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Horizon Forbidden West is not enjoyable as the first due to changes (No story spoilers)

TGO

Hype Train conductor. Works harder than it steams.
Whoever butchered Aloy’s actual model, Hannah Hoekstra, should be fired. Probably a committee vote that she shouldn’t be as hot as Hannah..
Aloy is fine
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Yeah I can’t even play it anymore, it’s very boring and the voice acting/acting is just bad to me. I really liked the first one and the DLC but this one isn’t fun to play to me, maybe I’ll pick it up later but right now I have no more desire to play it.
 
I played around 20-30 hours of the original Zero Dawn on PS4 but never finished it until I got the game on PC and played it to completion at 60 fps (this was before the 60 fps patch for the PS5 version).

I've played around 75 hours of Forbidden West to level 50 and I feel I am very near the end but I have been deliberately doing as many of the side-quests as possible because the writing and quality of the cutscenes now match those of the main quests (unlike the first game). I am very much enjoying the game but personally I feel that both games are very similar and the sequel is just a refinement of everything from the first game, which is fine because this is only the second game. I also found the climbing to work fine, you can see where you can climb using the focus (and there's an option to enable the highlights automatically when climbing if you want) and added a bit of challenge to reaching higher ground, something that you don't get from, say, a modern Assassin's Creed game where you just hold down a button and press up!!!

My only criticism of the game is the melee combat against humans which feels a bit unrefined and basic. There's no option to block or parry, as commented already, and I feel the developers really could have done more here to improve this in the sequel. Otherwise, this is a great game and one of the highlights of 2022 so far for me.
 

GymWolf

Member
nah you should, the story presentation and side quests are superior. Most ppl only think the first game had a good story because of the twist and the unknown. After that theres nothing about it that was good, generic bad guy, side characters that no one gave a shit, etc. The second game makes use of the side characters much better, they have more impact, they are there kinda of like Mass Effect 2 did with their companions but the story doesnt really have anything of shock value besides one twist that you can see it coming based on the story bits/signs and it feels more safe.
SPOILERS AHEAD!!!












True, but the core mistery and old days story in the first one is WAY better than anything inside fw, even the final reveal...in my modest opinion of course.

And hades+helis are still far better villains than fucking far zenith\tilda.

At least helis has a couple of good cutscenes and like 3 long audio log about him where you can understand his point of view, far zenith are cardboard thin villains and tilda is whatever and honestly nemesys doens't look that much interesting neither.

Kotallo was by far the best bros, his voice actor did a good job.
 

Rayderism

Member
My only real complaint about HFW was how there is too many weapons that were mostly the same thing, but different enough to make you have to constantly be switching weapons. That was kind of annoying.
 

The Cockatrice

Gold Member
SPOILERS AHEAD!!!












True, but the core mistery and old days story in the first one is WAY better than anything inside fw, even the final reveal...in my modest opinion of course.

And hades+helis are still far better villains than fucking far zenith\tilda.

At least helis has a couple of good cutscenes and like 3 long audio log about him where you can understand his point of view, far zenith are cardboard thin villains and tilda is whatever and honestly nemesys doens't look that much interesting neither.

Kotallo was by far the best bros, his voice actor did a good job.


The actual villains are not even in the games so these chars dont matter that much. I didnt care about them either. Hopefully the third game when the true villains shows up on earth, it'll have a more impactful presence
 

GymWolf

Member
The actual villains are not even in the games so these chars dont matter that much. I didnt care about them either. Hopefully the third game when the true villains shows up on earth, it'll have a more impactful presence
But the true villains is basically based on them and it only wants to kill them so the whole motivation and stakes are weak and confused at best, they really fucked up by not having an advanced alien species being the next enemy, another ia based on rich assholes with a weak ass purpose is not that exciting.

Also not really a good excuse to have weak ass villains for a 50+ hours game.

Even regalla was weak AF and underused.
 

The Cockatrice

Gold Member
But the true villains is basically based on them and it only wants to kill them so the whole motivation and stakes are weak and confused at best, they really fucked up by not having an advanced alien species being the next enemy, another ia based on rich assholes with a weak ass purpose is not that exciting.

Also not really a good excuse to have weak ass villains for a 50+ hours game.

Even regalla was weak AF and underused.

