Horizon: Forbidden West - Disassemble all

Yeah, I turned on easy loot from the start. And I think the intro was actually well done, but I tend to evaluate those from a design perspective, and I guess that those complaining played the first game and aren't thinking of those who didn't.

I have it on and I think it is a good compromise. I am sure there will be folks who want to really think a lot about each hunt to make sure they get just the parts they need etc. and they can do that. The rest of us don't have to put up with that tedium.

I do wish there was a special trophy for say getting parts but *not* killing the machine. That I could see as a fun challenge. It gets pretty frantic in fights (well they way I do them anyway) and it would be neat to reward precision without killing.

I like having to break off specific parts, it adds a bit extra to the strategy of fighting certain machines when you need that part. That hippo one was kinda tough, as it only opens its mouth to reveal those precious tusks during certain attacks. And the tails you need from some of these guys, even with your slomo aiming they are whipping around all over the place. It's fun. And if you don't get a part 'cause you mess up, you're bound to come across that machine again somewhere. I'm not at a point where any upgrade feels particularly necessary, so it doesn't feel like I'm hugely missing out if an upgrade is delayed.

Supposedly the only thing custom difficulty affects is leaderboards in the arena. I haven’t gotten there yet. So, I don’t know how all that works, but I believe I read you can go back and set it to a non-custom setting before going in and you can still participate in leaderboard rankings.

Has anyone else experienced Machines that appear to fall through the world during combat..I will be fighting one or more machines and then usually after I kill one I’m look around and the second and or third machine are gone but the indicator that they are aware and I’m in combat (along with combat music) is stuck on. Machines are nowhere to be found and I have to run some distance before the indicator disappears and the combat music stops.

Yeah. Forbidden West at release feels buggier than Zero Dawn, especially because I'm playing it on a regular PS4. Disappearing machines are just one of those things.

Don't even get me started on disappearing loot! Just one more reason for me to play Easy Loot mode.

It's not Bethesda level of buggy, but it ain't Zero Dawn.

I've finally peaked at level 50 with what I assume are very high level weapons and coils. I have something like 30 unassigned skill points from side missions. They're quite generous with the skill points!

The game adopts a Diablo-esque and Borderlands-like color system for their armor and weapons, but it's NOT random. Every weapon is named and statted up quite deliberately. Every weapon is mapped to a particular sort of function and attributed to a specific tribe. Of course, they are each made up to look like they're from that tribe's art aesthetic.

Ive finally farmed enough Metal Bones that I use the Spike Thrower (an atlatl!) liberally. It feels like one of several variants of high damage impact options replacing Blast Slings in Zero Dawn. These are excellent for destroying components. Good if you don't like that Ravager Cannon firing at you. Bad if you hit a Widemaw tusk. Even on Easy Loot mode, that destroys the loot.

Forbidden West features the Impact VS Tear dichotomy more strongly than Zero Dawn. You'll take out the component in either case, but one option destroys the loot. The other preserves it, but doesn't also do damage to the machine's health pool.

There are also armor-piercing options. Feels like Impact Boltblaster Ammo is less affected by armor, but the Armor Piercing Ammo of the Piercing Sharpshot Bows definitely penetrates armor. It'll cut straight through the helmet of a human Gunner.

Forbidden West definitely features more "weird" ammo catering to a variety of play options. Knockdown Ammo knocks over machines with little damage. Good for when you're trying to shear off something difficult to target. Berserker Ammo makes machines fight anything near them - a callback to Zero Dawn's Corruption Ammo. Drill Spikes do direct DOT - good for popping out of cover for quick hits that deal lots of damage eventually. Impact damage to machine feet knocks them over. Advanced Ammo is very powerful, but other than the Advanced Hunter Arrows, advanced ammo usually require Volatile Sludge, which can usually only be harvested from very high level endgame machines.

I do keenly feel the need for a Loadout function now in Forbidden West. You can only load up 6 weapons in your weapon wheel so you're usually kitted out to handle a specific sort of threat in a very specific manner.

If you're headed out to an area where one or more machines are resistant to your battle plan, you'll want possibly an entirely different set of weaponry.

You do get ridiculously powerful in Forbidden West. Stacking situational modifiers plus your active modifiers and state modifiers gets pretty chunky. Doing many thousands of points of damage in seconds is par for the course.

EDIT: One thing I'm particularly annoyed with is that they nerfed mounted hunting very hard. The entire point of mounted hunting is so the machines and the humans cannot attack you easily. This is completely nullified by the fact that trees and rocks are now apparently completely indestructible and even the tiniest irregularity will halt your mount to a dead stop. That's annoying when traveling but fatal in combat.

