At over 800 hours in the game, playing it almost weekly for the regular events, earning all the cars, having actually used close to half of them, and as near as I can to claiming I've 100%'ed the game... This review is long overdue. Let's get into it shall we?

FH5 is shocklingly fair. Alarmingly so. Not Baldur's Gate 3 in terms of content for value, but VERY close. Let's make the highlight of fairness perfectly clear; there are no MTX in this game. There's DLC and different versions that include different amounts of DLC, but let's make something perfectly clear. DLC does not equal MTX. DLC is a one-time purchase for additional content. MTX are recurring purchases for consumables. By that logic, yes a one-time purchase for a skin is effectively DLC. So just because it only has DLC doesn't make it fair. What makes FH5 fair is how low the asking prices are for that DLC. Premium and Ultimate Editions get you MOST but not all DLC. Neither will give you the post-launch car packs or the treasure map. Premium lacks the Rally Adventure DLC. None of this DLC is essential for competing in all events, stories, races, or extra content that isn't isolated to its respective DLC. The developers made absolutely sure this time around that you can just buy the base game and still earn anything that's not isolated to DLC. That's impressive and worth commending in modern AAA gaming. Even Halo hasn't been spared, but here's FH5 showing it can still be done.

That's not where it ends though. Performance is superb and the game looks sharp and vibrant. AMD 5800X and 6900XT at maximum (and I do mean MAXIMUM) settings will see 120-150 fps at 1440p if you run a clean system. I see maybe a 5fps loss if running YouTube or Netflix in my second monitor while playing. Even DXR ray-tracing enabled doesn't tank the framerate on AMD GPUs here. Shocking, I know. Especially as I'm not experiencing the same in Forza Motorsport as of writing this...

But I digress! Let's discuss my playtime and regularity~ Simply put, there are monthly "battle passes" but they are free and allow you to earn content that can't simply be purchased for credits. I'll touch on the darkside of this later, but it gives us a reason to play regularly. It gives us a reason to replay content in unique and potentially challenging ways. Every race can be ran in any car and bots will be matched to your car's performance index. These special event races impose restrictions that get you to try other things broadening your comfort zone and giving you a reason to try things you otherwise wouldn't. Often finding out you may enjoy something you didn't expect.

Stories are back and are numerous. They are not DLC; they are free content updates that add special cameos from the likes of Donut Media as well as returning characters from the Horizon series. Completion earns free cars too. All of these stories are fully voiced and can be funny at times. Each features 10-ish special tasks that typically involve getting from A to B as quickly as possible. Unlike most races that don't have any legit shortcuts, these often do. Even the ones with checkpoints, so keep your eyes peeled.

The single worst thing about FH5 is its menu UI changes compared to FH4. Horizon 4 had extremely controller-friendly menus for everything. Selecting cars, choosing player-made liveries, making your own, and upgrading your cars all have menus, obviously. It's the redesign between FH4 and FH5 that I have a problem with. FH4 was far better designed for either controller or keyboard and mouse than FH5. In FH4 your car is shown in the top 2/3rds of your screen while the menu mostly rests in the bottom 1/3rd with a straight-forward "left/right" directional methodology. The L/R bumpers will skip 5-ish slots in their respective directions so you can fast-scroll through. This hasn't changed in FH5, but the layout has. Now your car is shown in the right 2/3rds of the screen while the selection menus are now a 3-column vertical grid on the left 1/3rd. This makes it far less intuitive to interact with by comparison. Minor nitpick? Sure. But I have very little to really say in this section.

However, we're not moving on until I make a point I eluded to earlier. The whole "free battle pass" thing I mentioned has a darkside to it. A darkside that is very "dark patterns" in design. The simple fact is that all cars should either be purchasable through in-game credits, or earned via event rewards at any time we want relative to current progression. I do not like the lottery system that is slot-machine lootboxes called wheelspins even if they are earned VERY quickly and for free. I do not like the raffle system of having to come back at least one day a week to spend 2+ hours for arbitrary progress to earn cars that are exclusive to the current monthly and weekly battle pass event. Sure, it give me a reason to play more, but this should be on my terms. I should play when I want to and not be imposed with FOMO over exclusive cars that I could miss if I stop playing for more than a week. This entire system is designed to keep concurrent and weekly active players numbers inflated. Thank you developers for making this free. Please stop making these exclusive cars purely exclusive to these battle passes. You're welcome to keep running the monthly/weekly events, but stop gating specific cars behind them. Once the event is over, they should be purchasable in the showroom.

This is a weird thing to be going on over a game like this. People are complaining about and mass review bombing DLC. Why? "Because it's not included in the Ultimate Edition!" Yeah? The one that tells you everything it comes with? The same superfluous DLC that I just got done saying is already superfluous? Let's knock off the self-righteousness for a moment and look at these things objectively.

Everything can be simplified to "worth" in essence. Is the base game worth $60? If you like simulation-style arcade open-world racing games; yes. There are few games on Steam that rival it other than its kin FH4. Are the major DLCs or their respective edition bundles worth their prices? Less so because they are isolated and superfluous. Is VIP worth its price? Meh, subjective. I would say yes if you cannot dedicate as much to the game as I or other regulars do. If you would play it regularly, then it's very useless. Is the treasure map worth its price? Yes! Unless you enjoy trying to find "collectibles" on your own, YES! Welcome pack? Yeah, but only as a starting point since all these cars are treated as separate from the existing versions. They come pre-upgraded to a specific tier, and can be pushed just a bit further in performance per performance index than their originals, but they are otherwise non-essential. Any post-launch car pack? Only if you like collecting cars in the game. You get 4 or 5 cars for $5 which are effectively like unlocking characters in a gacha game. You don't need any of them, but you want them to add to your collection. Only difference is you aren't playing gacha for them. They cost about a dollar each while gacha characters if you first-pull them are typically at least $2, but average $50 to get. I really don't understand this self-righteous and bigoted stance that these packs should've been included in the Ultimate Edition. FH5:UE tells you everything you will get when you buy it, expecting more than that is entitlement. Expecting more than that when they've been adding FREQUENT additional content to the base game FOR FREE since launch is tantamount to conceited narcissism.

Right now, as I write this, FH5 is the single best open-world sim-cade racing game on PC. If you want that experience you will find nothing better or more fair here on Steam. There is no MTX, but you still get the same thrills with monthly and weekly battle passes and slot-machine wheelspins all for free. Get in, and ¡GO!