# Poll - What is the Best Horizon Game?
**URL:** https://forza-forums.discourse.group/t/poll-what-is-the-best-horizon-game/24
**Category:** Forza Horizon
**Created:** [May 12, 2026, 3:33am UTC](https://forza-forums.discourse.group/t/poll-what-is-the-best-horizon-game/24 "2026-05-12T03:33:44Z")
**Posts on this page:** 7
**Page:** 1
### Author:  [@CosmicKitten593](https://forza-forums.discourse.group/u/CosmicKitten593)
#### Post date: [May 12, 2026, 3:33am UTC](https://forza-forums.discourse.group/t/poll-what-is-the-best-horizon-game/24/1 "2026-05-12T03:33:44Z")
_Poll ([view on site](https://forza-forums.discourse.group/t/poll-what-is-the-best-horizon-game/24/1))_
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### Author:  [@N1GHTMAR3](https://forza-forums.discourse.group/u/N1GHTMAR3)
#### Post date: [July 7, 2026, 4:06pm UTC](https://forza-forums.discourse.group/t/poll-what-is-the-best-horizon-game/24/2 "2026-07-07T16:06:05Z")
I’m conflicted between 3 and 6 on this one. Gonna stick to just talking about these two’s multiplayer - the source of Horizon’s magic, in my eyes - otherwise this post will be monstrously long.
FH3 was my gateway to the series, and the most I’ve ever played a game in my life, so it holds a lot of nostalgia for me, in large part because it was the last Horizon game to have truly social online multiplayer.
- You had to actively choose to queue for Online Freeroam and interact with others, as did most everyone you came across.
- Public voice chat was still a thing, before they quietly axed it shortly into FH4. Hop in and shoot the shit with random people on the open mic, maybe make a friend. No Xbox parties and flurries of invites needed.
- You could collide with anyone without explicitly asking them to join a convoy, giving them actual presence in the world.
I made a lot of friends playing FH3, and it’s the most alive a Horizon game has ever felt.
But on the other hand, most Horizon games live and die by their multiplayer. When the world moves on and the curtains draw shut, I find they don’t have much left to go back to. FH3 had its glaring problems, and it ages more and more with time.
- 98% of the people you met either drag raced V12 Darts at the airstrip ad nauseam, drifted around the Surfer’s Paradise parking lot for hours on end, or exclusively indulged in Playground Games.
- If you didn’t fit into any of those cliques, you had to lobby hop quite a bit to find people with shared interests - a problem exacerbated when only one event could be going on at a time in each lobby.
- Online Adventures being ranked with XP gain instead of finishing position was a baffling decision I still can’t comprehend.
- The absence of a route creator as seen in the later games always felt like a missed opportunity, leaving so many potential fun race routes forever unrealized.
- Since PC matchmaking has been broken for a long time, the only way to actually properly experience it now is within the limitations of an Xbox console.
- Realistically, it’s only a matter of time before FH3’s servers shut down for good, given the precedent of FH2’s shutdown 3 years ago, and with it will go a lot of FH3’s appeal as a whole.
FH6, on the other hand, has the advantage of being the newest hotness.
- Most everyone is fixated on it, and the game is still early into what’s sure to be another long life cycle of new(-ish) content.
- Japan has been a fun map to drive around and race through so far.
- EventLab is more unlimited than it’s ever been, letting you make whatever races you want, where you want. Being able to build races with friends with CoLab is cool, too, even if the implementation leaves something to be desired.
- The mano a mano Touge Showdowns feel more personal, and in my experience, it leads to more thrilling races on average.
- Pulling up to car meets and finding someone to shoot the shit with for a little bit is cool.
- The Festival Playlist provides… some impetus to hop on and play a few hours every week.
- Horizon Stunt Parties feel a lot more lively than Forzathon Lives now that the game actually matchmakes you with other people wanting to play them.
- The Estate providing an open, customizable space to shoot the shit in with friends is a neat concept.
That being said, it can’t remotely scratch the itch that FH3 did. The main issue I have is that anything beyond basic interactions has so much more friction than it used to.
- FH4’s switch to 72-player lobbies (and however the hell the “12 players in your area” system works from FH5 on) sounded good on paper, but its implementation shoots the idea dead. In FH3, you had to actively want to enter an online session with others. From FH4 onwards, you’re quietly dropped into one automatically without your initiative. This dilutes the pool of active players you come across; they may want to play the game, but most won’t want to play with you.
- Communication is limited to paltry pre-made chat messages that can never adequately convey what you want to say, especially after FH5 cordoned half of them off to borderline useless “contextual” messages. If you want to say anything more than that, you have to go out of your way to send an Xbox message that’ll inevitably be buried behind Chat Requests in complete silence, with no notification. It’s even worse as a Linux player, as there’s no good way to passively receive Xbox messages, short of opening [xbox.com](http://xbox.com) in a browser window every time you boot up the game.
- Open mic voice chat has been dead and gone ever since FH4. It always made online interactions more fun and personal when you can put a voice to a name, and riff shit off on the spot, as opposed to stopping what you’re doing to send just text.
- The game’s tendency to shuffle out the players around you as you drive throughout the map can break up groupings of players you find impromptu. Stumble across a group of players cruising around? Better ask to join their Convoy and hope they accept, otherwise they’ll all unceremoniously vanish into the ether once the game decides you’re being separated.
