Just a quick too late thought regarding Aloy and psychopathy, I just attempted an outpost after reaching a point in the story where they should all be having second thoughts, nailed the leader and only the leader, but got caught sneaking up to get his tags, and the rest of the rebels responded with very loud demands for "the head of the Outsider!" soooooooooo...
So.
I've now played considerably farther - they seem to be warning me the next main mission is the end - and there've been many moments where the level of emotions dealing with people (love, regret, anger) put her firmly in the non-psychopath category. You can certainly cherry pick moments to go either way, but I'll still chalk that up to the fact that she's a videogame character and often times what she says and does has nothing to do with human psychology and everything to do with the mechanics of the game.
Based on the number of times she's said "these Tenakth must have been hunting machines when they were killed" when there are no humans or machines around I could also say she's delusional, but I'm going to go with "it's a game" instead.
Bit annoyed at the game
Why did they make the cities so stupidly laid out? I know they wanted to make things "bigger" etc but it is just annoying to have to run to different levels, all over to get to the different shops.
It is actually a bit of a complaint about the game as a whole - they made everything "bigger" without considering if it made the game better.
I am still enjoying it but I keep bouncing off for a bit because it is a bit dull really.
This is great, just started a couple of days ago. Had a good chance to spend several hours yesterday exploring and questing around Chainscrape. Well done Sony, your strategy of releasing some games on PC to entice PC players to PlayStation worked (at least on me).
Looks great on PS4, maybe not as good as HZD looked on PC, but good enough once I turned off motion blur. I love how things are actually colourful in this world,
Noticed this in my PS5 list last night when deciding what to play and I honestly felt no desire to keep going. I am nowhere near done but somehow the game lacks the fun which the other one had. Maybe it is because of my complaints above that everything was just bigger for the sake of being bigger but it misses the magic.
I think this will be my disappointment of the year.
I think the trick to maintaining enjoyment of these huge games is to allow everything to be optional. Then play the parts you find fun and ignore the rest (hello Machine Strike, arena fights, training grounds, races…)
I played for about 70 hours and the game was still giving me surprises and new experiences up to the end. Easy GOTY for me.
I'm liking it quite a bit. It's a step up for me in terms of the first game. The world is beautiful, there's a lot more freedom in the climbing, the side quests are way better both in writing & in terms of facial animation that was so wooden in Zero Dawn.
I still love shooting off the various parts of the machines, even more so the tiny hard to aim at parts. It's even more satisfying when you need that part to upgrade a weapon or armour.
The main story is going strong, I love the lore regarding GAIA & it's various subordinate functions, along with how that ties into the infection taking over the land.
The side stuff has been fun & more engaging overall but I still don't overly care about the tribe politics. Still I'm only 28 hours in, that's with taking my time. I've only came back to it recently after Elden Ring swallowed up months of my gaming time.
I still have a few complaints though, The melee is still weak, the valor surge does nothing to rectify this, or very little. I actually put loads of points into the melee skill tree to give it a chance but it just feels shallow & not a lot of fun.
The shieldwing which should have been outstanding if it was utilized in any way like Breath Of The Wild, just descends far too quickly. It's cool to use don't get me wrong but there's so much more potential. I was imagining gliding huge distances from mountain to mountain or off huge structures onto other high landmarks but by & large it's usually just used for getting down off cliffs or other elevated points of the environment that you've ascended/climbed.
The last thing, there are too many bows, it feels like I'm drowning in them & I haven't even got a purgewater or adhesive one yet. I've had to swap out weapons mid fight to get a bow with the specific element that a certain machine is weak against.
The human enemies are still mostly an after thought, with a couple of exceptions. One being a cool, environmental style boss fight.
I'm eager to push the story forward & get that damn diving mask wherever it shows up 
Yup, pretty much my thoughts there Spikeout.
All those bows and status effects are also optional. I don't think I fired a single purgewater arrow - used some traps once or twice though. A good Tear bow works wonders, then target weak points and bits that explode. It’s easy enough to keep a few favourites equipped - fire, acid, shock always went down well.
I too ignored a lot of those options. Lots and lots of arrows was my strategy.
All those bows and status effects are also optional. I don't think I fired a single purgewater arrow - used some traps once or twice though. A good Tear bow works wonders, then target weak points and bits that explode. It’s easy enough to keep a few favourites equipped - fire, acid, shock always went down well.
