Complain
Hey guys, I’m here to rant because nobody here knows me, and honestly, I’m pretty disappointed with this game. This time, my complaint is about the AI in single-player races. Everything below is purely my personal and subjective opinion.
At this point, I feel like the single-player racing in this series has been getting worse and worse.
Back when I played Forza Horizon 4, the AI drivers felt like they were all racing for themselves. Every AI driver treated the others as rivals, and you would occasionally see them fighting and even crashing into each other.
My main complaints at the time were that the AI’s top speed was ridiculous, and that the car in first place would often pull far away from the rest of the field. The AI was also extremely consistent and almost never made any mistakes. Still, in FH4, I could at least turn the difficulty all the way up and have a proper fight with them.
In Forza Horizon 5, the first signs of the AI seemingly working together started to appear.
Whenever I raced, it often felt like the AI cars in front of me were deliberately slowing down to block me so that the other AI drivers could pass. At least, that was how it always felt from my perspective.
The AI cars in front of me or beside me would either squeeze the space around my car or slow me down, yet I almost never saw them fighting each other for first place like they did in FH4. Meanwhile, their ridiculous top speed and flawless consistency were still very much present.
This problem is at its most obvious in Forza Horizon 6. Now even the AI cars behind you will attack the player.
It feels like the player is racing against twelve opponents, except all twelve of them are on the same team. They only have two objectives: make sure their team wins the race, and make sure the player finishes in twelfth place.
Is the player behind an AI car? It slows down.
Is the player beside an AI car? It either squeezes the player out of space or simply rams them. If it can make the player spin out or leave the track, even better.
Is the player ahead of the AI? That is even easier to deal with: just ram the player and push them into a wall.
No matter what happens, even if they have to use collisions, the AI will do everything it can to stop the player from being able to drive properly. No space on the inside? Just ram the player and create some.
And how do they treat the other AI drivers? They are all teammates. What opponents?
This was at its worst when the game first launched. Just look at Bowie Knife 99 and how infamous it became.
But from my perspective, all of the AI drivers behave like that. They might simply have different assigned roles. Some of them are especially good at blocking, while others are especially good at ramming.
After people pointed out the Bowie Knife 99 problem, Microsoft said they were going to fix it.
Did they fix it?
Technically, yes—but barely.
Everything I described above still happens, and the entire AI field is still fully capable of attacking the player. In a single race, I can get screwed over to the point where I have to restart five to ten times—sometimes even more than twenty—just to have a chance of finishing first, and the difficulty is only Expert, which is just one level above Highly Skilled. (Oh, uh... the twenty-plus restarts happened in The Goliath Rivals bty.)
Honestly, I don’t even know what kind of company manages to design the AI in a racing game like this.
Maybe some people will say:
“That’s your problem. If you don’t have the skill, stop complaining.”
“Defensive driving is part of racing.”
“Contact is normal in racing.”
“I think this game is really easy. Maybe you’re just bad.”
“Forza Horizon 6 is great. How can you say something like that?”
Blah, blah, blah.
Yeah, yeah. You’re all right.
If you enjoy the game, that’s great. To be fair, Forza Horizon still has plenty of good qualities. If you like the game and love playing it, then keep playing and enjoy the feeling of driving around its open world. I’m just sharing my personal experience and how I feel about the game.
You can just think of me as a skill-less loser.
Below are my playtimes in FH4 and FH5, just to prove that I have actually played them. I’m not including Forza Motorsport because I only have around 400 hours in it.
After I upgrade my steering wheel, I’ll probably move on to Forza Motorsport, Assetto Corsa, and Assetto Corsa Competizione.
I’m done with FH6.
That’s all.
I hope everyone who continues playing can still have a good time.
Posted Jul 11, 2026, 2:20 PM UTC