- No collisions outside of convoys. Yes, it prevents griefing, and is objectively the right decision to make with how modern online freeroam works, but it also makes people more… ignorable, if that makes any sense. They don’t have as much presence in the world around you. When you just ghost right through players, they feel more like figments of your imagination than actual people sharing the same space as you.
- The “Find a Convoy” feature introduced in FH5, and then bafflingly hidden behind two menus, never advertised to the player, is virtually unchanged in FH6. It defeats the purpose of the feature when no one realizes it even exists, leaving very few convoys to join in the first place. Hell, last time I checked, certain categories of convoys like Road Racing are bugged and don’t work at all.
- Car meets are woefully lacking in features compared to FH3, and especially FH2. The big issue of there not being anybody attending them wouldn’t be a problem if you could matchmake for people like in Horizon Stunt Parties. There’s also no direct way to kick anything off with the people you _do_ come across, unlike in FH3 and especially FH2 where you could jump straight into a race from a car meet.
- EventLab loses its appeal without a good way to gather enough people to race community tracks. You have to go out of your way to seek out people online and organize shit. They beg for an FH1/FM4-style lobby browser, where _everyone’s_ events are broadcast to the world, and you can scroll through and join whatever appeals to you - all on a whim - but that feature’s been MIA for 13 years now.
- As has become painfully apparent with Series 2, the quality of the Festival Playlist championships leaves something to be desired (like when you have to drive C-class cars on what is effectively a giant straight line), and the FOMO is as much a stick in the mud as ever.
- Even touge showdowns are getting old with only six tracks to race on.
- This is all even as I’m still afflicted with a bit of recency bias. The longer the game goes on, the more cracks will show underneath.
FH6, with its active playerbase and content influx, is IMO the best Horizon experience you can have… right now. But, as is the case ever since FH4, it’s overshadowed by the knowledge of what we _used_ to have, and the more personal memories made that don’t organically play out like they once did.
What it comes down to in the end is: the best Horizon experience there is now (FH6), versus the best there’s ever been (FH3). And I don’t know which is more valid.
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### Author:  [@Xbox271987](https://forza-forums.discourse.group/u/Xbox271987)
#### Post date: [July 9, 2026, 7:39pm UTC](https://forza-forums.discourse.group/t/poll-what-is-the-best-horizon-game/24/3 "2026-07-09T19:39:22Z")
I think it’d have to be FH3.
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### Author:  [@DataDrivenRacing](https://forza-forums.discourse.group/u/DataDrivenRacing)
#### Post date: [July 10, 2026, 12:29am UTC](https://forza-forums.discourse.group/t/poll-what-is-the-best-horizon-game/24/4 "2026-07-10T00:29:11Z")
Gotta go with 5.
One simple reason… the huge buffet of shitboxes that were viable to race with.
3,4,6… all iconic cars so far.
5? It had Astrovans, un-badged Escorts. 🥰
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### Author:  [@CosmicKitten593](https://forza-forums.discourse.group/u/CosmicKitten593)
#### Post date: [July 10, 2026, 1:20am UTC](https://forza-forums.discourse.group/t/poll-what-is-the-best-horizon-game/24/5 "2026-07-10T01:20:55Z")
> [@N1GHTMAR3](#):
>
> - It’s even worse as a Linux player, as there’s no good way to passively receive Xbox messages, short of opening [xbox.com](http://xbox.com) in a browser window every time you boot up the game
Forza works on Linux?
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### Author:  [@N1GHTMAR3](https://forza-forums.discourse.group/u/N1GHTMAR3)
#### Post date: [July 10, 2026, 1:33am UTC](https://forza-forums.discourse.group/t/poll-what-is-the-best-horizon-game/24/6 "2026-07-10T01:33:56Z")
Through Proton on the Steam versions, yes. Works well for the most part.
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### Author:  [@R3L04D](https://forza-forums.discourse.group/u/R3L04D)
#### Post date: [July 10, 2026, 3:23am UTC](https://forza-forums.discourse.group/t/poll-what-is-the-best-horizon-game/24/7 "2026-07-10T03:23:31Z")
Horizon 3 has a special place in my heart since it was also my gateway into the series since I didn’t have either a 360 or an Xbox One. So hearing that Horizon 3 would be coming to PC was _huge_.
The map is pretty cool with many fun places like the Twelve Apostles, construction site up north, the mine, shipwrecks, the airstrip and the carpark in Surfer’s Paradise to name a few. The skyboxes are absolutely gorgeous and the game has nice rich colors without overdoing it. The car list while smaller than FH4 and FH5’s rosters and was missing Volkswagen did have a couple of gems which ended up not returning in later games.
Also not to mention Horizon 3 debuted widebodies, Horizon Edition Cars (which have since been renamed to Forza Edition Cars), Blueprints, Danger Signs and Drift Zones which would become staples in the series going forward. The built-in club system was pretty nice since you got credit payouts from ranking up in your club.
As someone who was very mixed on Horizon 4 and 5, Horizon 6 is definitely my favorite since 3. The map is a huge upgrade over Horizon 5 and the progression while not perfect is far better than what Horizon 5 got. Though I’d be lying if I said there weren’t cracks beginning to show. I totally understand the frustrations and criticisms toward the game, whether it’s the hundreds of cars being cut at launch, or the playlist being the same boring format as before or the car customization still being underwhelming, I seriously hope PGG don’t rest on their laurels and are cooking up big stuff in the months to come.