system and lifestyle.

It is not a story about "owning" a certain car, but about "how you treat" a car.

From a cultural psychology perspective, the allure of JDM lies precisely in its "imperfection" and "accessibility." Unlike the distant perfectionism of European supercars, the core appeal of JDM is that it tells a story of "possibility": a factory-stock Nissan Silvia or Toyota AE86, through the hands and judgment of its owner, can challenge high-performance machines that cost several times more on a mountain road.

What this car brings is often not about wealth, but a story of skill, patience, and personality. This identification with the "driver" themselves is the very charm that allows JDM culture to transcend borders and continue to captivate generation after generation of enthusiasts.

Going further, the formation of JDM aesthetics itself carries a unique philosophical nuance. In the 1970s and 1980s, an unwritten "gentlemen's agreement" formed within the Japan Automobile Manufacturers Association: domestic models were limited to a top speed of 180 km/h and a horsepower cap of 280 hp. This self-regulation, motivated by road safety concerns, did not stifle the pursuit of performance. Instead, it forced engineers to focus on lightweighting, chassis tuning, and turbocharging — since absolute power could not be the winning factor, every single horsepower had to be pushed to its ultimate limit.

It was precisely this "dance in chains" that gave birth to iconic modification symbols later revered by car enthusiasts worldwide, such as HKS blow-off valves, TE37 wheels, and APR carbon fiber spoilers. These components were never merely about "looking good"; their functionality came first. This behavior of refining technology to the extreme constitutes the very foundation of JDM aesthetics.

In other words, the true appeal of JDM does not lie in "speed," but in how it demonstrates the possibility of outsmarting brute force and transcending limits through ingenuity. This narrative carries a natural appeal, allowing every ordinary person to find a moment they can connect with.

At the same time, JDM is by no means a culture limited to modifications alone; it is a living entity nurtured by specific road ecosystems, underground racing culture, and mass media. From the late 1980s to the 1990s, street racing in Japan splintered into several distinct factions: the "Wangan-zoku," known for extreme speed runs on the Tokyo Bay coastline of the Capital Expressway; the "Touge-zoku," who competed in downhill speeds on mountain passes like Hakone and Haruna; and the "Drift-zoku," who favored sideways sliding maneuvers in their driving battles.

It was precisely this raw, law-skirting real-world ecosystem—rough-edged and operating on the fringes of legality—that later gave birth to cultural classics like *Initial D* and *Wangan Midnight*.

The reason these works resonate across borders is likely because they transformed real physical spaces—steep downhill curves on winding roads, bustling loop lines of the expressway, quiet rural paths—into "stages" that carry narrative and emotion. Those iconic cars were given personalities; circuits like Irohazaka, Asan, and Happōgahara became vessels for different memories, and every undulation of the road became intertwined with the fate of the driver.

And it is precisely on this point that *Forza Horizon 6* reveals its limitations.

I must admit, the game's recreation of the terrain is meticulously detailed to an almost "maddening" degree: the five consecutive hairpin turns of Mount Haruna, the loop structure of the Shuto Expressway, and the undulating curves of Hakone's Nanamagari have all been replicated into the map with exceptional technical precision. The in-game list of JDM vehicles is also remarkably complete, featuring the Supra, GT-R, RX-7, NSX, Silvia, and Fairlady. Yet these roads and cars feel more like collectibles; every time I make a selection, it's as if I'm taking them out of a display cabinet, polishing them, and then neatly putting them back in place.

After choosing the name Takumi and driving the AE86 Trueno down Mount Haruna—the real-life inspiration for Akina—I still didn't feel like I had truly experienced JDM culture. There was no deeper interaction between fellow car enthusiasts, no discussions about turbo pressure, no legends tied to these specific models. The roads have been physically recreated, but they lack the legendary tales of some unnamed driver conquering a certain corner.

《Horizon 6》understands the “material shell” of JDM, but fails to grasp its “spiritual core”—those stories about people and cars, people and roads. The true charm of JDM has never been merely cold mechanical parameters or geographical coordinates; it is the interpersonal relationships and cultural memories that grow around a car and a road. A car club exchanging tuning tips at a service station in the dead of night, an old driver telling a newcomer the history of a particular curve, a community spontaneously forming unwritten racing rules on a certain mountain road—these seemingly trivial scenes are exactly the most vibrant part of JDM culture.

Yet 《Horizon 6》precisely lacks this construction of a “community.” It gave me a perfect Mount Haruna, but told me no stories about this mountain; it gave me a classic NSX, but did not create an emotional connection beyond numbers between this car and any corner of the world.

