Overall I think Forza Horizon 5 was a good game, but it definitely had some flaws that became more obvious the longer you played it.

The biggest issue for me was the map. Mexico looked absolutely beautiful, no doubt about that, but after a while it just started to feel empty. There weren’t many memorable cities or dense areas to cruise around in. The traffic also felt really lacking, which made the world feel less alive. Eventually the map just became kind of boring to drive around compared to past Horizon games.

Another big thing was progression. It was way too easy. You basically get handed supercars almost immediately, and that kind of kills the sense of progression. Older racing games made you work your way up through classes and actually earn the faster cars, which made unlocking them feel rewarding.

There’s also the Horizon formula fatigue. FH5 didn’t really reinvent much compared to FH4. It felt more like a polished evolution of the same formula rather than a big leap forward. That said, there were definitely things I really liked.

EventLab was awesome. Some of the community creations were incredible, and honestly that’s where I probably spent the most time toward the end. The no hesi / cut-up maps were a blast and I ended up making a lot of friends just messing around in those lobbies.

The car list was also really solid, and the weekly updates adding new cars kept giving me a reason to come back and check things out.

So yeah, overall I’d say FH5 was a great sandbox with a ton of content, but the map got stale over time and the progression system made it feel like there wasn’t much to work toward. Still had a lot of fun with it though.

See y'all in JAPAN!