I felt the same way about FH4 when it launched, like it was mostly a bad copy of FH3 with more bugs, much worse progression, a much less interesting map, annoying forced seasons, worse multiplayer and a lot more locked cars and chores each week.
It wasn’t as bad as FH5 at launch (at least the game didn’t crash all the time), but for me the Forza Horizon magic stopped with FH3. FH4 and FH5 both feel like they were built for gamepass to get you hooked on trying to catch exclusive cars (even FH3 suffered from this to a lesser degree) and just aren’t satisfying to play compared to the earlier games.
Not much to disagree on here - those features were in previous games. I am not saying that this prevents anybody from enjoying them in FH 5, merely pointing out that they are not new.
I have said it before - FH5 is a “best hits” compilation and as always in those cases, turns out fans like the product for different reasons so each would have a slightly different ‘hits’ selection. Can’t please everybody.
I like it too, I play probably as much as I used to with previous Horizons but I do understand the argument of a lack of “wow” effect for this game, especially for horizon veterans and it feels like they have tried to do too much of a fan service by re-introducing a lot of features but taking the edge off out them so they might be appealing to wider audience - like with seasons, I loved that winter was so drastically different to other seasons in FH4 but many complained about it so now, we technically have seasons change which appeal to “me” but they bring almost no changes to gameplay so they appeal to the other camp of the supporters. Seemingly everybody got what they wanted but not that many are 100% happy
Just a quick observation and one that has bugged me from the get go, but does anyone feel like FH5 tried to copy Dirt 5 in its race types?
I mean Baja for example, and how the progression to unlock them roughly looked similar to that of Dirt 5. I think this is what’s bugged me between FH4 and FH5 the most, as I didn’t like the switch between dirt 4 and 5 for the same reasons.
I suppose I’ll always enjoy FH4 because it reminded me of my home Country “Scotland”, driving through “a part” of Edinburgh was special, and obviously the AI in 4 wasn’t anywhere near as bad as 5. Oh and I forgot about the seasons, the diversity they brought was welcoming. The seasons in 5 just look the same, excluding a bit of snow on top of the volcano, and some sandstorms. I think they listened to the majority of players who hated Winter, when in fact it was one of my favourite Seasons. Ah well… can’t please us all I suppose.
I like FH5, but I still feel a large part of the game is missing, no doubt we’ll see these added back as “new exclusive” content, when they get round to coding them back in., who knows?
I still think FH3 though is my favourite out the series, even though the map was smaller, it somehow felt larger, hard to explain.
You can genuinely feel the rush that FH5 was developed in, it feels like a stripped down, lacklustre version of what FH4 was, with a reskin and some slightly different cars and altered features.
FH3 was my favourite also, but I think the combination of it being in Australia (my home country), it being my very first Horizon and Forza game and just playing it at a better time in my life has all amounted to it being the best Horizon game ever, and I doubt it’ll ever be topped for me.
You are spot on, but FH4 had the feeling of England. I was not a big fan of the seasons, but it gave the game something. In FH5 the map is awesome, but races are handicaped like FH3 and FH4 was. There are almost 600 roads in FH5, and only 1/3 or less are used for the career races. And now were FH5 is set in Mexico, i don’t get the mexican wibe i was hoping for. No mexican radio stations, those radio stations there is, was the same in FH3 and FH4. When i selecting cars in FH5 i feel, it is the car list from FH4, with all those lefthanded cars, feels like copy and past.
I was hoping for a bit more mexican feeling overall, but got stuck between England and Australia. Maybe it is just me, i do not know.
It is like Turn10 and Playground games, have lost what is the most important to a racing game, the racing feeling and the joy of it. Forza Horizon games is more about have many cars you can pick up, with out doing anything, and then sit and look at them. I have deleted my savefile 2 times now, and wanted to start again, just ended up chasing wheelspins. Too many cars and when i take any career race, i have that feeling of, have i raced on that road before. FH5 have the biggest map in any Horizon game, but still, we race on those same roads:-/
I miss the feeling FH1 and FH2 had, and FH3 was kind of okay. But you re right, FH5 do not have the feel and magic FH4 had or even FH3.
I agree, wish I didn’t but you are right. For me a lot of it has to do with the music, the music in FH5 is really bad. Then you have the location, Mexico, really, why? There is nothing there, no one vacations in Mexico unless it is in the California peninsula and that isn’t even really like the inside of Mexico, it is protected in many ways. I cannot wrap my head around the reasoning of this location but besides that there just isn’t anything special about this version, it is very lackluster. I miss the forzathon’s where you would see sometimes 20 or more people doing them, now 99% of the time I do them alone. There is no incentive to do anything with open multiplayer, in 4 we had the drift adventure and the like but now there is no reason to do any open races at all and with all the cheaters in open racing it’s 100% pointless.
