Horizon Forbidden West continues Aloy’s story as she moves west to a far-future America to brave a majestic, but dangerous frontier where she’ll face awe-inspiring machines and mysterious new threats.
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Pegaram o 1° e melhoraram em tudo, inclusive historia! ansioso pelo 3°, jogão!
Horizon Forbidden West is gorgeous! The world is stunning, exploring feels like a real adventure, and the robot dinosaurs are still super cool to fight. The story picks up right where Zero Dawn left off, and gets really interesting. But some of the side quests are kinda fetch-questy, and while the climbing is improved, it's still a little wonky. For fans of the first game, and fans of open-world action, this is definitely a must-play.
esse jogo nao peca em nada. um dos poucos AAA q eu gosto
This review contains spoilers
I don't know why, but Ashley Burch really lays on the breathiness in her acting during the start of the game. It was excruciating to hear that constant sighing sound at the end of every word. It seems that she pulled back on the breathiness as the game's hours went past. I don't think I could have finished this game otherwise. The melodramatic acting was killing me.
Also, many of the side characters feel too squeaky clean. Everyone is jovial and cracking jokes. There’s no bite to most of the characters; most are paragons. The writing was just tame in general. Few moments that genuinely made me laugh. Couldn’t care less about most of the side quests either. That boils down to uninteresting characters, tedious and predictable gameplay (investigate, follow/climb, fight, resolve), the world's ending and I'm helping some random tribeswoman find her dementia-addled father.
I did like some of the side quest stories: Helping a young kid prove himself during a climb that was symbolic for his village, the hot air balloon flight with the tinkerer, helping Zo fix her village's tilling machines/deities that previously tended their crops, and helping Kotallo make a prosthetic arm. I did all 28 side quests and I literally can't remember most of them.
It feels like you’re watching a stage play, with everyone donning immaculate wardrobes, face paints, and accessories. That’s one of the big problems for me. It’s hard to immerse myself when it feels like the world’s biggest larp session, with all the trappings that come with it; stilted dialogue, okay writing, the lack of any sense of realism, etc. After any battle in the game, no one comes away with any scrapes or bruises, not a drop of blood in sight.
Paradoxically, the game features heavy violence at points. Regalla's massacre is a chief example. The Carja/Tenakth forces are equally maimed and murdered by Regalla, with guttural cries and splurts of blood. Kotallo's arm is chainsawed off for christ's sake! I went back and watched that cutscene and saw something shocking: Kotallo falls to the ground after being mutilated and his removed arm has already been nicely wrapped up haha. Similarly, Regalla is impaled by Kotallo if you choose to kill her. Not a drop of blood, then either.
The narrative shied away from confronting its weirder sci-fi elements. I liked the sci-fi story with Ted Faro being a giant tumorous blob, but the game shied away from showing you his disgusting appearance and quickly killed him off. I was hoping for a Resident Evil-esque boss fight or at least a conversation with Ted. They also shied away from explaining the new amalgamated consciousness of Far Zenith billionaires dubbed "Nemesis" that's coming to wipe out all life on Earth.
This game has the problem of male antagonists being pure evil, while the female antagonists, of which there are few, have complexity. They're misguided, being manipulated by a male, have good intentions, etc.
So the game starts incredibly slow and monotonous. It felt like a direct continuation of the first game in the worst way, in that it's exactly the same game. Unfortunately, it barely reinvents itself. The new elements are swimming (not that important besides missions), the grapple hook thing that makes platforming a little less tedious, the new flying mount that unfortunately unlocks very late game, side quests have dialogue choices that actually impact those stories, and side quests have subtle dialogue effects on the main story. The choice to select a new desert Tenakth leader was awesome!
The tallnecks had a lot more variety and puzzle-like gameplay to determine how to activate them. Also, the cauldrons have more variety and one in particular stood out; you find a dormant tallneck in there and ascend out of the cauldron atop the tallneck. Great moment!