I can still perform a spectacular drift on these roads, but after that, it failed to “pass down” these things, and what is missing is the most touching part of JDM culture.

PS: For more stories about JDM, please refer to our site’s series: 《JDM Warring States History》

Additionally, I have some doubts about the "off-road racing" design in this title.

Japan indeed has a genetic foundation for off-road racing. I'm not just referring to international events like the WRC Japan leg; it's worth noting that the Hokkaido Rally has been Japan's first FIA-sanctioned international rally since 2002, renowned for its high-speed forest stages, and its event structure is often likened to WRC-level stages. At the same time, Japan has a completely self-contained grassroots off-road culture: it's not the American style of massive pickup trucks jumping across deserts, but rather a culture built around small K-Car rugged 4x4s like the Suzuki Jimny.

Although Japan's terrain is primarily mountainous, the area of national parks available for off-roading is extremely limited—27 million acres compared to the United States' 840 million acres, which can only be described as "pitifully small." However, this geographical constraint has given rise to a unique "small but refined" off-road philosophy. Japanese off-road enthusiasts have invented "Jimnying"—venturing in convoys deep into forests and riverbeds late at night, climbing narrow, rocky mountain trails at low speeds with high torque. The challenge lies not in speed but in traversability and vehicle control. This mindset of turning "limitations" into "extremes" is strikingly similar to the JDM street car culture's ethos of "maximizing lightweighting and chassis tuning when power is capped."

However, in "Horizon 6", the off-road content feels somewhat "rough" to me: the game lists off-road races and mud racing as core event types alongside road races and mountain races, continuing the series' long-standing design philosophy of a "road/mud/off-road" three-way split.

Indeed, Japan's mountainous terrain provides a natural canvas for off-road track design, and the game features many varied road conditions that instantly switch from paved surfaces to suburban rice paddies. But the problem lies in the off-road experience itself, which remains fundamentally the same American-style presentation that the Horizon series has always emphasized: extreme speed and aerial acrobatics, with vehicles soaring through the air and roaring roughly across vast open landscapes. All of this has almost nothing to do with Japan's real off-road culture.

Japanese off-road culture is about slow, precise climbing on narrow forest paths, and the battle over grip and lines on Dirt Trial courses where every inch counts. "Horizon 6" places off-road racing in a Japanese setting, but fails to capture the spirit of Japan's off-road culture – that philosophy of "doing big things with small tools," achieving results through finesse and skill rather than brute force.

So I think this issue is consistent with the essence revealed by the aforementioned "absence of JDM culture": a game can place an off-road racing event on the map of any country, but when it comes to Japan, there has been no re-examination or adjustment. Suzuka Circuit is certainly a benchmark for international road courses, but in terms of off-road, the most unique content experiences of this region — the All-Japan Dirt Trial Championship, Jimny climbing culture, and even stilt-walking street parades — have not been transformed into interesting gameplay or spectacles.

I can drive a truck delivering packages in every city around the world, but the delivery gameplay itself is not what makes Japan distinctive. Compared to Forza Horizon 3's deep engagement with Australia's V8 muscle car culture, or Forza Horizon 4's solemn tribute to Britain's automotive heritage, why does this design philosophy stop when it comes to Japan?

The development team's choice of music radio stations in this title also suffers from what I feel is "not enough attention to detail."

In the entire radio playlist of this game, "City Pop," which is perfect for driving, is completely absent — names like 山下达郎, 竹内玛莉亚, 杏里, which are inseparable from the Japanese urban driving experience, do not appear at all. Also absent is Eurobeat. This music genre, marked by high BPM, dense synthesizer sounds, and euphoric melodies, has a very clear link to Japan's mountain road racing culture.

It is precisely because 《头文字D》 used Eurobeat as its core soundtrack that an entire generation firmly bound this music with the experience of "high-speed drifting on mountain roads at night," making it an inseparable part of Japanese car culture. For any player familiar with 《头文字D》, when driving an AE86 into the night of 榛名山, the background music that automatically plays in their mind is almost certainly Eurobeat — this is a conditioned reflex engraved in cultural DNA.

However, 《地平线 6》 is lacking in both aspects. The Japanese music actually included in the game is just some popular J-Pop tracks in the current mainstream Japanese market. From a commercial licensing perspective, this is an understandable choice — these tracks have high recognition, clear copyrights, and are sufficiently "Japanese" for ordinary players who are not familiar with car subculture.

But the problem is that there is a subtle mismatch between the rhythm, emotional curve, and spatial sense of J-Pop and the auditory experience needed for driving. J-Pop serves vocals and melodies, with its focus on singing; driving, especially alone on mountain roads or highways, requires a soundscape where engine noise, wind, and road sounds all become part of the music.

