Stay with 4 or go to 5?

Forza Horizon Forza Horizon 5 FH5 Discussion
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Hi! First off I want to say I did make a good faith effort to try to find a thread addressing my concerns with no luck so if this topic has been addressed, can someone kindly point me in the right direction.

Okay, I’m totally new to the Forza universe as well as this forum. About a month ago I had a choice between between FH4 or 5 on XBox One and as I’m neither a racing game fanatic nor a car guy but wanted to try something new I did what I always do and looked at game reviews within Microsoft’s store. FH4 reviews seemed overwhelmingly positive while FH5 was a mixed bag with players either loving or hating the game. The primary gripes seemed to be that FH5 is extremely buggy.

So given the knowledge that I had at that time I went with FH4 which had the additional bonus over FH5 of its premium game (all the bells and whistles) being on sale for extremely cheap in the Microsoft store. Long story short, I fell in love with FH4 (very addicting). The problem I noted was that a large segment of that community has moved over to FH5 which didn’t bother me initially as I was doing most everything solo. However, now I’m looking into clubs and such and noticing it’s a bit sparse. I’m not overly competitive (PvP) but having a social scene to the game would be nice.

With that in mind I’m revisiting the idea of getting FH5 as well but there’s the original problem of do I want to take a chance on a game that is quite a bit more expensive than FH4 and end up cussing out the world three days later because I find it unplayable? The bottom line question is should I take a chance on FH5 now or wait a while until some updates have cleared up problems and just continue learning the mechanics of the game on FH4? Any input is appreciated.

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I think that FH4 is still played plenty enough, so I’d wait for most of the major issues to be fixed.

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Depends on what you are interested to play.
If you want to play a racing game look out for something else outside the Forza Universe. In seasonal list most races have been cut out, reducing it to -currently- alternating 1 or 2 racing events per week. For online racing only one general solo pvp-mode remained, no filtering, no team races, no ranked. Nearly no nothing.
Can’t create private Lobbies instead to race with friends and specify an own series like in FH4 either: Erased.

If you are more interested in a fun stuff adventure-leisure parc for cars with nice alternating decorations and semiwellcreated stuntstuff for soloplay in an environment where others with ghosted cars are parallely somehow doing similar stuff it might be your game.
In the core it’s a collecting game. Devs give you housework (Do this, do that, doesn’t matter wether you like doing that) and as reward you get cars to complete your collectors album.
Main driver to play it is Fomo: Fear of missing out one of the reward cars that you can’t buy anyway and might take long to return accessible in some other way.

It’s pretty buggy but that’s -at least not on the xbox- not exactly game breaking. It’s just not making any relevant offer to players whos main interest in so called racing games actually is racing

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For me the transition to 5 wasn’t really worth it. After the gloss of the new map, tracks & cars vanished I often found myself without motivation to do anything. Online racing is a disaster and I still don’t like the new handling model on tarmac.
So, now with Gran Turismo 7 and Elden Ring available I completely lost interest in Horizon 5. Both games have way higher production quality and racing in Gran Turismo is actually fun.
Only getting the weekly new car and call it done.
Horizon 4 could bind me a lot longer - especially after the refinement to online racing. Maybe Series 6 with the rumoured online racing overhaul can bring me back to Horizon 5.

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So many of us are looking elsewhere to help pass the time. I spent countless hours playing Avengers before FH5 was released, Guardians of the Galaxy will be on gamepass next week and I’ll be spending most of time playing that. I’ll do the weekly stuff on Thursday but I’m gonna cut back even more until they give us better Eliminator cars.

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I’ve played Horizon 4 to death over the last year. Excellent game. Horizon 5 is better considered an enormous DLC for Horizon 4 - sort of Horizon 4.5. Much of it is the same. Different map. Copy-and-paste bugs as well as identical interfaces here and there. Some bugs are going to get addressed, others aren’t - but that’s nothing specifically to do with Horizon 4.5, it’s the nature of the gaming industry which pumps out unfinished/buggy products and developers not usually worry about annoying the customer base by refusing to acknowledge irritating issues (there are a few notable exceptions such as Re-Logic, PGG/T10/MS are not in that group). There are new things in the game which are good for some, pointless for others. There is quite a lot to do but not as much as 4. Multiplayer operates differently, some consider it better, others consider it worse.

So, Horizon 4.5 as I think of it is a good game. Horizon 4 is closer to being a great game.

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To the OP: Stick with 4, there is so much game there that to jump to 5, now, would literally give you the same game twice just with different maps.