I dont think Horizon was ever about villains like some other games focus on. This was always about dealing with the mystery and fixing it which is what Aloy is trying to do. Everything else is just in her way/not relevant, even her companions. I kinda like that they made her more and more like Sobek. They have plenty of time to change some stuff for the third game tho. And yeah, Regalla was meh. Even more hillarious that
she can join you despite all the shit she has done
.
 

Gamerguy84

Member
These threads which could have been a thought in the other threads are funny.

"Not as enjoyable"

Nothing new, every big PS exclusive that matters gets completely shit on anymore from every direction.

Miles, R&C, DS, GT, Returnal, HFW all have dedicated threads why they are terrible. Usually more than 1.

Next up God of War even though it's already started. The concern of lack of info was over 300 posts last time I saw it. Currently sits at 338 posts and apparently looks like a PS4 expansion pack.

Read the room.
 

Valonquar

Member
Regalla getting next to no screen time was the biggest crime. Basset did a great job with the little she was given. You can easily miss some great stuff with her in the HQ basement before the final battle... and then she goes out like a complete chump to rush towards the to-be-continued ending.
 
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Rockman33

Member
I loved the first one so much! But this one I just can't like. They made horrible changes!

Health: The way health works is awful. You only get two pools of health and it runs out so fast because the enemies and machines take more than half your health in ONE hit! Then you are in the middle of the combat and you have to tell the enemies: WAIT I need to stay still to fill the other pool of health! That's so ridiculous! Why the hell can't I move when I need to fill my health?!! It's so stupid! Why do I only have two pools of 16 berries when I have 500+ in my inventory?!!

The climbing is horrible, and not even comparing it to another game. The game is not even consistent on what you can and can't climb and the functionality is extremely buggy.

Combat: The combat is horrible comparing it to the first one. It's not enjoyable for many reasons, but my main complain is that either is bad or it's cheese-able.

Melee: This is a joke! The first one didn't have a good melee at all, but you could see they didn't design the game at all for it, so it was a moot point. This time, they give you three stupid combos that don't do shit. The combat is useless, but somehow if you get the resonator blast it's cheese-able.

WHY THE HELL I CAN'T USE A SHIELD OR PARRY?! (I haven't finished the game, so I don't know if you get one eventually) but it NEEDS either shield or parry or both!

Enemies/Machines:
- They have a stupid long reach. You could be like 5 miles away from them and still get you.
- The armor it's incredibly stupid when trying to infiltrate because you can't scope them anymore. If you hit them with an arrow to beak them they get alerted. Specially if you use an exploding barrel.
- Machines now have combat designed as Pokemon. Where you just have to match their element and that's it. It's cheese-able because you just span their weakness and win easier. One thing is to have parts that react to certain elements, the other thing entirely is to ruin combat by making them Pokemon.
- Whatever they have to throw at you, they never miss. If you are running, they throw shit advanced so that it hits you. It's incredibly stupid how precise you have to be to avoid shit.

Weapons: Weapons are mostly useless in this game. It's hard to have fun with them because they don't do shit.
- Again, armor ruins everything. The tear arrows now take much longer. It's like the entire fight it's used to remove armor.
- Rope caster is useless now.
- Gauntless are cool but good luck catching the disc THREE times while moving like crazy because of how you need to spend 100% rolling.
- Tripcasters are useless. They don't even fill the element state and they just alert enemies, so you just get yourself in a fight when trying to be stealthy
- Spears are so OP. This is my main weapon when fighting large enemies. Again, cheese-able
- Weapon skills are good, but they shouldn't be limited since they are not that good!
- Weapon surges are horrible. They are useful, but they last like 5 seconds, so become useless.

Items/traps:
-Items are useless.
-Traps are OP in most cases, making fights cheese-able.


The first one was fun. It was a grounded game with basic mechanics that made the game enjoyable. They tried to implement so much shit in this game, that forgot the fun factor. I remember loving to fight Stormbirds and Thunderjaws because I used to rope cast them. Now I just hit them with arrows until they die. It's not fun anymore.

There are many new machines that I would like to use the rope caster but it's useless. New weapons are not fun because every machine is so fast and so aggressive that you just have to roll, roll, roll, roll, roll, roll, and then go high ground and cheese.

Maybe many of you will say: GET GOOD! But that's the thing, I don't think this game is designed like a soul's game where you need to learn the enemies patterns very intricately to be able to win. It used to be a game to have fun, it was like a AAA super-hero movie that doesn't get involved in deep shit to be fun.