The combat became stale quickly. The problem is that you have to fight many robots for different crafting materials. It felt a lot more grindy than Zero Dawn. Forbidden West forces you to keep crafting upgrades for your weapons and armor, otherwise you don't stand a chance. The map is also littered with innumerable enemy areas. You get knocked over constantly by enemies with attacks that affect a massive area as well. I have no clue how to dodge some of these attacks. Getting up after a hit takes forever. They also kill your mount quickly if you're spotted. It killed the combat for me, because I started running from each encounter. It was no longer fun. Eventually, I gave up and played the game on story difficulty.
The default setting for UI is distracting and takes up too much of the screen. Similarly, the animation to open chests, loot machines, bodies, and plants was tedious over many hours. Having to scan constantly for climbable surfaces and loot gets annoying quickly. I was going into the settings constantly to try to make the gameplay less tedious and distracting.
The climbing feels kinda loose and I miss jumps all the time when it looked like I should have reached it. Really frustrating. So many different weapon types, ammo, resources, etc. It’s extremely overwhelming. Most of it doesn’t even matter anyway. Platforming areas relied heavily on the pullcaster, using it pull open vents and pull down beams to jump to. It quickly became tedious.
The notes/datapoints you find are presented in such a boring way. They read like emails. It’s not like in The Last of Us where all the notes are physical unique objects, with actual handwriting.
I did like the world map. It has depth to it, so you can make out the changes in elevation and all the peaks and valleys. Flying the pterodactyl mount was awesome! It unlocked too late though to fully enjoy it. Beautiful game, but there is too much visual clutter. It's so detailed that it's overwhelming to navigate.
My favorite tracks
1. https://youtu.be/PyCWedrKiMU?si=fzKcm73JM0uZLee-
2. https://youtu.be/yKPPSBsNK4g?si=8jFavC80mJB7kEnZ
3. https://youtu.be/MSZOJFct28o?si=iwDEJmNA-6qFdLpq
Also, many of the side characters feel too squeaky clean. Everyone is jovial and cracking jokes. There’s no bite to most of the characters; most are paragons. The writing was just tame in general. Few moments that genuinely made me laugh. Couldn’t care less about most of the side quests either. That boils down to uninteresting characters, tedious and predictable gameplay (investigate, follow/climb, fight, resolve), the world's ending and I'm helping some random tribeswoman find her dementia-addled father.
I did like some of the side quest stories: Helping a young kid prove himself during a climb that was symbolic for his village, the hot air balloon flight with the tinkerer, helping Zo fix her village's tilling machines/deities that previously tended their crops, and helping Kotallo make a prosthetic arm. I did all 28 side quests and I literally can't remember most of them.
It feels like you’re watching a stage play, with everyone donning immaculate wardrobes, face paints, and accessories. That’s one of the big problems for me. It’s hard to immerse myself when it feels like the world’s biggest larp session, with all the trappings that come with it; stilted dialogue, okay writing, the lack of any sense of realism, etc. After any battle in the game, no one comes away with any scrapes or bruises, not a drop of blood in sight.
Paradoxically, the game features heavy violence at points. Regalla's massacre is a chief example. The Carja/Tenakth forces are equally maimed and murdered by Regalla, with guttural cries and splurts of blood. Kotallo's arm is chainsawed off for christ's sake! I went back and watched that cutscene and saw something shocking: Kotallo falls to the ground after being mutilated and his removed arm has already been nicely wrapped up haha. Similarly, Regalla is impaled by Kotallo if you choose to kill her. Not a drop of blood, then either.
The narrative shied away from confronting its weirder sci-fi elements. I liked the sci-fi story with Ted Faro being a giant tumorous blob, but the game shied away from showing you his disgusting appearance and quickly killed him off. I was hoping for a Resident Evil-esque boss fight or at least a conversation with Ted. They also shied away from explaining the new amalgamated consciousness of Far Zenith billionaires dubbed "Nemesis" that's coming to wipe out all life on Earth.
This game has the problem of male antagonists being pure evil, while the female antagonists, of which there are few, have complexity. They're misguided, being manipulated by a male, have good intentions, etc.
