Granathar

Wasted potential. Japan is just a map, pretty much barely anything else. Campaign is bad, boring and soulless, live service is bad, boring and soulless. Meta is bad, everything is AWD V10 swap with rally tires. Game made with least possible amount of effort as FH5 reskin. If it's your first Forza Horizon - you may like it, if it's not ...well - then it's just FH4-FH5 with different map and even more devoid of any soul. There is a chance that DLCs will change something, but I wouldn't count on it as they would have to remake like half of the game.

I'm veteran of the series that literally grew up with Gothic and Gothic 2, and this remake exceeded my expectations. First trailers and demo made me very pessimistic about the future, but today after 48 hours for single playthrough there is nothing else left to say than - "they did it". It has the heart and soul of the original game with only some things changed or added (and nearly all of them for the better), they served true oldschool action RPG experience in 2026 rather than mutilating the original to appease ADHD zoomers because some guy from marketing and sales said that it has to fit "wide audience" and be "inclusive" to be a success. Thankfully there is no inclusivity and audience will come anyway, because it's just good and fresh, especially in 2026 with all RPG games stuffed to the limit with various QoL like for example quest markers or journal that tells you exactly what to do so you don't need to pay too much attention to listening. It's climatic, immersive and absolutely unforgivable in first few hours, especially if you don't know original like back of your hand. Veterans will obviously be pleased, but I advise trying even if you are not a life-long fan. They just don't make games like this these days, apart from maybe soulslike genre and you may accidentally fall in love like many of us did already in 2001.

Well, it was certainly one of the games of all time. Art is very interesting, but plot is one big deus ex machina where things happen because they happen and writing is quite bad in general, I had hard time to get immersed. At first I thought plot is some kind of parody of 80s action movies (because some lab rat nerd becomes Bruce Lee x Terminator x Spider Man only because AI took a free ride in his head), but it's actually not. And if we take it seriously, then it's not too good plot-wise. Many things in plot are so far-fetched that I would laugh if it was actually a parody. It's certainly a game worth playing, but it certainly won't change your life and won't stay in your head for long.

I really don't get the hate. I mean yeah, it's a bit unpolished, I encountered few annoying bugs that stopped me from getting all of the lugloxes, but nothing really gamebreaking. Performance wasn't bad at all for me, few hiccups here and there, but with FSR it was totally alright on 7900XTX + 7800X3D. I had my moment of doubt in first like 30 minutes of the game when it kinda felt like slop where I dropped it for like 1-2 days because it just didn't hook me up (maybe that's the moment most people wrote their reviews). But when I got back after work to wash my brain a bit - it clicked for me, because that's the intended purpose. Generally speaking it's a game that is doing what it's meant to do - just shut your brain down, relax and listen to some dry jokes. Developers themselves are pretty damn sure that many of these jokes are totally dry, and that's what actually makes them funny (not all of them are even that dry though). Skateboarding is quite well done and fun, shooting is pretty fun too, locations are fine. Plot is not too complicated, but it's not meant to be - this is not freaking Witcher 3 with deep roleplaying, this game is meant to be "dumb", you are supposed to relax in there, not contemplate moral choices or whatever. It may not be for everyone or not for everyone in given particular moment where they want some deeper immersion or something, but if you just want to chill after work - it does the job very well. I don't really know why people are complaining - maybe they had worse experience than me with bugs or performance, that's fair. But when it comes to what this game is supposed to do - I'm not really sure what were they expecting to say it's bad. It delivers what it's supposed to deliver: low effort fun that's supposed to reset your brain after everyday struggles. Complex enough to not make you sleep, simple enough to not make you tired. PS. I'm still really curious what Apples did.