If there is a third one, they need to rethink the design of the game. Go back to basics.
I completely agree on pretty much every point.

To add to this I find the open world extremely lackluster. It’s never made me want to explore it in any way.

When your mount dies you have to go override a new one. Drives me crazy.

The visual language is terrible. I’ve found myself not knowing where to climb or go multiple times.
 

Allforce

Member
I'm having fun with it still but I started on Normal and have no intention of changing it at this point and it's much much easier than the first game. I think I JUST finally got a new Hunters Bow after using the original I started with all the way to the west coast. I do enjoy just going balls to the wall on the biggest machines with no fear whatsoever, I melee'd a Stormbird to death yesterday lol.

I also just stopped upgrading anything in the skill tree hours ago. I think I have around 50 Skill Points to spend last time I played and there's literally nothing left that interests me.

It's a great game just has a LOT going on mechanically and it gives you about 3 dozen distinct ways to play, which is great. I just don't have any interest in most of them.
 

Mossybrew

Member
Combat is fun and challenging, OP just sucks at it, clearly. WHY CAN'T I USE A SHIELD OR PARRY get out of here with that crap, there are enough games that rely on parrying or shields, go play those, I'm happy that nonsense isn't a part of this combat system.

Anyway, climbing is the only downgrade from the first game, every other aspect is an improvement.
 
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The biggest thing I agree with is combat feels a bit more off in this game than the original. But its hard to put my finger on exactly.

Its definitely just more chaotic and its harder to read which attacks will hit you and it regularly feels like there are some attacks you just cant avoid. Its still fun but it just doesnt feel very refined.
 

sendit

Member
I was waiting what this weeks Horizon thread would be about. Let me tell you, the OP did not disappoint.
 

Zeroing

Banned
The only thing the first game did better than the second game is the Story, the second game improved everything else
I disagree , the story on the second one is a mess! The first one was more realistic and grounded on a plausible reality, the second one went full sci-fi crazy!

I think the devs tried too hard to improve and change things and didn’t work as a fully realized game! Doesn’t mean it it bad, but the first game felt more special.
 
I disagree , the story on the second one is a mess! The first one was more realistic and grounded on a plausible reality, the second one went full sci-fi crazy!

I think the devs tried too hard to improve and change things and didn’t work as a fully realized game! Doesn’t mean it it bad, but the first game felt more special.
You know your agreeing with them, right?
 

SlimySnake

Flashless at the Golden Globes
Another dumb thing is the nerfing of legendary weapons in single player game. Another design decision that makes no sense. These weapons have you kill like hundreds of the hardest enemies to level up and then they nerfed them to make very rare weapons more viable. Why? Why should i go back to them after i have literally spent dozens of hours leveling up my legendary weapons?

The latest update removes some of those nerfs but adds a few more. Like reducing the critical hit rate on the Death Seeker's Shadow from 15% to 5%. Why? That is literally the only good thing about that weapon. It's trash otherwise.

Again, i can understand balancing on pvp games, but this is a single player game and that weapon wasnt even OP anyway. I can one shot many enemies with the Forgefall right now, so why downgrade the hunter bow I barely even use. Especially after I spent dozens of hours killing hunderds of the hardest enemies in the game to get this powerful and then you nerf it. This is all so silly. I dont expect this from AAA devs like GG. They were the chosen one.
 
The combat takes awhile to understand since there are a lot of mechanics, but it's very satisfying and flexible. I found my flow and stuck with it and systematically dismantled those robots. It was a good time!

I'll give you the climbing. If I can't effortlessly get from point a to point b in an open world game in 2022, I'm immediately annoyed. The flying was also too rigid.

I think the speed of executing certain actions needs to be increased in general. Picking up items is a chore, and adds frustration to the combat. Traps are really only worthwhile before combat begins, because it takes too long to setup. Which is probably by design, but it makes me far less likely to actually use the items when I have so many other fast options.
 
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I loved the first one so much! But this one I just can't like. They made horrible changes!

Health: The way health works is awful. You only get two pools of health and it runs out so fast because the enemies and machines take more than half your health in ONE hit! Then you are in the middle of the combat and you have to tell the enemies: WAIT I need to stay still to fill the other pool of health! That's so ridiculous! Why the hell can't I move when I need to fill my health?!! It's so stupid! Why do I only have two pools of 16 berries when I have 500+ in my inventory?!!