Mexico right now is not the map I think many of us hoped for…the weather/seasons are almost irrelevant in this game, the day/night cycle feels like it’s still in beta, there are many little annoying bugs in the game that can affect your enjoyment of it depending on what irritates you (harsh engine sounds, graphical glitches between external and internal views, etc). The entire center of the map East to West is a long, flat Highway Run…literally floor it and you almost don’t have to steer…there are no tunnels, no bridges, landmarks…nothing…just rolling hills and farms as far as the eye can see. You do this a half dozen times and immediately start looking for the Fast Travel boards to break so you can warp around instead :frowning:

The driving model is enhanced, I will give it that, but at the same time there wasn’t much wrong with the driving model in 4…so…that may be neither here nor there. It’s also harder to win races in 5,
the AI difficulty is stepped up…this can be good or bad depending on your skill level, and some other subtle changes in the rules of the game for getting achievements, etc.

The best thing I can say about 5 is that it’s 50% bigger so there are longer stretches to just drive your car around…with a wheel preferably, so you can enjoy a longer cruise. It is prettier, there’s no doubt about that, but at the cost of location. You can cruise around in cars with your wheel and pedal set and enjoy more lengthy drives…but there is almost no variation in the weather so there’s no snow to manage, barely any rain…the big storms they claimed would happen only seem to happen if you drive to the coasts and they are short lived. I’m one of those guys who LOVED winter in England because with a wheel it really made some of the cruising a lot more challenging, you know, using your imagination to go from your cottage to cottage to castle, etc.

Technically its a step up if you’re on the current-gen hardware or more-of-the-same on last gen, but overall it’s a bit…well, it IS part 5, right?

Think of it this way: You already have a great game in FH4, and FH5’s price is only going to go down, so waiting right now is a smart move.

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If you’re looking for a more robust social experience you’re not going to find out in 5. The open world always online does not work as advertised. It ends up being an even worse social experience than 4 was. It’s only better if you already have an established group of friends.

It’s ironic, by forcing this always online environment, PGG have actually made the game far less social. A lot of people in the open world aren’t there to socialize, they are there because they have to be. Sure there is solo mode, but you need to go online to complete a bunch of stuff on the playlist. So you’ve got a bunch of disinterested people who will disappear as soon as they turn a corner. Online had no continuity or purpose. It would rather make you feel connected than actually provide any service to help with connecting players.

For the sake of any dev reading: this is why you don’t force always online. You know what game had an online that helped build a community (and actually worked)? Forza Horizon 3.

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As time goes by and F5 gets slowly fixed, and with dlc coming out in the future, things will get better,. Now while fh4 may now seem the better option it has all the dlc it’s going to get so there won’t be anymore for it in the future FH5 will be the better choice. But ultimately the final choice is yours.

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Do yourself a favor, save your money and try the Game Pass version first. I bought FH2, FH3 and FH4. I did not buy FH5 because of two main reasons, same bugs in FH4 exist in FH5 and the same cheats from FH4 exist in FH5. As stated above, this should really be called FH4.5. Just remember this, they promised a lot in FH4 and never delivered, just transfered it all the 4.5.

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I played Horizon 4 a lot and also play Horizon 5 a lot. The last update that came out a couple of days ago fixed many of the bad bugs. There’s still a way to go but I can play the game pretty much without any issues.

I would say move to Horizon 5 now. If you wait then come over later you’ll be yearning for cars that you missed out on and you may have to wait a while for them to come up again. The first expansion for Horizon 5 seems to be just around the corner and hopefully this will make the game more interesting. They’ve also hinted at filers for Open racing where you can choose what you want to do rather than the current random event, car class etc.

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FH4 was the start of things I hate in the Forza franchise. Still, a lot of cool stuff was added to the game: lift kits for SUVs, several new bodykits, full implementation of seasons and route creator. It was a game that satisfied me at the time.

However, FH4 eventually developed in a direction I didn’t enjoy, and FH5 is the culmination of this development, with the Playlists being more in your way than ever and an increasing focus on features I as a racing game fan have zero interest in, such as Arcades or Eliminator.

Because it feels so samey compared to FH4, and because I tasted Gran Turismo before FH5’s release, I began to question why I was wasting my time playing a game I clearly didn’t enjoy when I could be having lots of new and cool experiences, both on PS5 and Xbox.

I still visit the forum, but make no mistake: I haven’t played FH5 since January. And I don’t feel like coming back to it. I admit I get the itch, but, when I remember I get bored of it in 20 minutes, I ignore it.

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I was a die hard FH4 fan and for the longest time was underwhelmed by FH5. However as time has passed i still find myself casually playing FH5 and starting to appreciate it for what it is.

Would I play it if I had gamepass? Definitely it’s the best game on gamepass right now

Would I buy FH5? No

Would I buy FH5 expac 1? Personally yes I will but my recommendation for others is to wait a week and look at reviews.

Would I recommend FH5 to others? No. They dropped the ball both quality and feature wise. They are just a cash shop now.

Would I buy FH4? No, but I would play it if I had gamepass and never played it before.

