Microsoft pulled the classic bait and switch and backed out of valve regional prices, ~tripled in most regions. I do not recommend spending that amount for this, its not worth it. Give it a try on the pass first. If you get FH4 and FH3 ultimates together on a sale you would have almost the exact same game as this, better maps and more terrain and weather diversity and still have some money left over instead of buying this broken mess.

*Mexico is underwhelming, uninteresting and boring.

*Not sure if its the location itself but Mexico is by far the worst looking Horizon map, not sure what they were going for, realistic I guess but ended up with dull. Compared to FH3 and FH4 the visual presentation difference is night and day, they still look better somehow. To be clear, the textures are better, models are highly detailed and the number of props in the map are significantly more than the previous games but they just don't look good.

*There are several technical and online issues atm, crashes and bugs. Same online problems as before, loading and sync. Haven't come across input lag so far which has been an issue since FH3.

*LOD issues. The terrible draw distance makes the terrain and foliage, which are already bad looking worse as 70% of the screen and view look pixelated and low res including the skies, like a game from 2010s. Black horizontal lines bars due to SSAO, broken textures, low fps crowd, pixelated smoke and dust etc.

*Weather effects are recycled and not even improved upon and imo mostly worse. The only new thing is the dust storm which is basically the blizzard effect in brown. No more than bare minimum effort was put into water and rain effects, weather effects on the environment aren't great either. You have look in the menu to find which season it is.

*For a game centred around fun, festivals and party, the UI is as basic as a formal ppt done in the last minute.

*Festival locations are meh. Even Australia festivals were better to look at, from near and far.

*Character customisation is the same as before with just different hairstyles to chose on the very specific stereotyped 3D scanned faces that look like nobody. The player talks now so that's new.

*Vanity items are just handful, the emotes and most things are recycled from the last games.

*Woke signalling nonsense, pronouns, prosthetic and face masks for whatever reason and that too in a racing game. They could've easily done a balaclava or bandanna instead but NO! they've just got to insert their political bs at every given chance because 2021.

*The handling and physics is almost identical, Unless you're deep into tuning, you wont notice the difference.

*The new engine sounds are there but I assume most people like myself would just turn down sfxs to listen to their playlist.

*Still no offline time and weather control in freeroam.

I don't mind multiple Horizon releases in a gen, we get more locations to drive in and that's great, but this game is downgraded in more things than it improves upon. Now I know why they would talk about nonsense like graffiti for hours all the time because they had nothing else new to show. FH4 was an actual generational upgrade from FH3 and people still liked FH3 better and still do, so remember that, most of these "improvements" are subject to preference.

Do not buy this game, get Forza Horizon 4 instead

[h1]Still broken, DO NOT BUY THIS CRAP[/h1] [h1]This game is simply FH4 in Mexico.[/h1] Microsoft pulled the classic bait and switch and backed out of valve regional prices, ~tripled in most regions. I do not recommend spending that amount for this, its not worth it. Give it a try on the pass first. If you get FH4 and FH3 ultimates together on a sale you would have almost the exact same game as this, better maps and more terrain and weather diversity and still have some money left over instead of buying this broken mess. *Mexico is underwhelming, uninteresting and boring. *Not sure if its the location itself but Mexico is by far the worst looking Horizon map, not sure what they were going for, realistic I guess but ended up with dull. Compared to FH3 and FH4 the visual presentation difference is night and day, they still look better somehow. To be clear, the textures are better, models are highly detailed and the number of props in the map are significantly more than the previous games but they just don't look good. *There are several technical and online issues atm, crashes and bugs. Same online problems as before, loading and sync. Haven't come across input lag so far which has been an issue since FH3. *LOD issues. The terrible draw distance makes the terrain and foliage, which are already bad looking worse as 70% of the screen and view look pixelated and low res including the skies, like a game from 2010s. Black horizontal lines bars due to SSAO, broken textures, low fps crowd, pixelated smoke and dust etc. *Weather effects are recycled and not even improved upon and imo mostly worse. The only new thing is the dust storm which is basically the blizzard effect in brown. No more than bare minimum effort was put into water and rain effects, weather effects on the environment aren't great either. You have look in the menu to find which season it is. *For a game centred around fun, festivals and party, the UI is as basic as a formal ppt done in the last minute. *Festival locations are meh. Even Australia festivals were better to look at, from near and far. *Character customisation is the same as before with just different hairstyles to chose on the very specific stereotyped 3D scanned faces that look like nobody. The player talks now so that's new. *Vanity items are just handful, the emotes and most things are recycled from the last games. *Woke signalling nonsense, pronouns, prosthetic and face masks for whatever reason and that too in a racing game. They could've easily done a balaclava or bandanna instead but NO! they've just got to insert their political bs at every given chance because 2021. *The handling and physics is almost identical, Unless you're deep into tuning, you wont notice the difference. *The new engine sounds are there but I assume most people like myself would just turn down sfxs to listen to their playlist. *[u]Still no offline time and weather control in freeroam.[/u] I don't mind multiple Horizon releases in a gen, we get more locations to drive in and that's great, but this game is downgraded in more things than it improves upon. Now I know why they would talk about nonsense like graffiti for hours all the time because they had nothing else new to show. FH4 was an actual generational upgrade from FH3 and people still liked FH3 better and still do, so remember that, most of these "improvements" are subject to preference. [b]Do not buy this game, get Forza Horizon 4 instead[/b]