Aw, you missed out! Purgewater is great against some of the ones with vicious ranged elemental attacks, like the Scorcher and Fireclaw. I definitely used it less than others though; fire and acid were go-to's.
The inability to stack multiple status effects definitely changed my strategy. They'd probably be more important on higher difficulties, but anything that only slowed/stopped an enemy seemed less appealing than maximizing damage. I almost never used adhesive arrows.
I don't want to sound too negative, but I've got nowhere else to discuss my feelings in depth so *deep breath*...I'm not enjoying this game, at all. Going to go dot-point to keep it brief.
- This game feels so bloated! It's bigger for the sake of being bigger, but it doesn't benefit the play experience. Material gathering feels grindy, reaching the next plot point takes forever, finding the right merchant is tedious.
- The upgrades feel unbalanced. So often I'll want to buy a new weapon, but notice the next tier is weaker than my current equipment...But to upgrade the new gear, I have to find (and kill) harder monsters I haven't seen yet.
- Perhaps due to the above, I always feel weak. I'm not doing much damage, even when dismantling and hitting the correct elements.
- Aloy's movement! The dodge roll feels so inconsistent, I'm always getting hit - they removed the long dodge, and it feels like there's minimal i-frames when I try to get out of the way of something. THEN they add a stumbling mechanic after you've rolled a few times. It makes Aloy feel so sluggish
- enemies are far more aggressive, which...is fine, but without more considered defensive options, I'm constantly hit to the ground and unable to even get up to fight back. Enemies also seem to "home in" on you. More than a few times, I've noticed projectiles curve mid-air to hit me which makes dodging feel even more inconsistent
Most of my problems stem from Aloy feeling so sluggish and the dodge rolls being a 50/50 at best. I constantly feel out of control, and combat often becomes about me scrambling not to get hit rather than playing with the cool robot monsters and dismantling them in interesting ways. The other stuff just reminds me why I often bounce off AAA games - they are just big and frustrating for me.
The story is very interesting, and I'll definitely finish it to see where it goes. I adore the graphics, Aloy remains one of my favourite characters, and the setting is captivating. I just wish it was a little closer to the original in terms of mechanical feel.
I agree with most of your points. Zero Dawn was probably my favorite game of last generation, but not only did I not enjoy Forbidden West, it kind of soured me on a third installment. I put over 70 hours into Zero Dawn, but Forbidden West makes ZD seem swift and concise. Upgrading weapons and having to separately gain overrides for each species was so much more grindy than in the first installment, and the weapons improvements, while necessary to keep from dying as the game went on (at least they were for me), felt incredibly stingy compared to the amount of unfun work you had to do to get them.
I also thought climbing was actually worse, although I seem to be in a very small minority there - in the first game, there was one path and it was clear what that path was. In Forbidden West, there were almost infinite bad and frustrating paths, and frequently Aloy would refuse to go to a hand hold easily with in arm's distance, but then would leap 10 feet in a direction I didn't want her to go. Congratulations, Guerilla, you made a more frustrating climbing mechanic than Assassin's Creed, and used it to replace a better one.
For me, at least, I got the impression that almost everything Guerilla thought they'd improved in the sequel made it a less enjoyable experience.
Agreed with both of you. Somehow they missed the mark.
Yeah it was definitely too much though I did manage to finish it. The cliffhanger ending was less satisfying than the end of the first game too. It does the right thing though in letting you continue on in the world after the end with some really cool new gear I won't spoil.
There were several times where I wanted to just continue the story but I was too weak and had to farm for upgrades. I ended up turning the difficulty to the lowest setting to minimize this. I prefer how ZD had that one clearly superior piece of armor you had to quest for. All of the equipment in FW had too many trade offs. I did like the variety in weapons though. The upgraded javelins were very powerful and it felt like they pushed the player adequately to use different weapons.
I ended up sticking through HFW and finishing it but I share a lot of the same frustrations on the gameplay. The dodge in particular was infuriating and my frustration was amplified as I started playing this right after finishing Elden Ring where the dodge component is so critical and well done. I don't think Dodge in HFW is meant to be the same "invincible button" as it is in Elden Ring but the sluggishness you mention was so obvious that I basically stopped using it and preferred hit and run tactics.
I am enjoying FW a lot more after turning the combat difficulty way down. It makes the weapon management a lot less of a hassle. I can pretty much stick to 6 weapons that cover the elemental options and that I enjoy using (for example, I can ignore the shredder gauntlets which I cannot get the hang of). The Radial Blast valor skill takes care of the occasional mob when Aloy gets swamped by 5 machines jumping all over her, and I can mostly focus on the skills that give new abilities vs. just better damage/survivability. It takes a bit of the loot/gear fun out of it but the combat is much less frustrating.
