Is it just me, or is this game just a rehash of Lego Champions and Storm Island?

Forza Horizon Forza Horizon 5 FH5 Discussion
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I want to love this game, and I am already sinking an ungodly amount of hours into it, but I just feel a bit… duped?

The “accolades” in this game which is their new progression model is 100% Lego Champions. Which is also one of the things I hated most about that expansion, but I realise that’s a personal choice.

I also feel like the game just lacks any sort of heart or soul. I feel they had this huge feature checklist they had to implement, and that’s all this game is so far. A collection of features.

Oh we NEED to have an insane mountain-drift-zone just like in Storm Island. Okay… stick it on the Storm Island mount. .sorry, volcano. We need players to think they have a choice in their progression - Okay, let them choose what chapter of the story they do next. What? No, the choice is irrelevant, they need to play every chapter anyway, and sometimes choosing the 2nd thing first makes no sense story-wise. What? No, after you choose the icon moves around so if you want to play a previous chapter you have to go to the NEXT chapter to select it. What? You’re confused? So am I mate, so am I.

And the way this game chose to unlock content, jesus. 5 minutes in and the game is already full of stuff to do, ALL OVER THE MAP. Previously at least we’d be drip-fed content so we don’t suffer from confusion, but this time it’s like they just stopped caring and threw everything they had at you from the get-go. Here’s everthing. You decide what you want to do with it. But I don’t want that! I want there to be an end-game, where I feel like I progressed and evolved in the game.

But for me at least, it feels like 3-4 hours in and I’m already in the end-game, because there’s no real structure. My map is so full of s**** I have to do, it’s so anxiety-inducing. Hello Far Cry 3/4, hello Assassin’s Creed 2/3/4. There are better ways to gate content, you know.

Also why am I being called Superstar all the time? Enough! Half the time it feels passive-aggressive. Like I am a person, I chose a name, call me by that or not at all. Don’t objectify me.

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I agree, it’s too complicated.

Another thing, why does it keep awarding me things, but instead of just giving it to me, it makes me go to another screen, find the thing myself, press on it to ‘open’ it and only then give it to me? Are those extra steps necessary?

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You 100% correct, I completely forgot it did that. 100% boggles the mind why they would complicate the UX in such baffling ways.

Here’s a fun anecdote. I completed the V10 story, and really wanted to get the Jesko. So I went ahead and bought the Jesko. Hours later, going through my accolades screen. I GOT A JESKO FROM THE ACCOLADES. But nobody told me that. I now have to make a point to go and check that stupid screen EVERY TIME just in case I won something? Come on…

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Finally a player that understands what these developers have actually created, a rehashed piece of garbage.

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Sorry that you don’t you like the game, but the truth is that the majority of players love it. Playground Games have truly created another amazing game. Calling it a ‘rehashed piece of garbage’ is an extremely stupid and idiotic statement.

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o.O How much do you get? :wink:
Not all the ppl are here! But look at MS Store game is already down to 2.25 Stars for all Editions. GamePass version is 2.8 Stars. Look at the reviews on all edt lots of ppl cant even start the game.
Same for me cant install on pc.

Sure you can play most of the singleplayer stuff fine and it looks great. But then in long term, u have to deal with broken/stripped online mode

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I agree as well, especially with your point of having to go to another screen, SCROLL THROUGH TABS to find the thing myself, etc. The reward originally flashes on the screen very briefly so I usually don’t remember what reward I got, and have to spend time searching for it. Not good.

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I’m honestly confused by what exactly you want?

Like you want it to have some big whoopty do grand ending as if it was an RPG or something?
Just from your gripes it feels like you don’t really want a forza game, like the only thing that’s honestly different with the progression of this title is that you cam choose what section you want to work on first.
Say you want to do the PR stunts because that’s what you honestly like, you can just unlock Rush first and jump, speed, drift explore all you want without other things getting in the way of what you want.
And when you get enough accolades to unlock the next part, you don’t have to chose the next thing to unlock right away, just press B.

It’s really as simple as that at the end of the day tbh, like no one if forcing people to push through unlocking each part within the first hour and have stuff everywhere.
And even if you have the accolades to unlock everything, no one is forcing you to keep everything on the map, yeah just like FH4 the map gets cluttered once you have the different types of races unlocked but there is a reason why a map filter is added.
Like don’t want to see all those pesky boards you’ve found or just don’t want to see a set type of event you might of already finished? Boom in 1 second they are gone.

At the end of the day no one is forcing you to unlock everything right away, if you do that it’s all on you.
The freedom of being able to choose what section you want to unlock honestly feels nice rather than the game just being like here, you’re forced to do these 10 dirt races or the 3 road races you have left but you still gotta do those other ones you might not really enjoy doing but have to just so you get to the next part that the game is holding your hand leading you to.

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I 100% disagree with what you’re saying. If they weren’t trying to force me to progress in the game, it wouldn’t interrupt me every 10 minutes trying to force me to upgrade my festival site. I wouldn’t mind a little notification in the corner of the screen every once and a while, but literally stopping me from doing anything and taking me to the festival screen is a bit much.

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There are plenty of racing games with an “RPG” sense of progression and rewarding endings. And many of those have a legacy of being the best racing games ever by racing game fans.
Need for Speed Underground 2, Need for Speed Most Wanted, Midnight Club LA, hell even Grand Turismo 4.