The climbing is horrible, and not even comparing it to another game. The game is not even consistent on what you can and can't climb and the functionality is extremely buggy.

Combat: The combat is horrible comparing it to the first one. It's not enjoyable for many reasons, but my main complain is that either is bad or it's cheese-able.

Melee: This is a joke! The first one didn't have a good melee at all, but you could see they didn't design the game at all for it, so it was a moot point. This time, they give you three stupid combos that don't do shit. The combat is useless, but somehow if you get the resonator blast it's cheese-able.

WHY THE HELL I CAN'T USE A SHIELD OR PARRY?! (I haven't finished the game, so I don't know if you get one eventually) but it NEEDS either shield or parry or both!

Enemies/Machines:
- They have a stupid long reach. You could be like 5 miles away from them and still get you.
- The armor it's incredibly stupid when trying to infiltrate because you can't scope them anymore. If you hit them with an arrow to beak them they get alerted. Specially if you use an exploding barrel.
- Machines now have combat designed as Pokemon. Where you just have to match their element and that's it. It's cheese-able because you just span their weakness and win easier. One thing is to have parts that react to certain elements, the other thing entirely is to ruin combat by making them Pokemon.
- Whatever they have to throw at you, they never miss. If you are running, they throw shit advanced so that it hits you. It's incredibly stupid how precise you have to be to avoid shit.

Weapons: Weapons are mostly useless in this game. It's hard to have fun with them because they don't do shit.
- Again, armor ruins everything. The tear arrows now take much longer. It's like the entire fight it's used to remove armor.
- Rope caster is useless now.
- Gauntless are cool but good luck catching the disc THREE times while moving like crazy because of how you need to spend 100% rolling.
- Tripcasters are useless. They don't even fill the element state and they just alert enemies, so you just get yourself in a fight when trying to be stealthy
- Spears are so OP. This is my main weapon when fighting large enemies. Again, cheese-able
- Weapon skills are good, but they shouldn't be limited since they are not that good!
- Weapon surges are horrible. They are useful, but they last like 5 seconds, so become useless.

Items/traps:
-Items are useless.
-Traps are OP in most cases, making fights cheese-able.


The first one was fun. It was a grounded game with basic mechanics that made the game enjoyable. They tried to implement so much shit in this game, that forgot the fun factor. I remember loving to fight Stormbirds and Thunderjaws because I used to rope cast them. Now I just hit them with arrows until they die. It's not fun anymore.

There are many new machines that I would like to use the rope caster but it's useless. New weapons are not fun because every machine is so fast and so aggressive that you just have to roll, roll, roll, roll, roll, roll, and then go high ground and cheese.

Maybe many of you will say: GET GOOD! But that's the thing, I don't think this game is designed like a soul's game where you need to learn the enemies patterns very intricately to be able to win. It used to be a game to have fun, it was like a AAA super-hero movie that doesn't get involved in deep shit to be fun.

If there is a third one, they need to rethink the design of the game. Go back to basics.
gQI0ptO.gif
 

SlimySnake

Flashless at the Golden Globes
Combat is fun and challenging, OP just sucks at it, clearly. WHY CAN'T I USE A SHIELD OR PARRY get out of here with that crap, there are enough games that rely on parrying or shields, go play those, I'm happy that nonsense isn't a part of this combat system.

Anyway, climbing is the only downgrade from the first game, every other aspect is an improvement.
ummm they literally added a new melee skill tree, a half a dozen arenas, melee specific skills and combos to enhance melee in the sequel. Melee is a huge part of this game's combat system after people (unfairly imo) knocked the first game for it. But now that they have invested so much in melee and promised that they have made it better, they need to be criticized for not adding basic melee features like blocking and parrying. in fact, the melee is somehow even worse than it was in the original after the DLC melee upgrade. I do way less damage than I did in the DLC even after upgrading everything.
 

Mossybrew

Member
Picture Aloy straight up parrying or blocking attacks from these multi-ton machines. It's ridiculous. Getting the fuck out of the way is the only defensive maneuver that makes sense in this setting.
 

SlimySnake

Flashless at the Golden Globes
In the next game maybe they can double up the shield glider into a shield shield.
There is a shield in the game. it's on one of those wire traps. It's so stupid. Just have a secondary attack that lets you block or parry attacks. The enemies are super aggressive this time around and are constantly trying to get up in your ass and all you can do is dodge so you end up dodging for eternity.