The aim-shaking when mounted on a Clawstrider only adds insult to injury. It's not just pointless now, it's actively annoying to even try!

Anyone in here able to give an educated guess on when this would be released on PC?

Horizon Zero Dawn came out in February of 2017. The PC release wasn't until August of 2020.

Looking at another big Sony exclusive, God of War, came out in April 2018 and the PC version just came out in January 2022.

So, while it's possible that Sony may shorten this window, it's likely going to be a couple years. There's no confirmed PC release, it's just a fairly safe assumption, given that the first game was ported.

I haven’t had a single bug on PS5, but there was a patch that went out yesterday. It specifically mentioned the issue with machines falling through the map.

Edit: I take it back - I’ve seen the weird visual blurriness around Aloy that the Guerilla has said they are working on, but once I turned off motion blur, I haven’t really noticed it.

Thank goodness for Easy Loot. I'm just... I'm just bad. Very bad. I still regularly miss components when I'm in stealth and the machine is barely moving; it's extremely difficult when the machine is actually flailing around. Still, I wouldn't mind if they had a randomized option: shearing off the component guarantees it, otherwise it is randomly broken or available.

Fortunately, a combination of melee ("Warrior") and stealth ("Infiltrator") remain viable, at least on normal difficulty with Easy Loot.

On PS5, no serious bug issues, but I did get stuck in geometry in one or two places and had to thrash my way out.

As usual, loving the storytelling; I constantly want to push forward to learn more. Working hard to avoid any spoilers whatsoever.

On that subject: he Future Press strategy guide has sadly been delayed, but in a way I'm happy to first experience this "fresh" and with no tempting spoilers at hand. Although there's no real need for a guide to get through the game, I really enjoy the extremely detailed analysis of weapons and combat options, often with notes on behind-the-scenes workings you can only get from working closely with the developers. Which is probably another reason a delay's a good thing: I imagine they're tweaking balance up to the last minute...

I am amazed at how good and how well this runs on a base PS4.

Loving it so far. It is more of everything I loved from the first game.

Spoiler:

Just rebooted Gaia and got the Base. Far Zenith confirmed to not have been destroyed and responsible for the extinction signal. Not a huge surprise but I was wondering if maybe Ted Faro's Elysium was responsible somehow. I can't wait to see how this all goes. Like how the eff am I supposed to take on space men with a bow and arrow?!?

beeporama wrote:

Thank goodness for Easy Loot. I'm just... I'm just bad. Very bad. I still regularly miss components when I'm in stealth and the machine is barely moving; it's extremely difficult when the machine is actually flailing around.

This is my problem with combat - if I get a good enough layout of traps and wires ahead of time, I can usually manage a group of machines. But if anything goes wrong and it gets into a melee combat, my entire plan devolves into frantically jumping and flailing my spear around to try to survive. It's impossible to aim for specific components at that point, machines are too close and moving too quickly for me to hit anything, even with concentration. I usually end up with multiple machines launching themselves at me in sequence, each one staggering me and/or knocking me down. As soon as I recover another is already landing on me again. I haven't found a good way to counter this yet, and the few Warrior upgrades I've unlocked so far don't seem to be helping. I'm only in the low teens level-wise, maybe I'm still intended to be this hapless.

In outdoor climbing puzzles such as relic ruins that require you to access a moveable crate or to jump through hoops to reach a certain area, you can sometimes bypass the headache by calling your mount (bristleback works well); jump up on its back (don’t mount) and you can climb up from there.

My fingers slipped while attempting a complex jumping puzzle and I accidentally called my mount. Ended a 20-minute string of curses.

I might have missed it as I've mostly skimmed this thread, but any impressions on the gyro aiming? Is the sensitivity adjustable?

Dyni wrote:

I might have missed it as I've mostly skimmed this thread, but any impressions on the gyro aiming? Is the sensitivity adjustable?

Sensitivity is adjustable. I have mixed feelings on it ; it can be helpful when aiming for weak points or sniping, but it’s also turned on in focus mode and makes it a PITA to toggle between and read the weaknesses on various machine parts. If there was a way to only enable it when aiming weapons, I’d be completely sold.

steinkrug wrote:

Horizon Zero Dawn came out in February of 2017. The PC release wasn't until August of 2020.

Looking at another big Sony exclusive, God of War, came out in April 2018 and the PC version just came out in January 2022.

So, while it's possible that Sony may shorten this window, it's likely going to be a couple years. There's no confirmed PC release, it's just a fairly safe assumption, given that the first game was ported.

Oof, thanks. I'll unfollow this thread incase it ends up selling me a PS!

vypre wrote:
Dyni wrote:

I might have missed it as I've mostly skimmed this thread, but any impressions on the gyro aiming? Is the sensitivity adjustable?