The problem is the way the Horizon series doesn’t really have a buildup to anything at all.
You’re a racing god superstar right away.
You can chose how to do every single race. Any car you want, any class you want etc. (aside from the scripted showcase events)
You can obtain plenty of supercars and ridiculous X class cars within the first couple hours that carry you through the entire game.

In my opinion, each racing series (apex, baja, street scene etc.) should be unlocked one-by-one and have certain restrictions for each one that you work your way up to driving faster and faster cars. Then after each race is completed you unlock the options to create the lab events on that track and use any class or car you want.

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Lego made you do EVERY LITTLE THING to get 100% or at least to get the final unlock. There needs to be some breathing room. You shouldn’t have to do everything, maybe someone gets stuck in one thing. It was a bad and frustrating progression system. You have kids playing you seem to forget that. If I had trouble how are they going to do it.

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It’s not garbage but it’s definitely over engineered. Having to go get the accolade awards is stupid. Same thing in the playlist but at least that’s only one screen to check. The playlist rewards used to just pop the next time you went in, now you have to hit x to redeem. Those are small frustrations compared to your car stopping dead and losing a skill chain when you have a new festival upgrade or there’s a connection issue.

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I wouldn’t call it garbage either. It’s definitely a spectacular game, and probably the most expansive and the most content-filled racing game out there. But therein lies the problem for me. I don’t want a game that looks good on paper. I want a game that’s fun to play and treats the player with dignity and respect.

To better formulate what I was trying to say - I feel like this game was designed by committee and designed to fit certain production/marketing/corporate criteria, with a secondary focus falling on the “soul” of the game, or rather what gives you that dopamine shot to make you keep playing.

To elaborate, on paper this game is fantastic. There’s nothing that you can say bad about it on paper. That’s why the disappointment is so big when actually playing it.

This hasn’t happened in previous games, and I’ve played all FH games since FH2, but with FH5 the “cogs behind the game” are obviously apparent. It’s clear (to me, at least) that some features were added just so that there would be content in the game, not because they were particularly fun, or actually made the game better as a whole. I would say that the entire UI and UX in this game are net-inferior compared to previous games. Frustratingly so. Almost everthing takes a button-press longer to perform, which is a cardinal sin in UX. Content/rewards are hidden in screens that players have to seek out. Game flow is stopped abruptly - which can cause frustration and should always be avoided. All of these make me feel like the players are not the primary concern of the developers. Otherwise the game would feel better, not worse, right?

And regarding my main gripe - the sheer amount of content and they way it’s presented. Having too much stuff thrown at you all at once can cause a serious adverse reaction and actually make you stop wanting to play the game. It’s the same reason why you spend 2 hours trying to find something to watch on Netflix, but then just watch Seinfeld or The Office. Call it choice anxiety, call it the paradox of choice what have you. Our brains are not good with dealing with a lot of conflicting information at the same time.

I feel like that game does exactly that - throws tons of content at me, most importantly - WHETHER I WANT IT OR NOT. If I had a choice, I would not have unlocked extra-outposts until I completed the previous one. Let me finish Apex, then get into Wilds, etc. BUT! THE GAME FORCES ME TO UNLOCK MORE CONTENT. See what I mean? I don’t want to unlock more races, I’d rather just finish the 20 I already have, but I can’t do that. The game throws another 20 races at me. I feel like there’s always more content to do, but not enough time to finish everything until MORE CONTENT gets stuffed down your throat. So the reaction? Okay, I’ll unlock EVERYTHING so then I don’t have to worry about being bombarded with new S***. Then I’ll be at peace. But after you do that, Hello! You just finished the game, you’re in the end-game now!

So the entire game just feels like a race towards nowhere. I’m trying to escape the inescapable feeling of just having chores to tick off a list. There’s absolutely zero fun in playing like that. I hope this makes more sense to those who didn’t understand what I was trying to say in the first place.

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Completely agree. I went from super excited to bored within 20 minutes as this felt like recycled content.

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I so agree with you i’m now just driving along roads stopped doing racing as it felt it was same over and over ,i feel fh 3 and fh 4 looked and played better , this seems that they have tossed this out to say look at how good series x is with is better graphics , and the bugs and crashes starting to get on my nerves

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“there’s not enough content” “There’s too much content” There’s not this or too much of that… we can go around all day with this. It’s never ever going to be just right for everyone, especially for a game like this. You got people in the hundreds already. Then you got people like me slowly grinding away taking pictures and trying every little thing at 20+ with double the time with the level. But i love the ticks too so

As for garbage, my lord find some real garbage games. What an insult to the people that made this.

Everyone’s got opinions but calling it utter garbage is horrible.

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I wouldn’t call it garbage, but so far it is my least favorite of all the Horizons. The original (Horizon1) is still my favorite, followed in order by 2, 3, 4 and then 5 in terms of how much I like them. I thought maybe I was remembering only the good parts of the older games, so I fired up Horizon 1 again. It is still my favorite.

Horizon 5 has way too much sameness as Horizon 4 for me. OK, they changed the names of some of the things, added accolades, etc, but still I feel like I just moved from England to Mexico. I have completed a good portion of the tasks at this point and feel like I have ‘done it all before’ and am just going through the motions.

I am enjoying the new location, though. I give PG an A+ on the map and scenery details. Some of the locations are breathtaking (well, for a game). The details in some of the areas that one might not normally travel to are incredible.

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I have never really played horizon story mode. Its all side nonsense to me i make money of selling cars i dont want and just race around in cars i like. I made 20mil already i have never really thought of forza as being in depth or really having a story i cold care less about accolades.

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