I agree. Although It’s quite interesting if you think about it. Instead places everybody wants to go to, they can build Forza games around places everybody wants to leave. This primes the location for street racing and other nefarious activities. Like you’re in a hollowed out city, and only we remained…to race multi-million dollar Bugatti’s and Lambos. This is sort of the way I think about it when I’m playing Horizon 5 and I’m frustrated. It puts me in the zone.
What I hate about FH5 is the joy stolen from you while trying to beat drivatars on the level you used to beat them with eyes shut. Now it is hatred and frustration.
I still the “pass the chicken” stupid playground games. How pathetic and insulting these are. Speed up the car pass the crown and run . Do it 5 times.
I dont like play-alone Arcades. I played with online users 3 maybe 4 times .
I dont like the effort you need to make with festivals where in return you get lame car.
What I like about FH5? The fact that FH4 is there where I can come back to any time.
I think part of it has to do with what you played and when. FH4 is my favourite but it was my first horizon game and my first forza since the early days of the 360 with Motorsport. I played it from the early preorder release and completed every playlist until the launch of 5. It’s not perfect but I love it.
I never got the complaints about the map but since I kept hearing how much better the older ones were, I decided to try them out this past summer. I started with Horizon 1 because it was already in my library. I must have claimed it from games with gold and never realized I had it until I was looking through everything on the Series X. Long story short, it’s fine. It’s a good game but it feels very Need for Speed to me. Not a bad thing but nothing like fh4. I couldn’t find fh2 digitally but cdkeys had fh3 so that was next. It was better than the first one but the graphics are a bit flat compared to 4 despite the beautiful scenery. I do get what people say about the festival atmosphere of the earlier games. You can feel that in 1 through 3 but it’s not something I care about. I prefer the more open do whatever feeling of fh4.
I’m enjoying fh5 but it doesn’t hold a candle to 4 for me personally. There is something missing but I think a big part of it was that fh4 was such a leap from anything I had seen before. I missed most of the xbox one generation and hadn’t been playing much aside from messing around with gta5 on the 360 once in a while. I bought a One X specifically for fh4 and was blown away. FH5 is slightly better in some ways graphically and worse in others. The other thing is the disappointment with the bugs from day one. Maybe if it had been a joy to play from start I’d feel differently about it but there’s no way of knowing that now. I think if it had launched generally bug free, had Mexico city added to the current map and still had ranked, this forum would be a ghost town because there’d be very little to complain about.
You guys know that we’re talking about country that is closer to equator than US or UK where most of you live? That’s almost like you guys come to Finland and say “I don’t understand how you can have less than 6 hours of daylight per day for 1 month straight and how it’s reversed 6 months later.”
To be fair, the game doesn’t really have real seasons does it? One season there is a bit of rain, another there is some dust if you are in a certain part of the map. The problem is that, asides from those little bits, every single season is identical…at least in FH4, you could tell which season you were in as the scenery changed…in FH5, the scenery does not change at all…trees don’t have less leaves, things don’t look a different colour or whatever. Honestly? it’s almost as if they decided the country based on how much work they wanted put in to the weather system (I say put in as my understanding is that PGG didn’t do the weather stuff). Prior to the game, they were massively hyping up all these biomes and whatnot and they might as well saved their money as it is nothing close to what we were expecting.
Yeah, same here. According to the publicists, FH5 has achieved something like 5 million sales (…or was that 15 million? - I can’t recall which) I don’t understand why I don’t see other players? There have been times when I’ve been the only one in a team facing between 1 to 6 avatars. Looking for other players online sometimes doesn’t show anyone else… and I’ve had times when, according to the map, I’m the only person playing.
Whilst I’m in here having a rant I’d also like to say I too miss the four “proper” seasons of the higher and lower latitudes. At first, I hated winter in FH4, but then I found out how to tune a car for winter conditions and that opened up a whole new experience. I fail to see why anyone would fit snow tyres to a car in FH5 except for perhaps one race - the Caldera Scramble. Maybe USA or Canada would have been a better choice for terrain variety and seasonal changes?
I didn’t spend a lot of time with FH4 when it was released. Or 3. 2 is what I had played the most of.
But I’ve gone back and have been replaying them in order to get achievements and I don’t know why I slept on 4. It just feels complete and oozes style. I know it’s a bit of a bad comparison because 5 just came out but FH4 feels so much more alive than 5. Not just the map and the races but also the online community. I still get half a dozen people out so to play forzathons in 4, but 5 is a barren wasteland.
