Forza Horizon 5

Forza Horizon 5, released 9 November 2021, sent Playground Games' open-world racing series to Mexico for the first time, and its reception has held up remarkably well nearly five years later: Very Positive across nearly 279,000 Steam reviews, with weekly content updates continuing into mid-2026. That sustained scale and quality is real and well-documented — and so is a specific, dateable monetisation complaint this review sets out to explain precisely.

Genuine scale and approachability

The review sample's praise for Forza Horizon 5's scope is specific and consistent. "This game is great. It has over 500 cars, a massive world to explore, endless possibilities of car builds," one review states plainly, while another frames the game's accessibility directly: "I'm not a racing guy. I'm not a car guy, even... I can tune the holy bejeezus out of a million sliders that mean absolutely nothing to me, or I can just equip a premade setting by someone who does." That layered accessibility — serving both casual players and deep tuning enthusiasts simultaneously — recurs as a consistent, specific strength throughout the sample, alongside sustained praise for the game's visual presentation and varied Baja-inspired terrain.

A real, specific, dateable microtransaction complaint

What tempers that reception is a real complaint recurring with unusual specificity and consistency. "Sneaking microtransactions into a game two years after release sound like satire to me. Unfortunately it is not... Seems like Microsoft finally pressured Playground Games into allowing microtransaction purchases for cars," one detailed review states, describing a specific, dateable shift in the game's business model well after launch. The complaint sharpens considerably among buyers of the game's higher- tier editions specifically: "Bought the digital deluxe ultra premium special edition, which includes the car pass, but now I'm repeatedly being asked to pay $3 per car in the new car packs? Massive L," one widely-endorsed review states. Another independent reviewer describes the identical grievance: "Imagine spending €100 on the PREMIUM edition and not even getting all car DLC's, while you're supposed to be getting all of them, this game is going downhill real quick." A third, more pointed still: "There's so many car packs that are supposed to be free, at least to who bought the deluxe edition." That specificity — independent reviewers describing the same precise entitlement gap between what premium editions were marketed to include and what later car packs actually required separate payment for — is the sample's clearest, load-bearing finding about the game's real monetisation problem.

A real, specific complaint about AI and multiplayer polish

A separate, mechanically specific complaint concerns the game's "drivatar" AI opponents. "There is no AI, there is no intelligence. Non-human cars do not obey the same physics as you do. They follow the racing line at a preset speed... as if they were on rails," one detailed review states, a specific, testable claim about the AI system's actual behaviour rather than vague difficulty complaints. A related, historical complaint describes slow developer responsiveness to well-documented multiplayer bugs: "Took over half of a year to fix headlight at night and started to remember that they need to add custom online games, Took almost a whole year to fix festival playlist online matchmaking," one review states, describing specific, named issues left unresolved for extended periods. A further complaint concerns the ban system: "The devs will ban you for dumb reasons... but then they don't ban the clear cheaters on the leaderboards," one detailed reviewer states, describing what they characterise as inconsistent moderation enforcement.

Where this leaves a buyer

At NZ$99.95, Forza Horizon 5 delivers a genuinely massive, gorgeous, approachable racing experience this review's sample credits consistently, and Playground Games' sustained, weekly content investment nearly five years after launch — including a substantial 2026 PlayStation 5 port that reportedly sold millions of additional copies — is real, verifiable evidence of the game's continued commercial and creative health. The honest, necessary caveat concerns a real, specific, dateable complaint that Playground introduced paid car-pack microtransactions roughly two years post-launch in a way that several detailed, independent reviewers describe overlapping directly with content premium-edition buyers had already paid for via the game's Car Pass. Players buying the base or standard edition, purely for the driving and exploration on offer, are very likely to find exactly the massive, accessible racer this review's sample describes so consistently. Players considering a Premium or Ultimate edition specifically for its promised car content should understand precisely what that edition does and doesn't cover before paying the higher price.