Forza Horizon 4 Review

Hey guys, this is the final video in my series of reviewing the Forza Horizon games, And for some reason, I started with 3 and ended with 4 LOL. I hope you all enjoy this one.

Timestamps
0:00 Intro
0:45 Quick Disclaimer
1:35 Starting With The Positives With The Car List
2:20 How Pro-Consumer Horizon 4 Is
3:15 Expansions Starting With Fortune Island
5:35 Lego Speed Champions
6:48 The Map Of Horizon UK
8:12 The Visuals
8:30 Multiplayer
9:50 Starting My Issues With The Singleplayer/Progression
11:20 Super Wheelspins Rant
12:55 Highlight Of Progression In FH4
13:47 Lack Of A Satisfying Conclusion
14:57 Lack Of A Large Festival Presence
15:38 Potentially Amazing Features
16:55 More Positives Such As Customization
18:00 Conclusion

[abdullahjubair]

Having played just FH3 and FH4, I prefer FH3 more to be honest, the horizon festivals all over the map was really a nice touch, the houses in FH4 feels like an expensive background to buy.

[RyujinSwift]

Forza Horizon 4 didn't even have a story. Your Progression was going through 4 seasons and doing events that was it. (My own Personal Experience) I've never really felt rewarded for earning cars. You get one each week for doing certain things and that was it. Yes I love building my garage and earning cars but I don't want to own half the car list in the matter of a week. Forza Horizon 2 gave us Wheelspins but it didn't spoil us to the point where we get 1 million on the first day. They even had a perk for better Rewards in Horizon 2 for Wheelspins because they knew it was hard to gain money. I want that again..

[couriersix]

In terms of progression and story, I‘d love to have a "rival festival" scenario. You win races to gain followers and fans and when you have enough influence, a boss challenges you to race for festival territory (kinda like in GTA San Andreas with the green and purple map areas).

You start off with a tiny festival site at the corner of the map and your goal is to cover the entire map in Horizon‘s signature pink color.

At the end you have the final showdown against the owner of rival festival: A smug, rich, douchy, cheesy boss. You leave him in the dust and the Horizon festival lives happily ever after.

Fin.

[mrgiraffe]

This is my first horizon game I've played but coming from different games, horizon is so much better, the fact that it's open world gives it so much more depth from speedzones, dangersigns and drifting.

[jimbobvlogz]

This is the man that the forza community as always needed. Well thought out and structured videos. Doesn't get any better than this! Keep the content coming 👍

[PiercingEditz]

This horizon festival garage background looks like a mall showcase

[alfielamb]

I feel like forza needs to add more progression like the first horizon as it adds so much more replay ability and feels so much more rewarding

[solescorpionofficial]

The Forza Horizon Series has to be one of the most top rewarding racing games of all time when it comes to earning cash and cars

[leopedley]

This game just felt so nice to drive in, but (even despite loving Britain) the map felt too small with everything packed too close together and it all just felt too similar. My favourite map is still horizon 3. It just felt so alive and special compared to the less interesting and diverse fh4 map. Australia allowed you to change from city to outback or beach to rainforest very quickly, whilst I feel like you are just constantly driving around British forests.
I also occasionally try and play with friends which just ends up being more frustrating than it's worth because the matchmaking system is just long and overcomplicated. This just makes it irritating to even attempt at messing about with my mates.
I do enjoy this game, but it just feels like a step down from the previous games, so I really hope horizon 5 goes back to the way the older games felt.

[timeforsteve]

Got this video recommended. Horizon 4 was my entry to the series and now after one year of Horizon 5, I can confidently say that Horizon 4 remains as my favourite of the two for multiple reasons.

- The 4 seasons are executed way better than in Horizon 5. I know this is attributed to the location, but in the UK you actually noticed when the seasons changed. Cruising around in Mexico, the only change you'll really notice maybe is the rivers being full or dry (and the snow on Caldera, but when are you ever really up there?), meanwhile in the UK, you had the full map covered in snow, entire huge lakes frozen over, and the leaves in the trees changing colors. It was beautiful to look at, because you could actually tell that the map was ever-changing with the season.