Sensitivity is adjustable. I have mixed feelings on it ; it can be helpful when aiming for weak points or sniping, but it’s also turned on in focus mode and makes it a PITA to toggle between and read the weaknesses on various machine parts. If there was a way to only enable it when aiming weapons, I’d be completely sold.

Ah, I see. I'll have to experiment when I pick this up, but I'm surprised they don't have an option to use it only for aiming with all of the other accessibility options they managed to pack in.

Boudreaux wrote:
beeporama wrote:

Thank goodness for Easy Loot. I'm just... I'm just bad. Very bad. I still regularly miss components when I'm in stealth and the machine is barely moving; it's extremely difficult when the machine is actually flailing around.

This is my problem with combat - if I get a good enough layout of traps and wires ahead of time, I can usually manage a group of machines. But if anything goes wrong and it gets into a melee combat, my entire plan devolves into frantically jumping and flailing my spear around to try to survive. It's impossible to aim for specific components at that point, machines are too close and moving too quickly for me to hit anything, even with concentration. I usually end up with multiple machines launching themselves at me in sequence, each one staggering me and/or knocking me down. As soon as I recover another is already landing on me again. I haven't found a good way to counter this yet, and the few Warrior upgrades I've unlocked so far don't seem to be helping. I'm only in the low teens level-wise, maybe I'm still intended to be this hapless.

I'm in the same boat. I like to plan out encounters with traps and stealth, but that seems to go against the need to tear off specific parts. And if I do try to shear off a part with an arrow, all hell breaks loose of course and I end up flopping around getting walloped by machines I can't see. Not exactly living up to the great hunter fantasy yet, though it's still early days for me.

Same -- I'm all fine while I'm in stealth but once I'm spotted, I'm in trouble. The sharpshot bow does not have as long a range as I'd like. If they're too far away to scan, they're often too far away to shoot.

I realise this is a result of my build -- at level 17, I've invested mostly in Hunter & Infiltrator with some other points sprinkled around Machine Master & Survivor. I only put enough into Warrior to unlock the basic combos, because melee seems the least fun, with no blocking or lock-on mechanics and you just get pounded at close range, especially if you're outnumbered.

I often use smoke bombs and grapple-sling-glide to get out of melee and re establish stealth, or at least some distance. Tripwires are great if you get the time to do them. I tried mounted combat for a while, but the warrior bow seemed to be the only weapon I could really use it with it, and they are often too weak.

I do like how you have to use a variety of stuff for different beasts, rather than just one weapon type.

I'm currently playing with around the shredder gauntlet, and spike thrower for bigger beasts, mostly because they were the newest weapons I found, but gee you can go through materials quick with crafting upgrades and ammo.

Boudreaux wrote:
beeporama wrote:

Thank goodness for Easy Loot. I'm just... I'm just bad. Very bad. I still regularly miss components when I'm in stealth and the machine is barely moving; it's extremely difficult when the machine is actually flailing around.

This is my problem with combat - if I get a good enough layout of traps and wires ahead of time, I can usually manage a group of machines. But if anything goes wrong and it gets into a melee combat, my entire plan devolves into frantically jumping and flailing my spear around to try to survive.

Heh, sounds familiar. I too think levelling up means it'll get easier; I remember how hopeless I was early in the first game, whereas in New Game+ I was taking down Thunderjaws and Stormbirds with ease. It also makes me think Easy Loot wouldn't feel as necessary with better weapons: it would be one thing to shear off parts with a powerful Tearblast arrow, it's another when I have to hit the same part three times to shear it off.

As much as I want to be Stealthy McStealtherson, once I recognized I was going to end up in melee a lot, I focused on the melee passive buffs which I think have helped. I'm particularly fond of the "Aerial Slash/Jump Off" combo (particularly the latter) since it's very short, creates distance before I get walloped by a counterattack, and gives a brief free slowdown window.

And obviously, Potent Medicine is simply a must. If we're going to get our butts kicked a lot, might as well admit that healing fast is important.

I am thinking i need to move on from the first area after the embassy. It feels like a desert setting that I played a lot of in the first one. I am excited to see the new beach looking areas from the previews. But then I am afraid of missing important loot or being underleveled.

Good problems to have I guess.

I’m average at best at the combat in this game, but there’s something really satisfying about shooting components off of machines.

I can stealth components, but it's the hardcore stealth of the extremely patient: shoot a component from within red grass, wait two minutes for watchfulness to subside, then keep repeating for 5–10 minutes total per part. The wait time drastically goes down as you get better and better bows with better coils installed, which is where I'm now at on my seventh day of playing.

