A game that I found was carried very hard by its incredible story and endearing characters. The mystery of what Zero Dawn is, and where Aloy came from has to be one of the most engaging stories in gaming I have seen. I loved every second of it.

What I didn't love as much were its combat, its RPG-like mechanics, and some of the world exploration. Fighting the robots themselves wasn't too bad, even if the spear was barely ever useful, but what I disliked most was the constant need to find new long-ranged weapons and armour sets that would have the stats I was looking for. It almost reminded me of a looter shooter, which put me off quite a lot.

Crafting was also somewhat annoying, though it wasn't a game-breaker for me. The limited item space did completely turn me off from it though, as I always felt I was running out of space.

The ending also felt a bit lacking, not that I expected a huge boss but to get what we got felt a bit lacklustre after everything the player had gone through. This game is still worth your time, but just know there are some flaws before diving in.

Horizon Zero Dawn is a ~tRiPlE A~ (James Stephanie Sterling Voice) game, if I've ever seen one. A cynical person might say It's nothing but an amalgamation of every trend you've seen in the 2010s in gaming:
Assassins Creed's free climbing and towers
Ubisoft's general open world structure
Witcher 3's witcher sense
BioShock's voice recordings as a way to tell the intricate backstory of several places
Soulslike button layout for close combat (though that feels rather janky)
...and Monster Hunter in regards to how the combat actually works, you know removing parts from enemies and stuff (or so I'm told, never really played monster hunter)

And of these open world features are used quite well here though - If you didn't get sick of open world by 2017 or whenever you decided to play this for the first time. There aren't as many "Towers" and the Tallnecks are a bit of a more interesting idea, moving around the area or being captured by a camp of the occult, so you have to work through that to be able to climb. Some baggage still remains of course, like bandit camps or numerous collectibles. Also you might at times travel great distances between story missions, which can be tedious if you don't feel like exploring at the time. Luckily I've barely played any open world games, cuz I thought they get tedious very easily, but I can bear the more annoying parts here, because I haven't done this a million times before.

I found the world to be engaging, the vistas are just beautiful, between lush jungle forests, glistening deserts, decrepit ruins of a only slightly futuristic society long gone now.
And the enemies are fun to fight, the fucking Glinthawks you either have to shoot down very effeciently or you'll be like me and pull them down to you with a ropecaster. Laying traps for big and especially fearsome foes, sneaking around to kill the enemies one by one - I always felt their were a lot of apporaches to battle if you were willing to take you time, and there are some tactical or RPG-elements to it. Using elemental weaknesses or tearing down specific parts to maybe even use the weapons against the enemies themselves. Or you just sneak around and corrupt as many enemies as possible to have them fight each other. The only place, where this isnÄt true is the fight against other humans. You either hit them in the head with an arrow or you try to wittle down their health with your spear - and close combat isn't that good, if you're not sneaking about.

The story of Horizon Zero Dawn is told on two timelines if you will. On the one hand you have to figure out what happened in the distant past - our immediate future not destroyed by climate crisis, but by some rich guy who wanted to make money with the solution to climate crisis: ecological robots that can basically terraform. He sells them as warmachines reliant on biofuel and this is were shit goes haywire. Now a team of scientist will have to try salvage whatever possible, to have at least something survive. These stories are mostly told via voice recordings or the occasional holographic scene, showing us people arguing in the shape of purple hazes. The other part of the story is about Aloy an outcast in the tribal Nora society, seeking out how she was born and what mysteries lie in the ancient past as well as why she was attacked by an insane cult. She travels the world gets to know different tribes and different people.

The settng of Horizon Zero Dawn tries to accomplish something interesting: a mix of Sci-fi with ancient history. Aloy and her immediate conflict and surroundings is more based in "tribal conflicts", religious superstition and a former feudal power exploiting local people than the conundrums of climate changes, billionaires or ecological responisiblity for the planet. I liked traveling through the lands and areas, getting to more about the local beliefs and histories while also figuring out what happened in the distant past. As an anthropologist I could recognize easily where the inspirations for some of these tribes came from. The shamistic rituals and musings of the Banuk are very much inspired by real shaminism in e.g. Mongolia. The Carja Sundom reminds me of Aztec or Babylonian "high cultures" (that term implies one cultures is more developed, which might be true concerning technology or means of production, but not in anything else, especially not in morals or religious belief). The Nora - Aloy's own tribe - are a superstitious bunch and reflect on tribal people as very backward. In general the sci-fi background tends to portray anyone else that is not Aloy (or otherwise a technological afficionados) as simpletons, which goes with western modern beliefs. Hand in hand with the borrowing of native american aestethics, this makes for a handful of icky immplications - though I don't think this was the intention here, I guess its more about making Aloy more relatable to a western audience. And I like Aloy, she is capable a bit of a loner, determined, but heartfelt and at times snarky. Her quest of wanting to find a home for herself and finding out more about the past and her mother/ previous version of herself Elisabet Solbeck caught me emotionally - it's just that it is often tangled up in typical Western portrayls of other societies.

All of this is a very roundabout, part academic, part reflective emotional way of saying: there are reasons this game resonantes with me. The atmosphere catches something I didn't remember that once fascinated me ("tribal societies", stone age/ early bronze age and vibrant jungles) with aspects that I care more about nowadays (different cultures and ecological responsibility for the planet) while giving me gameplay, that is enjoyable to me while not reinventing the weel and also giving me a character that is trying to find a home or a found family. A lot here just works, even if not perfect.

P.S.:
I like the commentary about capitalists fucking up the earth even if they actually might be able to save it from climate crisis.
I also think it's kinda interesting, that a huge group of them came together to try to just flee into space, which doesn't work out very well...
Also Ted Faro also destroys a huge knowledge data base on a whim. Feels awfully fitting with the downfall of Twitter.
...the choice to create an AI that is supposed to save the Earth...didn't age well though. I know, what we have now isn't AI but machine learning, but it feels weird to have such positive talks about AI especially in regards to the climate and nature in general.

Horizon Zero Dawn is the first game in the Horizon series, released in 2017. as an exclusive PlayStation 4 game, but later released on PC. HZD is an open-world RPG adventure game.

I loved this game from the beginning till the end, the story of a young female hunter trying to find the truth about her origin and later the truth behind the Project Zero Dawn is so good that I cannot even find a word for it, probably one of the best stories ever made.
Apart from the main story, there is a great amount of side quest (every side quest is like a small story), type of machines (every type of machine has its own weakness and strength, its on you to find the best way to hunt it down), weapons (many types of weapons and ammunition means that you have many possibilities on which way to hunt down a machine and find a way to exploit their weaknesses) and many different ways to approach the game.
The ability to craft its own ammunition is really a good way to use the environment and your surroundings. The map is huge and beautiful, the graphics are amazing and sometimes left me speechless when I saw how beautiful the world of HZD is.

Horizon Zero Dawn is a spectacular, amazing, innovative and surely a MUST-PLAY game.