I enjoyed my playthrough of HFW immensely, but I did turn on Easy Loot mode and never took it off. I'd advise anyone playing it to do the same. It's a lot better that way. Almost no grinding necessary.
I also did spend a lot of time fighting on top of a machine, so I managed to avoid the dodging issue.
Managed to get a PS5 from Sony that was delivered Saturday afternoon. Downloaded all the games I’ve been eagerly anticipating playing.
Saturday night, fired up FW for 30 minutes to see how it looked. Impressive.
Late Saturday night/early Sunday morning. Thunderstorm takes out a tree in our neighborhood and haven’t had power most of the day…
I enjoyed my playthrough of HFW immensely, but I did turn on Easy Loot mode and never took it off. I'd advise anyone playing it to do the same. It's a lot better that way. Almost no grinding necessary.
In addition to easy loot, I turned off gathering animations which is great, so when I’m running through a field I can grab herbs or whatever and I don’t have to slowdown or stop.
I also changed the setting so interaction icons are always on. That way I don’t have to keep spamming the focus button to look for lootable items. The icon showing them is always on.
Finally wrapped up (rolled credits) on Horizon Forbidden West the other day!
I followed much of the advice here and turned down the difficulty. I was initially enjoying the game on standard difficulty but found myself running into a bit of a grind and some more challenging combat encounters. Actually set it down for quite awhile and finally jumped back in with easy mode/easy loot and my enjoyment of the game significantly increased! That also let me get laser focused on the story. I love all of the side content but really wanted to see the game through to the end so I had to put on blinders, which is very similar to my experience with the original game. Agree that easy loot + no loot animations greatly increased my enjoyment, it let me just have fun with the weapons I wanted to have fun with instead of having to "get smart" with combat. I can see where some would find that fun but I just wanted to use what I liked and wreak some robots.
Overall I think it's not quite as strong as the first game, largely because I felt like the original did such a great job revealing its lore and sci fi concepts over time whereas there was less surprise this time around. I still did enjoy the story though and found the ending sequences to be pretty satisfying.
It still has some of the same complaints as I had with the original: I don't particularly enjoy the writing (whereas the worldbuilding is fantastic) and while I like Aloy as a character I've always found her voice acting to be a bit too flat. All of that held this time around, but also like the original the good far outweighed the bad.
I do think that Ghosts of Tsushima has replaced Horizon as my favorite open world game, it really shines in all the areas I think Horizon is weak. Still enjoyed Forbidden West overall and I'm looking forward to the VR experience but I'm hoping the next game in the series can find ways to expand what it does without just adding "more". The story set up some interesting possibilities and I do hope they get a chance to explore those.
I do think the designers are starting to get a little high on their own stash with the loot system in the game. I understand that the devs took inspiration from games like Monster Hunter, but these are fundamentally different games, so I’m glad someone with sense got their oar in and were able to put in Easy Loot mode.
I think the fundamental difference here is that Monster Hunter is a game where the story is in the action. You make your own story; and the monsters as well as the weapon design in Monster Hunter are building blocks from which awesome personal stories of combat and hunting can be made. It’s a bit like a fighting game in that sense. Horizon is less like that and more like a first person shooter. You don’t have countermoves. You don’t build meter. There generally aren’t machine attacks you can finesse in order to generate a compelling visual narrative. The machine attacks themselves aren’t designed to look impressive and cinematic from a third person perspective. They don’t pose or make flourishes. Even MH makes very conservative use of the part = loot dynamic. You generally only grind for one part (the others are usually easy to get). The “grind” is infamous, but for the most part, you only need to do less than 10 hunts to be “done” with a monster.
On top of all that, MH is a multiplayer game, so chilling with your mates just doing things on a map and interacting with them in attacking or defending from a monster is often a significant part of the appeal. The loot is just extra.
Horizon doesn’t have any of these features, so having to systematically take apart a fast machine on a regular basis just to get decent ammo just feels unnecessarily punishing.
I do think that for future installments and future games, Guerilla needs to think about what they’ve made and how to leverage its own strengths.
I've been picking at this here and there. Man, the combat is not that fun. I don't know why, because I enjoyed the first one for some reason. But I feel like it's just annoying here. And I'm playing on easy...