For anyone having issues with melee, I HIGHLY HIGHLY HIGHLY recommend playing through the melee pit challenges. They teach you how and when to string together combos using the skills from the Warrior tree. You need to invest about 20 points or so to be able to complete all the challenges, but once you go through it, melee makes a lot more sense. My only complaint now is the lack of block/parry.

Word of warning: similar to certain fighter games, some of the combos have some specific timing you’ll have to get down. It can be a little frustrating at first.

Actually, this holds true of HZD as well, but the pits and hunting grounds actually serve as advance tutorials to teach you how to use various skills, weapons, and traps. They can be a little frustrating and boring in my opinion, but they are worth your time regardless.

Horizon does suffer from the appearance of being a frenetic action game when it's actually a very procedural sort of puzzle solver.

I got reminded this of my kid because she keeps trying to Rambo down everything with reactionary instant inputs.

As an example, here is ONE of the ways for how to take out a Stormbird. Don't worry. It's not fast or anything so it's not like I'm giving away the farm.

Equipment:

Lightning and Melee resistant armor.

Potion or Meal to boost HP.

High Tear medium or long range weapon - Shredder Discs, Sharpshot Bows, and Hunter Bows are great for this.

High Acid Element Bow at medium range.

Damage option - more Shredder, Boltblasters, Melee, Precision Sharpshot Bows, Advanced Hunter Arrows, Blast bomb, or Spikes.

So.

The procedure is to avoid the lightning attacks until the attack routine stops. You'll want to triple notch your tear options or otherwise boost your Tear.

Remove the Storm Cannon. This is both a valuable Upgrade Component, and disables the lightning attacks.

Without the Storm Cannon, the Stormbird hovers more. Take the opportunity to shoot Acid Arrows. No need to spend Stamina. Every attack staggers it, rendering it unable to attack. When the Acid Limit is reached, it falls and is Knocked Down.

Do your damage rotation.

Now it's got Corroded State but is attacking. Avoid attacks until the Corroded State fades. Repeat staggering with Acid Arrows.

There are several obvious ways to improve this plan, which I won't spoil, but this is how you take out a Stormbird. You create a plan based on both the data in your Notebook and from its behaviors and attitude in combat.

The plan includes both offense and defense. Of course, it is complicated by the presence of other machines that may be attacking you. Sticking to this plan while a Thunderjaw is trying to smash you is a bad idea. You need to modify the plan.

All machines and specific machine mixes in various Machine Sites are like mini puzzles and Mini Arenas for you to solve in various ways.

The Arena fights are a standardized version of these sites minus the weather, terrain, and lighting features, plus a few standard features you can exploit.

The Hunting Grounds are a much more basic form of this, with easily exploitable features, and machine mixes and terrain designed to facilitate the lesson they're teaching.

Ah.

I went down the Hunter and Infiltrator trees, predictably. The Warrior melee game interested me, but not too much, so I'm only now getting into it.

I also took up Survivor for that sweet, sweet Overshield and Valor on Impact.

In "More Ways to Make This Game Easy," you can tweak both the Ammo Craft menu and the Concentration time dilation in the Difficulty Settings to make them incredibly long. That's on top of Deep Concentration and Concentration+.

This turns Concentration into a moving sort of Fallout style game where you can just pick the part you want to shoot, and then shoot that. I won't call it basically static, but it is quite generous. This is on top of your three options for slowing down the machine, or rendering it motionless - Shock, Adhesive, and Rope.

Co pilot Mode is very usable and great fun!

The primary controller naturally assumes the moving and the shooting aspects of combat. The secondary controller can monitor health and take charge of the medicine pouch, as well as making sure the meal buffs are going. Popping off Valor Surges can be a good role here as well. Smoke Bombs are a good Get-Out-Of-Jail option for the second player to ready, too.

I will advise against trying to wrest control of the sticks or the shooting from the primary player as this can quickly become confusing for both of you.

vypre wrote:

...My only complaint now is the lack of block/parry.

I've found myself reflexively hitting L1 many times as an opponent's melee blow came crashing down on my head. It does not help at all.

Same! The melee pits are an interesting addition. When it comes to facing the leader of the pit or whatever they’re called, I do find the lack of a lock on or block noticeable.

I love Aloy, there have been a couple of cut scenes, she gives these heavy sorts of sighs where you know she's thinking "f*ck, I gotta stop getting involved in local politics".

Me too, reminds me of ME2 renegade Shep!

Speaking of difficulty options, I appreciate having so many of them, but it does make for an interesting meta-game of trying to tune the game to my liking. Interesting because some settings just seem to reduce the need to grind for loot (which is good) whereas others negate entire systems or aspects of combat (which I don't want). But most of them are somewhere in between and this is where it gets tricky, must be a tough job being a game designer!