So the game starts incredibly slow and monotonous. It felt like a direct continuation of the first game in the worst way, in that it's exactly the same game. Unfortunately, it barely reinvents itself. The new elements are swimming (not that important besides missions), the grapple hook thing that makes platforming a little less tedious, the new flying mount that unfortunately unlocks very late game, side quests have dialogue choices that actually impact those stories, and side quests have subtle dialogue effects on the main story. The choice to select a new desert Tenakth leader was awesome!
The tallnecks had a lot more variety and puzzle-like gameplay to determine how to activate them. Also, the cauldrons have more variety and one in particular stood out; you find a dormant tallneck in there and ascend out of the cauldron atop the tallneck. Great moment!
The combat became stale quickly. The problem is that you have to fight many robots for different crafting materials. It felt a lot more grindy than Zero Dawn. Forbidden West forces you to keep crafting upgrades for your weapons and armor, otherwise you don't stand a chance. The map is also littered with innumerable enemy areas. You get knocked over constantly by enemies with attacks that affect a massive area as well. I have no clue how to dodge some of these attacks. Getting up after a hit takes forever. They also kill your mount quickly if you're spotted. It killed the combat for me, because I started running from each encounter. It was no longer fun. Eventually, I gave up and played the game on story difficulty.
The default setting for UI is distracting and takes up too much of the screen. Similarly, the animation to open chests, loot machines, bodies, and plants was tedious over many hours. Having to scan constantly for climbable surfaces and loot gets annoying quickly. I was going into the settings constantly to try to make the gameplay less tedious and distracting.
The climbing feels kinda loose and I miss jumps all the time when it looked like I should have reached it. Really frustrating. So many different weapon types, ammo, resources, etc. It’s extremely overwhelming. Most of it doesn’t even matter anyway. Platforming areas relied heavily on the pullcaster, using it pull open vents and pull down beams to jump to. It quickly became tedious.
The notes/datapoints you find are presented in such a boring way. They read like emails. It’s not like in The Last of Us where all the notes are physical unique objects, with actual handwriting.
I did like the world map. It has depth to it, so you can make out the changes in elevation and all the peaks and valleys. Flying the pterodactyl mount was awesome! It unlocked too late though to fully enjoy it. Beautiful game, but there is too much visual clutter. It's so detailed that it's overwhelming to navigate.
My favorite tracks
1. https://youtu.be/PyCWedrKiMU?si=fzKcm73JM0uZLee-
2. https://youtu.be/yKPPSBsNK4g?si=8jFavC80mJB7kEnZ
3. https://youtu.be/MSZOJFct28o?si=iwDEJmNA-6qFdLpq
love u kotallo
My basic feelings about Zero Dawn were: "pretty solid open world game with great combat and some chore-like annoyances", but what really kept me engaged in the first game was the lore. I really, really wanted to find out everything about how the world as we know it ended, and how it then became a land of mecha-beasts.
So on the one hand I'd been looking forward to the sequel since it meant revisiting such a cool setting. On the other hand, I wondered if I would find it as engaging since the big mysteries of the apocalypse and re-making of the world were pretty well answered in the previous game so I wasn't sure where the story would go.
Thankfully, Forbidden West has mostly delivered on the promise of the first game. It looks gorgeous, the art design is as strong as ever, and mechanically it's a mild iteration on the formula but that's all that was really needed since Zero Dawn was mechanically great. Narratively, I was not quite as engaged by the "big plot point" here as I was by the mystery of "how we got here" in the first game, but it's still a great story and they definitely found a good way to build on previous story beats to introduce new conflicts and lore elements.
Among open world games, Horizon's combat stands out. Making robots basically stacks of armored components that force you to focus your attacks not just on specific components but with specific types of damage makes combat way more engaging than standard "hit the enemy 'til they die". It also can make different engagements with even the same enemy type very different: are you after an important upgrade component you need to remove, or just aiming for weak points to take down a mob as quickly as you can? And the design of the robots themselves is wonderful, with the different species feeling very distinct and the gargantuan ones inspiring a certain amount of awe every time I run across them. Fighting human enemies in the game is dull by comparison, but thankfully it's not where the game focuses its time.