- The map feels extremely satisfying to drive on. It has a lot of things you could wish for: Long straights (especially the highway and the long stretch at the beach), Techy curves (Glen Rannoch), a great mix of small towns and a big city (Broadway, Edinburgh, the Town south of the lake) and amazing Rallye spots (Quarry, the Forests, the mountain at Glenn Rannoch, Arthurs Seat). Although the map is not the most diverse with long stretches of empty fields and all, it still feels like I haven't discovered it all, while in comparison, although Horizon 5 has more diverse and interesting spots, the vast stretch of empty nothingness makes the map feel empty. The small towns are fine, but Guanajuato as the major town in comparison to Edinburgh feels incredibly claustrophobic and just isn't that fun to cruise around.

- The events in Horizon 4 are more enjoyable than in Horizon 5. Both games have their fair share of great races, but both the Showcase Races and Playground Games are more enjoyable in Horizon 4 than Horizon 5. Starting with the Showcases, some of them can be directly compared: Racing the Contach through the Canyon against the Train can directly be compared to the Nomad and the Train rushing towards Edinburgh. While you stay mostly glued to the road in 5, 4 launches you cross country and actually gives you multiple interactions with the train on the way, having multiple near collisions and just giving an overall more exciting setting. The flow of the biker showcase in Horizon 4 is so more smooth than in 5, where the section going through the tight corners of Guanajuato just completely kills the flow. As for the Playground Games, the maps in 5 feel so uninspired: The Stadium is just a circle, Ek Balam is a campfest, and the only decent ones are the Airfield and the Baja Circuit. Meanwhile each playground area in 4 just nails it: Mudkickers hills makes it really fun and allows insane manuveurs, taking chase between the trains in the trainyard leads to some exciting hunts, the seasons changing the water in mortimers gardens from a shallow puddle to an iced slidefest give it a big amount of replayability and the diverse setting of the castle gives less repitition. The businesses and other side activities were a great shakeup from the normal racing, and even if they were glorified PR Stunts and Time Trials, they still had their charme. Meanwhile in 5, most of the stories are subpar and even annoying in some cases. It's hard to enjoy the stories when Alejandra keeps blabbering on about "PaPa FeRnAnDo" or the Donut Media one is designed rather lackluster.

- The progression, oh the progression: The system in 5 isn't bad at all. In fact, I like how they pretty much carried over the system from Lego Speed Champions, because I enjoyed hunting these accolades. However, some of the things unlock way too quickly. What made Horizon 4 so great for me was that it actually took you time to unlock everything in a category: You wanted new PR Stunts? Do the prior ones enough to unlock a new set. New sprint races? Get used to the current few to get a few more. Levelling up your "mastery" in all of these gave a proper sense of progression towards unlocking the events. The stamp system in 5 and unlocking everything from a category right away takes all the wind out of the progression that made FH4 for me. The overcommitment to the Lego Speed Champions system was therefore also a downfall in my eyes.

- Speaking of the DLCs, as of now FH4 still has the better DLCs. I'll be real honest here and say that I don't see the appeal of the HotWheels DLCs. For me, Forza Horizon is about exploration and Free Roam, so having the Hot Wheels Nexus box you in for most of the track with only a select few sections to leave it, it just felt so wrong to me. Maybe HotWheels just isn't for me, but I didn't have too much enjoyment with the DLC. In turn, Fortune Island is just beautiful. The map is enjoyable, the progression is great, the addition of Trailblazers was a great idea, and the treasure hunts were real fun (which is why I was happy to welcome them back to Horizon 5.). I'm split on Speed Champions for a lot of reasons, so I can't give a perfect clear reasoning for it. From the map itself though, I'd still rank it above the Hot Wheels Expansion.