Would I recommend FH4 to others back in the day? 100%

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I would honestly say to look at getting one of the earlier Horizon games on disk, FH1 especially was amazing and still holds up well and is playable on Xbox One with backwards compatibility (although I’ve heard multiplayer servers are pretty much shut down at this point). FH2 and FH3 are good as well and still have active multiplayer, but lack the progression of FH1. Things really started going downhill with the franchise starting with the time limited cars in FH3 that arrived a few months after launch (and are effectively unobtainable now that the game is end of life), and FH4 and FH5 are pretty much all about doing weekly chores to get cars now.

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@LordErec42: I was about to make a very similar post, but since you stated everything so well, there is no need. Suffice to say I totally agree with you. FH1 is still my favorite, by a wide margin.

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I’d say that 4 and 5 are pretty interchangeable, but 4 already has both of its expansions so if you want the whole enchilada and you want it NOW it’s the better choice.

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My opinion is pretty much the same as others above, absolutey loved FH4 playing it every day (3-4 hour sessions) for about 2 years.

In particular loving the freeroam racing, whether it be racing up and down the motor way (highway) or just drag racing, it just seem there was more interaction with other players, unlike FH5 where it hard enough to even find other players…

It also seem better (easier) to find places to harvest mastery points. whether it was at lego or fortune islands or just the good old quarry on the main map. This map on the other hand just seems to lack something.

General races & challenges are pretty much the same (apart from all the FH5 bugs) although the cars DO handle differently in this version even with identical tunes from FH4.

I bought the pre release version and in all honesty wish I hadn’t.

I still play daily but maybe for an hour just to do the dailies and maybe harvest some points but really only have a real session between thursday and sunday, just to do the playlist but after that I find myself returning to FH4…

Bottom line: personally, given what I know now, I would wait for the bugs to be fixed, you’re not missing anything special at the moment…

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My opinion? Stay with Forza Horizon 4.

Forza Horizon 4 was the reason I bought all the other Forza games - even bought an XBox 360 for Forza Motorsport 1-4 and a XBox One S for Forza Horizon 1+2 and Forza Motorsport 5+6. Bought Forza Horizon 3 and Forza Motorsport 7 on PC as well with all the dlc content available at that time for all the titles…

Did all the season playlist in FH4 even after having a full garage (998 cars) and nearly 990 000 000 credits, because it was fun.

But Forza Horizon 5 is the reason I don’t like to play any racing game anymore…

Parallel to FH4 I played FH1-3 and FM1-7. I already finished FH3 and FM1,2,3,6,7 in about one year. But after FH5 I don’t like to play anything car related at this time…

So for me FH4 makes fun, FH5 has taken the fun.

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First off, In my opinion, Forza Horizon 4 is a whole lot more fun than Forza Horizon 5. The new physics is not fun. The cars just don’t handle like they used to. For me, it feels like being a newb again. I’m just really frustrated. Somebody says that it is prettier. I find that to be a complete joke. I live in Arizona. Mexico is just dirty. No offense but if you’ve been there you know what I mean. There is rebar sticking out of all the buildings. Why? Because you don’t start paying taxes on your house until it has been completed. Loophole. Just keep it unfinished forever. Beautiful? Dust storms. Beautiful? In real life they leave a film of dirt on everything. The outfits to choose from are straight off the rack at Goodwill. 4 to 5 different shades of dingy white undershirts to choose from. Relaxed or tucked in if you prefer.

There are contests to drive around and find pinatas to smash with your car. There are 150 year old Sajuaros cacti that you knock over with your car to get a Smactus score. You can drive around downtown and smash goalposts and payphones (a staple of Mexican culture) but when it comes to ancient ruins, you can’t drive on those. They even made an invisible wall to keep you from driving up the sides of the pyramids which would’ve been a blast. What a joke. Anyway you should probably just start using Horizon 5 right away because you will like 4 better and then they will stop supporting it and you’ll be bummed. The transition will be inevitable and you might end up hating 5 because you like 4 so much better. Most people have already migrated to 5 but I still go back to play the Playground games which are so much more fun in 4. Driving in 5 is just so loose. Unless you are on dry asphalt, you will lose grip. Everything feels like gravel. The ass end of your car will automatically slide forward if you hit the ebrake even if you are driving in a straight line with an AWD and while applying the throttle. Explain that. They should label the button “Drift assist” and not “ebrake” because it doesn’t act like an ebrake. Oh and there are glitches and an event lab that is useless unless you study the tutorial… which there isn’t one.(sigh) I wish they kept the map smaller because all they did was add wasted space of dirt and rocks to run into. Also because of the expanded map, you only see a small cluster of one to five cars in your general area. The rest of the map is not populated unless you drive to that area. It used to be exciting to check the map and see a list of all the people in the server and where they are in real time now there is no list and and a large desolate and boring map that shows nobody unless you wait for a minute and eventually a couple people will spontaneously pop up in your area. You can say Hi to them and they can say Hi back followed by your name. Pretty cool huh?