I am at a point in the end game where i can pretty much kill everything in one hit. But the moment things go wrong and i run out of valor and stamina, it becomes a grind. im constantly rolling, enemies are constantly moving around, even in slow mo, they move all the fucking time. Just fucking stop swaying for once. Having the ability to parrying that fucking kangaroo every time he lunged at you wouldve been great.
 
Is it Open Hate Season on Sony games right now or something? Like I get the early stuff for GT7 because of the shitty MTX (which they've already come out and say was dumb, and are fixing), but what did HFW do that was so offensive to people other than coming out close to Elden Ring (as if that's an offense)?

Anyway, I didn't play the first game so I can't give perspective from that point, but some of the things you mention are weird takes. You complain about the machines being too easy due to elementals, when that's not something uncommon for RPGs in general (and this is an action-WRPG), but ignore that you don't HAVE to target them based on elemental weaknesses, and in some cases you may not be able to depending on your resource management or what weapons you prioritize for upgrades and customizations. Playstyle might also factor in; some arrows for example only work at shorter ranges while others are better at far-range hits, but less damage and less (or any) elemental effects. If your playstyle is based on long-ranged play though (such as mine), then you're mainly relying on the longer-range shots with reduced elemental effects.

At the same time though, you complain about stealth/infiltration being "useless" because enemies will become alert when you hit them...like, yeah? Of course they'd notice something is afoot when they're literally shot by something xD. It doesn't mean your cover is completely blown though, you just need to be smarter in what locations you hide in and line up your shots better, and have some patience. Highlight their movement tracks if you can (I've gone unnoticed in the early game by machines literally an inch away from me just staying still in grass cover to blend in, and you can usually engage a critical one-shot kill when they're this close, or at least a critical strike when talking about more powerful machines).

You're complaining about machines being too easy due to elemental weakness exploits, but then are upset that they're too accurate with their shots from long distances. Ever play a Ghouls n' Ghosts game? Trust me, it's more annoying there. At least in HFW you can shoot off the power cells to deactivate those long-range attacks but again, that requires having at least a part of your play strategy focused on long-range combat, having the patience to aim your shots to shoot off the parts of machines that enable them to do long-range attacks.

It's kind of weird to hear someone complain about cheese in a game with heavy RPG elements..like, a LOT of RPGs can be cheesed with certain minmax builds, or just figuring out certain exploits. Ultimately though the level of challenge is up to you, whether you choose to exploit those things and do minmax or not. It's something inherent to the genre and games with lots of influences of that genre, and has been for decades. Maybe your playstyle just leads to leaning into exploits and minmax, but that may not be something you can 100% pin as the game's fault.

At the end you bring up Souls games, and probably indirectly referencing Elden Ring in that thought. Which is funny, because you have a game like HFW looking to add more challenge, and getting criticized for it, and we've seen reviewers do this to several other challenging games this year like Sifu, while giving Elden Ring and Souls in general a pass. It's the same with bugs and glitches, or performance issues: Elden Ring got a pass for things where if certain games had slight bugs or graphical issues, they were openly criticized for. It's like double standards and Souls Exceptionalism, and I don't understand how it's come about, but it's not a good thing.

But I don't want to make this about double standards when it comes to Souls/FromSoft games versus everyone else on issues of technical performance and difficulty, and I don't want to paint an impression my post is some stealthed defense for HFW simply to get at another game in some way (when I've said multiple times I'm 100% intending to pick up Elden Ring later in the year, hopefully by the time I can find a PS5 at MSRP and if the current-gen versions get their performance patched to run at a steady 60 FPS), so I'll stop there on that note. This is about HFW and just frankly speaking I don't agree with a lot of what you mention in the OP (tho I agree with maybe a couple of things, like with the Trip Caster, but that's only because I've yet to try working it into my playstyle. Same with the Frostling, tho now I'm more tempted to use that weapon in conjunction with different arrow types for the Brittle effect).

There is a shield in the game. it's on one of those wire traps. It's so stupid. Just have a secondary attack that lets you block or parry attacks. The enemies are super aggressive this time around and are constantly trying to get up in your ass and all you can do is dodge so you end up dodging for eternity.

Then just learn to be smarter with your weapon selections in combat? Maybe try weakening enemies beforehand targeting power sources to disable attacks before going in? Look I would definitely appreciate a block/parry function for melee as well as I'd take to the melee combat more, but let's not pretend the game doesn't offer options for the player to handle the new enemies.