The graphics for some reason is also extra bright/shiny.
I've been picking at this here and there. Man, the combat is not that fun. I don't know why, because I enjoyed the first one for some reason. But I feel like it's just annoying here. And I'm playing on easy...
The graphics for some reason is also extra bright/shiny.
Adjust the dynamic range settings. HDR is way too bright with the default. I ended up with the below but your results will vary depending on your TV and environment.
Brightness -3
Shadows +2
Highlights -3
I've been picking at this here and there. Man, the combat is not that fun. I don't know why, because I enjoyed the first one for some reason. But I feel like it's just annoying here. And I'm playing on easy...
The biggest protip I can suggest is that this game puts more emphasis on elemental weaknesses than the previous one. It really matters that you use acid/fire/shock/whatever.
The balance changes threw me for a while, too. I kept expecting bombs to do more damage, for example. It might take time to retrain yourself on which weapons are best for you and your playstyle.
I've been picking at this here and there. Man, the combat is not that fun. I don't know why, because I enjoyed the first one for some reason. But I feel like it's just annoying here. And I'm playing on easy...
The graphics for some reason is also extra bright/shiny.
You're not alone in that. I posted a few pages back my frustrations with the game.
It's hard to pinpoint, but combat does just feel...annoying. It feels like enemies have larger HP pools than before, there's more of a focus on hitting specific parts, and the dodge rolling feels cumbersome. It all adds up to create a really weird play dynamic that ultimately made me turn it down to easy, then stop playing shortly after.
You do kind of need to have a plan going in, and that plan needs to involve both a solid build with synergistic elements, and a strong understanding of machine mechanics.
With these, you can take out even Tremortusks in literal seconds. Combat goes extemely fast, even on Hard. But if you don't know how all that works, even Easy will be a slog.
Balthezor wrote:I've been picking at this here and there. Man, the combat is not that fun. I don't know why, because I enjoyed the first one for some reason. But I feel like it's just annoying here. And I'm playing on easy...
The graphics for some reason is also extra bright/shiny.
You're not alone in that. I posted a few pages back my frustrations with the game.
It's hard to pinpoint, but combat does just feel...annoying. It feels like enemies have larger HP pools than before, there's more of a focus on hitting specific parts, and the dodge rolling feels cumbersome. It all adds up to create a really weird play dynamic that ultimately made me turn it down to easy, then stop playing shortly after.
This 100%. The combat is tedious, it's borderline frustrating. Even on easy. Dodging is all over the place and just makes me lose my target. Often I wonder where the hell the enemy is. Camera sucks.
I don't know why because I genuinely love/liked the first.
I didn’t have the same issues with the combat. Ranged combat, that is. I can’t remember having any particular issues with the camera or targeting. I enjoyed using my bow to knock pieces off the larger enemies and it was exciting to take them down. I had a lot of fun with it.
I've been picking at this here and there. Man, the combat is not that fun. I don't know why, because I enjoyed the first one for some reason. But I feel like it's just annoying here. And I'm playing on easy...
The graphics for some reason is also extra bright/shiny.
I am enjoying the combat but I feel like I'm constantly in the slow motion mode aiming at parts of the machines, to the point it's taking away from the real time movement, avoiding attacks etc. I also don't like the dodge, it feels too loose, Aloy's jump too floaty into the bargain.
There are far too many elemental/status type attacks, acid, purgewater, fire, ice, plasma, adhesive it feels like your weapon wheel is chock full of the various arrows, sometimes two bows having ice or acid attacks.
I like the open world but some of the little encampments are so cluttered to the point Aloy can either get stuck on environmental furniture or it just looks janky as hell jumping over stuff.
I was going into this thinking this has the potential to be one of the best games of the year & after 60+ hours, doing lots of side quests, exploring the world a lot it's just falling into that 'good but not great category'.
The special thing Horizon had going in for it in Zero Dawn was how fresh the machines felt to fight, the spectacle, parts falling off, how they fought in groups. This is nicely evolved in Forbidden West but that newness feeling isn't there anymore.
I do like the main story & generally the characters are pretty well written but it's just not compelling like a Mass Effect 2 or Witcher 3. I'll see how the rest of the game goes but I am ready for it to end.
I'd be happy if they left Horizon & went onto a new IP after FW but I can't see that happening. No doubt the next game will look unbelievable (being current gen only) but it's lacking in so many areas gameplay, puzzle & exploration wise that Guerilla have a hell of a lot of work to do to take this series to the next level.
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