It's also worth praising that every side-quest in this game is unique, written by a human being, and fully voiced. They're not all the best mission design ever, of course, and the writing ain't Shakespeare, but in an era when many AAA games have tons of copy-paste or procedurally-generated "another settlement needs your help" mission filler, and many big companies seem to be threatening to lean on LLMs for quest generation in the future, it's gratifying to see a big game very definitively not take that approach.
Which doesn't, unfortunately, mean that Forbidden West completely avoids the kind of chore-like bloat open world games are prone too. The sheer, massive number of resources that exist and that you need on a regular basis inevitably means you'll end up doing "chores" for gear upgrades. It also kind of clouds the sense of the world as a real place: rather than adding detail, having a million similar-sounding resources to collect just turns the crafting elements into a blur of checkboxes and "number go up".
But overall I had a blast and enjoyed revisiting the post-apocalyptic West. Forbidden West takes the strengths of Zero Dawn and successfully builds on them, so I can forgive that it continues to have some of the same annoying weaknesses of both its predecessor and its general genre.
Slightly spoiler-y plot complaint: I was not expecting the third act reveal that Ted Farro turned himself into an immortal Resident Evil-style blob monster, that was cool. But then he was almost immediately killed off-screen and we didn't even get to see the monster he became, that was disappointing. I was looking forward to a wild boss fight!
So on the one hand I'd been looking forward to the sequel since it meant revisiting such a cool setting. On the other hand, I wondered if I would find it as engaging since the big mysteries of the apocalypse and re-making of the world were pretty well answered in the previous game so I wasn't sure where the story would go.
Thankfully, Forbidden West has mostly delivered on the promise of the first game. It looks gorgeous, the art design is as strong as ever, and mechanically it's a mild iteration on the formula but that's all that was really needed since Zero Dawn was mechanically great. Narratively, I was not quite as engaged by the "big plot point" here as I was by the mystery of "how we got here" in the first game, but it's still a great story and they definitely found a good way to build on previous story beats to introduce new conflicts and lore elements.
Among open world games, Horizon's combat stands out. Making robots basically stacks of armored components that force you to focus your attacks not just on specific components but with specific types of damage makes combat way more engaging than standard "hit the enemy 'til they die". It also can make different engagements with even the same enemy type very different: are you after an important upgrade component you need to remove, or just aiming for weak points to take down a mob as quickly as you can? And the design of the robots themselves is wonderful, with the different species feeling very distinct and the gargantuan ones inspiring a certain amount of awe every time I run across them. Fighting human enemies in the game is dull by comparison, but thankfully it's not where the game focuses its time.
It's also worth praising that every side-quest in this game is unique, written by a human being, and fully voiced. They're not all the best mission design ever, of course, and the writing ain't Shakespeare, but in an era when many AAA games have tons of copy-paste or procedurally-generated "another settlement needs your help" mission filler, and many big companies seem to be threatening to lean on LLMs for quest generation in the future, it's gratifying to see a big game very definitively not take that approach.
Which doesn't, unfortunately, mean that Forbidden West completely avoids the kind of chore-like bloat open world games are prone too. The sheer, massive number of resources that exist and that you need on a regular basis inevitably means you'll end up doing "chores" for gear upgrades. It also kind of clouds the sense of the world as a real place: rather than adding detail, having a million similar-sounding resources to collect just turns the crafting elements into a blur of checkboxes and "number go up".
But overall I had a blast and enjoyed revisiting the post-apocalyptic West. Forbidden West takes the strengths of Zero Dawn and successfully builds on them, so I can forgive that it continues to have some of the same annoying weaknesses of both its predecessor and its general genre.
Slightly spoiler-y plot complaint: I was not expecting the third act reveal that Ted Farro turned himself into an immortal Resident Evil-style blob monster, that was cool. But then he was almost immediately killed off-screen and we didn't even get to see the monster he became, that was disappointing. I was looking forward to a wild boss fight!