It just seems like some of you don't have the patience to be a bit more tactile in your playstyles and mix up your approaches. I know a criticism to that will be "But it's open world and any style should be viable!", but I think that still holds true here. Just that at certain moments certain styles may be momentarily more beneficial than others.

I am at a point in the end game where i can pretty much kill everything in one hit. But the moment things go wrong and i run out of valor and stamina, it becomes a grind. im constantly rolling, enemies are constantly moving around, even in slow mo, they move all the fucking time. Just fucking stop swaying for once. Having the ability to parrying that fucking kangaroo every time he lunged at you wouldve been great.

Again, just diversify your battle tactics and maybe leverage terrain better. You're further in the game than I am, so maybe there are specific enemy types near the end that are a real pain in the ass no matter what skills and weapons you prioritize. But I can't imagine it being this much of a hassle if you properly exhaust all available options.
 
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rofif

Banned
Picture Aloy straight up parrying or blocking attacks from these multi-ton machines. It's ridiculous. Getting the fuck out of the way is the only defensive maneuver that makes sense in this setting.
Picture aloy shooting these multi-ton machines with a bow... oh wait
 

Hobbygaming

has been asked to post in 'Grounded' mode.
Yeah.....the poor climbing mechanic was hardly a game breaking issue. It just needs to be rethought in the next game. But the combat was so much fun. I'm glad I'm not the only one who liked the story.
Yeah even the climbing though it is flawed is still an improvement over the 1st game. And yeah the weapons feel so good to use especially with the dualsense. The story pulled me in unlike any video game story in recent memory
 
I have to admit I didn't care for the story or Aloy anywhere near as much as I did the first one. The game looks amazing but Aloy is just a flat character with no personality other than seeming to be annoyed by everyone. The side characters were great especially Kotallo, if they do story based DLC I'd rather play as him than Aloy. They do need to do something about melee combat, no lock on and there is no blocking anything and it's way too easy to just start swinging right past your opponent. The animations where you are stuck trying to get up after being knocked down take too long as well. The shooting feels good with the bow but and the new disc weapon but I didn't even use a tripcaster in this game. Criticism of the climbing or at least inconsistent places you are able to climb is valid IMO, there is no reason why two hillsides that look exactly the same aren't both climbable.
 

Topher

Gold Member
Yeah even the climbing though it is flawed is still an improvement over the 1st game. And yeah the weapons feel so good to use especially with the dualsense. The story pulled me in unlike any video game story in recent memory

The DualSense was awesome. Did you ever notice the vibrations underneath the controller when walking through grass?
 

Hobbygaming

has been asked to post in 'Grounded' mode.
The DualSense was awesome. Did you ever notice the vibrations underneath the controller when walking through grass?
Yes!! I think I'm going to go ahead and start that new playthrough, finishing up the side missions is fun but I wanna experience the main story again

And idk if this is for every area but when flying on the Sunwing did you know you can pick up an energy cell and drop it over an area like a bomb and it'll shock all of the nearby enemies?
 

Fredrik

Member
I’m not even close to finish it but I agree that the climbing is bad, the rest has been great for me so far though.

In the top-3 for the year so far.
1. Elden Ring
2. Tunic
3. Horizon FW
 
D

Deleted member 471617

Unconfirmed Member
I completed Horizon Forbidden West a few weeks ago. Overall, an excellent 9.0/10 but doesn't have the impact of the first game which was a 9.5/10 and my 2017 goty.

Story/characters are easily better in HFW and the story quests are great. Visually, looks amazing but the 60FPS mode needs to be cleaned up because it doesn't have the image quality that it should have. It has like a glimmer effect or something that should simply be eliminated. Audio is excellent. Voice acting is top tier, music is great and sound effects are also great. The lone negative in this aspect which is a big one is that Aloy never shuts the fuck up. She literally spoils everything in the game, where to climb, the puzzles, where to go, just everything. It's so fucking aggravating. There should be a "mute Aloy" option when outside of conversations.

Combat/gameplay in my opinion is a step back. The spear is so underpowered and yet every other weapon being upgradable, the spear isn't. Valor Surges aren't anything special and you can only have one equipped out of 12. Like, what's the point? I'm not switching from one Valor Surge to another because that defeats the entire purpose of having a character build that suits my play style. Hoping this gets eliminated for the third game. The bombs are great and traps if you have enough time to use them are overpowered but the risk of trying to plant one makes up for it. The bows depends on what you like to use. I like Hunter bows the most but they don't do as much damage as they should.