- Finally, the online component. From Playground Games, to the trial, to Horizon Arcade?, Horizon 4 was always a blast to play. You had full lobbies of players, encountering them on a semi-regular base while cruising through the UK, and the Arcade matchups were very popular, most of the time having at least half the lobby participate. Meanwhile in 5, you barely see anyone, and even the "Freemode" Events are empty mostly, and more often than not you're running the Arcade alone. Throw in the online mode being completely broken at times or still running horribly almost a year later, and you have an unenjoyable experience. Even worse is the current model of selling cars that have been in the Horizon 4 car list as "new", having half of the carlist from 4 non-existent in the game only to be added later. The festival events are starting to feel uninspired and sometimes don't even work at all. Horizon 5 feels like a burning wreck.

I can absolutely believe the long-time Horizon fans that FH4 isn't as good as the prior entries, but for me it has solidified what Horizon was supposed to be and the potential that the series had, while FH5 proceeds to drive it all against the wall with lackluster updates, which make me return to 4 a lot more recently. Part can be attributed to the nostalgia, but for me Horizon 4 always has a place in my heart, and it gets broken by what Horizon 5 is right now.

[vortifyne]

Because we get new cars every week (not anymore, final new car is the VUHL), people demand to see cars and forget that it's amazing to even get new cars every month! The community has become more toxic through the livespan of this game, because Playground games gives us more, funny how that works...

[Seraphimino]

My problem with Forza Horizon is that it just doesn't allow the same experiences as it's previous games. I feel as if it no longer feels like a festival, it just feels like that focus has gone and I never have to use the festival for anything.

[thiagoprofili]

My main problem with horizon 4 is the single player, if they had put just a bit of thought, it would have been great. When they did think about single player, fortune island had a great little story that was very addicting and i enjoyed 10000% of that expansion, but the fact that the game was pretty much "ok, play for 1 hour, get 10 mil credits, buy ONLY the OP cars and then race online" was very irritating to me. Horizon 3 and 2 IMO had a great balance between single and multi player, however horizon 4 lost that balance and made the game much worse to me

[zimzipzoop]

After watching this video I can’t help but feel the same way. Fh4 is my second horizon game that I’ve played. Its because of three that I got 4 in the first place. I loved every second I’ve played this game for even with the issues it had at launch. To see how the game has turned out over the years is amazing to me and shows that the devs do care. This game has gotten me into car photography, something I wouldn’t have even considered before. Even though I do feel as though the game is kinda dull, I still find myself playing it regularly. Its a good game but as you said in the video it had the potential to be great which I think some people probably think it is. Over all FH4 is an awesome game and I hope FH5 will be even better.

[kylefaris]

Horizon 4 is my favorite game personally. It has the most cars, has the best graphics (although fh3 comes close), and horizon life is pretty cool too (when it works). This game does have some downsides though, such as the car sounds, lack of realistic tire smoke, no private lobbies, and the biggest one for me, no regular cars. No base level cars or trims of almost every car. Like driving around in a base model Mercedes a class would be sick, or a base model jetta or something. Also, your dedication to reading all the comments and replying to them while also putting out great quality content is great. You’ve earned yourself a sub, keep it up!

[Lucas_Broom]

I still think horizon 2 is one of the best. The fast and furious expansion was awesome. The car sounds were great, and the graphics had a unique style to them.

[thearm]

I personal only like it more because of the map, cars expansions and races and graphics. Thr story is where it counts and that's what makes the older ones better but other then the story yes horizon 4 is very cool and some execution, aka engine sounds. I do like how it's easy to get cars though because you get to spend more time actually driving them rather then trying to unlock them.

[jamesmccloud]

I'm surprised you didn't talk about the seasons at all. That's definitely my favorite feature of the game

[angelserrano]

A good progression system and leveling structure from bottom to top and much more focus in single player (like 1 & 2) is all I ask for in FH5👍🏼👍🏼🤞🏼

[shamantshetty]

Coming from Racing games like Grid, Assetto Corsa, NFS , Forza Horizon 4 was my first Forza game .And what a refreshing change it was ! endless content in the form of events all around maps, different and unique things to do like boards and showcase events, the auction houses wherein if you played your cards right u could make loads of money, and the sheer car list and the fun in tuning them to my preference is what makes this game special for me .