This game is incredible. I've spent almost 90 hours just on the main story alone, I've not even touched the DLC yet. There is always something to do, always a machine to destroy or weapon to upgrade or a side quest to complete. Most of my time playing this game was running around admiring the beautiful scenery. Having played the first game, I thought the graphics were already stunning, but this game takes it to the next level and it is breathtaking. I always find that it must be difficult to follow on from such a good first game such as Zero Dawn, however Forbidden West takes everything from the first game and expands it and adds brand new things that now I can't play the first game without. The story was compelling and the more I played it the more I saw myself in the characters I was introduced to. This has definitely got to be in my top 10 best games of all time.

I've spent around a hundred hours in this game. I've never been more conflicted about a game before.

I can honestly, with my whole heart, say that I enjoyed and adored this game. But there are so much things that this game gets wrong, I cannot bring myself to give it more than 4 stars.

First of all, the world is beautiful (visually), its one of, if not the best in the industry. But the map is horrendous, worst map in I've seen in a long while, it is cluttered, you cannot turn off the things you completed, there are millions of spots on the map but none of them are interesting. I cleared the map, because I'm a completionist freak, but %95 of them felt like a chore more than anything.

The graphics, animations, character faces are all superb. But the characters are dull in an almost baffling way, apart from the main cast of course. As I mentioned before, I 100%'ed this game, but I cannot even remember a SINGLE NPC in the game, they were more forgettable than my old socks. I cannot even fathom how you can design the characters like a fucking painting but make them duller and more one-dimensional than soap opera characters.

In terms of story, oh boy, it is also a massive missed opportunity, they have one of the best video game lore (and insane potential) but they missed so hard. It almost takes a skill to mess up this bad. 90% of the story feels aimless, stitched together by thinnest of strings, and all of them fall apart by the end. Story missions are disconnected. Things happen just to "happen", almost none of it is cohesive.

Last issue I want to mention is the upgrade system. In order to upgrade weapons and armor you need specific machine parts. These machine parts are pretty self explanatory, you have to beat a machine in a certain way, but they are soooo grindy. I don't want to spend 30 mins hunting for specific parts in specific machines for a purple armor, just to have it all be wasted because I found a legendary armor (repeat the grind again). I spent all these hours in the game but never even wanted to upgrade once because it all felt boring and grindy.


If I complained this much, why did I gave it a 4 starts? I will try to explain in a very short way.

The gameplay is so fun, having to deal with giant monstrous machines, trying to hit their weak parts, all that for them to fall down in an epic way, it never gets old.

Couple of the characters are really great such as Aloy, Varl, Erend and Sylens (although they butchered Sylens' whole chracter arc in the end). The banters between them are genuinely funny, I loved it.

Flying mounts, they just never get old. Calling them with one button press, and starting to fly immediately is just perfect.

Graphics are just insane, not even gonna elaborate on it because its obvious.

So this game is a weird one for me, there are a lot of shortcomings that make the game objectively worse, but I cannot bring myself to give a lower score because I enjoyed my time with it.