The ropecaster is a joke. It doesn't do anywhere near what it did in the first game. You can't just shoot it, you have to aim it all the way down to get a good shot which is counterproductive to what it's meant to do - tie down enemies which in turn prevents them from moving. Ropecaster isn't meant to do damage. Tripwires while still good were definitely nerfed compared to the first game and enemies amazingly avoid them the vast majority of the time which makes them useless. Stealth isn't as good as the first game. First, even skills maxed out, you're weak and can only get one hit stealth kills against very low leveled enemies. I should should be able to stealth kill any normal machine on one hit. Can't do this which makes it useless to use. Against human enemies, you can more damage with stealth which yes, makes sense but at level 50, maxed out, I should be able to stealth kill the lesser machines on one hit.

The biggest gameplay issue for me was the climbing. It fucking sucks. I prefer HZD over HFW because despite "paths" being on mountains and whatnot, Aloy still wouldn't climb half the time or go in the direction im pushing on the analog stick. Like, come on. HFW should have been exactly like AC Origins/Odyssey/Valhalla. If this isn't implemented for the third game, it will be an even bigger negative for me than it was in HFW. There's two other gameplay elements that are awesome but there's no combat to either at all. Won't say what they are as you can't do them until later on in the story.

Speaking of the story, getting the special items takes way too fucking long and if you want to complete everything (like I normally do in open world games), you will be backtracking a lot. Second gameplay issue after the climbing is the lack of a lock on. Way too many missed attacks with melee combat. Hoping the third game adds a lock on.

Two final notes - I changed the controller configuration to where the square and triangle buttons were my weak/strong attacks buttons. Fuck R1/R2 for melee combat. Anyway, changing buttons, whenever I would pick up a "heavy weapon", pressing R2 to shoot would automatically drop the weapon. LMAO. They completely fucked up allowing the player to customize their controller configuration as there are a few "conflicts" yet the game never tells you this.

Last was the technical issues. Holy shit!! Black screen for the second half of the game for two seconds or so that would just randomly happened. A lot of clipping through ladders/platforms, etc. Some pop-in but nowhere near the level of what Skill Up showed in his review. I had one crash to the dashboard. I had one side quest late in the game where a Clamberjaw did a jump attack and went into the ground. Couldn't kill it, thus couldn't advance the side quest. Reloaded, same shit happened. Third time, I went running in with powerful grenades and blew up both Clamberjaws quickly. Had Aloy freeze in that animation when opening up a car trunk. Fast traveled to a campfire and she was still frozen in the animation. Had to restart the game. Worse of all, I had a main story quest halfway through where at the end, a button "prompt" is meant to appear. It never did. Reloaded check point. Same. Restarted the game by closing the app. Same. So I reloaded an earlier save file. Lost an hour of progress and did other stuff for around 10 or so hours before going back to that main quest.

I had more technical issues with HFW in 150 or so hours than I had in the 20 Sony published games I completed last generation on PS4/PS4 Pro COMBINED and that includes Days Gone. HFW needed a few more months and should have been delayed to May in my opinion.

Despite all that, I still for the most part enjoyed the game but it was the story lines and characters along with the main story quests that kept me fully invested.
 

Dr Bass

Member
Just few weeks ago you thought it was amazing...

Dog Gif GIF
To be fair to the OP, my opinion of the game basically looked like a parabola, where the first five hours of my game being the "max" of the vertex. Not one that went to zero mind you, but by the end I was fairly underwhelmed.

It's ok for your opinion of a game to change over time. Happened with me, and appears to be what happened here.
 

SCB3

Member
My only real issue with HFW is that it feels dated and the first one did as well compared to BoTW and Assassins Creed Origins which came out around the same time

Its not a bad game at all though
 
My only real issue with HFW is that it feels dated and the first one did as well compared to BoTW and Assassins Creed Origins which came out around the same time

Its not a bad game at all though
What made HZD feel dated compared to either of those games? If anything they all played like any game with the play style they were going for. I feel like dated might be thrown around a bit much.
 

Kokoloko85

Member
Uh nah. Ive only played a short bit but all the mechanics are much better.