City Pop's bass and synthesizers can resonate cleverly with the late-night city, while Eurobeat's frantic beats perfectly match continuous curves and the bouncing tachometer needle. Yet J-Pop's positioning always leaves me feeling a bit unsatisfied.

I'm not saying the radio quality of this game is poor. The globally-minded track selection is still a safe choice, and it's not wrong as "music to drive to." But the problem is, when the stage is set in Japan, when the development team has prepared a brand-new driving experience on this country's mountain roads, the selection of music is not just about filling a playlist—it is a cultural stance, an answer to the development team's understanding of "local car culture."

And what "Horizon 6" gave me was: it did not choose the sounds that are directly connected to Japanese car culture and truly resonate with car enthusiasts, but instead those that are most easily recognized as "Japanese." This choice itself is what I referred to as "conservative."

However, after pointing out the shortcomings above, I still want to emphasize one fact: all the criticism is built on the foundation that "Horizon 6" is already an extremely outstanding racing game.

Frankly, I don't think "Horizon 6" did anything wrong — from a game development perspective, it’s almost flawless. Just as I wrote at the beginning of the article, "It stands on the most unique and profound soil of global car culture, choosing the consistent creative philosophy of the Forza Horizon series." It looks like Japan, and it drives like Japan. From start to finish, it remains that carnival that immerses countless players and makes them unable to pull away.

To be honest, for a series that has sold tens of millions of copies cumulatively, maintaining the continuity of its core experience is not an issue in itself—after all, no one would easily tamper with a formula that has already been proven successful. Yet Forza Horizon 6 still delivers a sincere effort on top of that formula. Whether it's the parallel gameplay brought by the "Collector's Logbook" and "Festival Events," the liberation of the fast travel system, or the classic return of the wristband system, these changes, while not groundbreaking, all make new attempts in the right direction. They make the game more comfortable, more liberating, and more substantial while retaining the series' identity.

When I'm drifting solo on Mount Haruna late at night, flooring it across the Tokyo Bay bridge, or cruising aimlessly along the countryside rice paddies—the joy I feel in these moments is exactly the same as when I first opened the original Horizon years ago. That might be the core of this series: it doesn't need to preach any profound lesson; it just needs to put your hands on the wheel and tell you that the road ahead is yours to drive however you want.

So for players (including myself) who expected Forza Horizon 6 to undergo some kind of essential transformation due to its Japanese setting, this title may bring a bit of disappointment. But for the vast majority who simply want to enjoy the thrill of driving in a virtual world, it remains the best choice in its genre—no exceptions.

"Forza Horizon 6 remains the excellent Horizon. As the sixth mainline entry in the series, it reaches new heights across all quantifiable technical metrics: its map design sets the benchmark for this generation, its visual presentation is stunning enough, and the core driving experience, after years of refinement, has reached a state of mature reliability—something you can trust without a second thought. From any rational perspective, it deserves all the praise a great racing game can earn. So I believe that any player who enjoys driving and can find joy in it should give this title a try."

However, for a work to make the leap from "good" to "outstanding," sometimes it's just that final push.

The name of this game is "Japan" — what Playground Games has is the most abundant, unique, and narratively promising stage in global car culture, but their approach to this stage is more like an outside curator than a firsthand storyteller. They have brought Japan's physical forms — mountains, seas, skyscrapers, torii gates, cherry blossoms, snow, the Hachiko statue — into the game with extreme precision, yet they never truly stepped inside. What ultimately appears before the player is merely a technically flawless "Japan theme park."

Please identify the language of the following text and translate it into English: This may be my final review of 《地平线 6》: it is not a failure, but a regret. This regret is not because it was poorly done, but because it could have done more. When a game already possesses the industry's top resources, technology, and design capabilities, when it finally stands on the stage that car enthusiasts around the world have been waiting for years, if what it presents is merely 'no mistakes,' then that itself already means a certain degree of mistake.

Japanese car culture shouldn't just be a map. It should be a memory, an unknown waiting for you at the end of a curve. This time, I saw a lot, felt a lot, yet never truly touched that elusive thing that could leave a lasting impression on me. Gazing at the beauty of Kinkaku-ji from afar, watching the autumn leaves blanketing the mountains from the highway—that excitement was real. But when I stopped the car, opened the camera mode, and tried to snap some beautiful pictures, I realized: this place really does look like Japan, so much like it.

But in the end, it's just similar.

PS: As for the poor localization like translating "good" into "uh-huh", I won't even mention it. To me, these are not big deals.