I enjoyed everything about HZD besides the characters and story really. I mean I didn't dislike them but they never grabbed me. I think the combat is great, the enemies felt unique, the different ways you can take them down was great. The world felt vast, I think they did a great job of making it feel apocalyptic and empty. We've been spoilt by alot of quality rpg's in recent times like Zelda (although the combat in that is pretty poor) and the Witcher 3. They both do a better job with story telling and creating a world that felt more alive. With HZD I enjoyed it more just me (Aloy) taking stuff down in the wild than the npc's or the villages.
I thought it was a really enjoyable game overall considering its the first installment with lots to improve on.
In general with open world games we really need to move away from this climbing stuff in order to unlock more of the map.
I would agree with all of that...up until the point in the game where I felt all of it all became (somewhat) redundant, and there's reasons for that, which I'll at least try to explain. I really don't want to be too critical of it, because I don't want to make it sound like it's a bad game, but it has many elements in there that a lot of bad, tedious games tend to fall into and get criticised for, and rightly so. A lot of Ubisoft games for example. The combat mechanics are good. Really fun, but I found that even that started to get stale due to the progression system once Aloy had certain abilities unlocked. At the start every machine was a genuine threat to you. I found myself avoiding everything because one sneaky hit from them wiped you out. A lot of that was down to the way you crafted arrows. Shards combined with wood - a trade off between currency and resources, and you get most of your shards through combat and killing machines. That was balanced. A good mechanic and a way of handling that, but again...until it wasn't. Once you obtain the sharp shooter bow, and then realise that most of every machine's single weakness was just hitting either a blaze tank, or the blue ones that have ice in them, they just became easy pickings, and every machine started to boil down to the same tactic after that. So you harvest the shards, and once you'v enough of them, it's practically infinite ammo and no need to upgrade your carry pouch either. Rinse, repeat.
The knock down perk you get also turns Aloy into the Terminator. Big machines like Tramplers and Ravagers can just be done away with by dodging their charges, then knocking them sideways for a critical hit. Even Thunderjaws are pussycats later on once you realise that a couple of well placed arrows can knock the disc canon off to pick up and do mega damage to them. Because of that, I found myself having no need for any of the other weapons available. An easy way for the developers to negate this would have been to make each machine impervious to certain attacks. The ropecaster and tripcaster I used only a couple of times, and other bows, slingshots and stuff, even armour, are pointless thanks to certain perks, so ergo merchants and side quests were also needless. Speaking of perks, I grabbed the one that allowed Aloy to grip enemies and pull them over a ledge or a cliff because it looked like good craic. Didn't get the chance to use that one, even once. Human enemies were all placed in a level design that didn't facilitate it very well. The bandit camps, whilst fun to take out, offered nothing in reward but for another pointless merchant, a campfire and some XP. That's fair enough, but it also removes the dynamic of running into bandits in the wild in the same area, which sometimes would be fun. Override could have done with a command option, because overridden machines turn into dummies unless there's something in direct sight of them.
So that's mostly it. Those are my main gripes with it. I know it sounds like I'm being a moaning bollocks, but it's a frustrating thing when something could have been so great if it wasn't for stuff that felt so underdeveloped. 'Underdeveloped'. Yep, I think that's the word that sums up the issues I have with it. It looks amazing, has a fantastic new female likeable main character that isn't Lara Croft or relies or some childish sexploitation, and it has giant dino robots in it. Those three things, I think, are its main appeal. If you strip any of those away from it, I think more people would have taken umbrage with it's issues, of which there are a fair few. There's a 'base' of a game there at least. If Guerilla make another - which I'm sure they will - then they need to improve and build on most of what I've sat and ranted about. There's an amazing game in there somewhere, had it had just a few tweaks; but the problem is, if industry journalists keep heaping hyperbolic praise on stuff, how do developers know, or what reason do they have in fixing, or improving, on what they started with?
So, Horizon: Zero Dawn - good game, but just not the masterpiece its pretending to be.
In general with open world games we really need to move away from this climbing stuff in order to unlock more of the map.
Nearly forgot about that. Yeah, I don't know. I don't think you really needed to cimb those Tallnecks to unlock anything, or did you? I did them anyway because it was something to do, plus you got that nice animation when she jumped off them and slid down the rope. I think the map revealing was just optional like it is in BoTW. Here's an idea instead: how about clearing the bandit camps to unlock the map view instead? Makes more sense. You get a challenge, and then reward.