I dont even remember the story barely for the first 1, it was more the lore of the world being revealed that was great not the actual story or NPC’s.

Releasing same time as Elden Ring and the haters really made it worse than it is. Its a better game easily.
Without some of the utter crap reviews like 4/10 and 6/10 the game would of got 9/10 and no1 would be saying its mediocre.

I expect God of War to get the same reception as Horizon 2 and GT7...
 

Chukhopops

Member
OP I agree with you on most of your points except melee being useless. You need to build a bit into it and in survivability but once you do you just stunlock everything and the heavy attack is still as good as ever once you understand how to charge it (I guess GS experience helps).

It still needs some improvements (remove the automatic lock-on, make large enemies more fun to fight) but it was a lot better than HZD. Not as good as abusing line of sight and dropping trap combos of course.

The only terrible part of HFW was the story but that's been debated to death already.
 

SCB3

Member
What made HZD feel dated compared to either of those games? If anything they all played like any game with the play style they were going for. I feel like dated might be thrown around a bit much.
Mainly the climbing and movement, all 3 games came out at a similar time and only HZD didn't have that freeform climbing but relies on Uncharted's style "Follow the Yellow" climbing that I'm surprised the sequel kept (Uncharted 4 and the Last of Us 2 were also criticised for it)
 

Dr Bass

Member
What made HZD feel dated compared to either of those games? If anything they all played like any game with the play style they were going for. I feel like dated might be thrown around a bit much.
Mainly the climbing and movement, all 3 games came out at a similar time and only HZD didn't have that freeform climbing but relies on Uncharted's style "Follow the Yellow" climbing that I'm surprised the sequel kept (Uncharted 4 and the Last of Us 2 were also criticised for it)
This is exactly what I was thinking.

When the first Horizon came out, I started playing that immediately. I think BotW was out shortly after, and my thought was "Ill just see what this is like, get back to Horizon, then do BotW when I finish Horizon." Problem was, when I started BotW I just couldn't put it down. It was way too much fun. I ended up spending like 100 hours on BotW before ever touching Horizon 1 again

Going back to Horizon after was hard. It felt limiting and extremely narrow as a game. Great visuals of course, but that was the highlight of the whole thing, Same thing has happened with part 2. They are technical showcases but to me the Horizon games just aren't as fun as they should be.

Again, no problem if someone disagrees. Just my take.
 
Mainly the climbing and movement, all 3 games came out at a similar time and only HZD didn't have that freeform climbing but relies on Uncharted's style "Follow the Yellow" climbing that I'm surprised the sequel kept (Uncharted 4 and the Last of Us 2 were also criticised for it)
Climbing I can give you as a legit criticism even if the game wasn't going for platforming , but I still feel dated doesn't fit. Movement I can't see that one as Aloy felt buttery smooth during combat with some pretty snappy weapon handling. I mean you don't have to love it, but we both know better examples of dated gameplay.
 
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Nydius

Member
The only thing I agree with in OP's rant is the point on climbing. The way they slightly changed the climbing mechanic between games frustrated me because it just didn't feel consistent. Too many times I was pushing one direction only for the game to go a different one. Most of my deaths were tied to climbing or the game thinking I wanted to climb as soon as I'd get near something attachable.

Other than that, I couldn't disagree more with the rest of the post. Everything was vastly improved from the first game. The only thing that made HFW less enjoyable to me was the story, which, to be honest, I somewhat expected that to be not as good as the first game. It's hard to top a game that builds the original world and does it so well. Sequel-itis was all but guaranteed. There were a few story decisions that I really didn't care for but even then it's still better than most story-driven first person games out there.


The thing that bugged me most about HFW's story was that it essentially erases everything that made Aloy unique:

  • In the six months time between the end of HZD and HFW, Aloy magically finds a big bag full of functioning FOCUS units that she then just starts handing out to her friends like Halloween candy, giving her "second sight" ability to everyone else;
  • An entire clan of people with outdated FOCUS units who can see almost everything Aloy sees, they just can't access some of it;
  • Beta, another Sobeck clone, thereby making Aloy's special genome status irrelevant, but that doesn't matter anymore anyway because...
  • HEPHAESTUS made Sobek's Alpha Clearance obsolete, which required them to find Faro's Omega Clearance. That clearance wasn't tied to Sobek's genome, meaning anyone with a FOCUS could have used it with minor hacking skills (like Sylens, or even Alva with her updated FOCUS).
 
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