Zero Dawn, while not perfect, was good enough in its own rights, but Forbidden West is an improvement on almost all fronts.

The environments are still undeniably beautiful, more unique and challenging enemies, more weapons and weapon types (though I’d probably argue that there a few too many different weapons), and many more ways to customize Alloy to accommodate for different play styles.

Once again, in my opinion, the game’s biggest weaknesses are Alloy and the story. The game starts with some of the story beats as Zero Dawn, and Alloy doesn’t really get developed too much, but both of those points get better around the last few hours of the game.

If you enjoyed Zero Dawn, you obviously need to play Forbidden West.

Great game. Waaaaaay better than the first.

CQC is amazing in the game it's actually viable and the more skills you get the better it gets you can make it look graceful once you master it. Really helpful for the enemy camps/human enemies.

Can't ignore the graphics and visuals this game is gorgeous, sexy, magnanimous. I don't think there's any other game where I actually even bother to use the photo mode.

Cons:
This open world formula is pretty boring but I think I'm just jaded from playing so many games where there is no exploration and there's so many markers on the map.

I don’t often rush to play new AAA titles but I enjoyed Horizon: Zero Dawn so much I borrowed my friend's PS5 just to play it at its finest quality.

Getting to grips with the controls again after not playing Horizon for years took a bit of time but was off full steam ahead after the tutorial section. Horizon isn’t a series of games that takes a lot of smart thinking to get from A to B but having Aloy saying what she has to do and where she has to go next spoiled it a wee bit for me. The climbing was not great but also not bad. It could get frustrating at times when Aloy would not play ball and jump to a yellow grip right next to her or jump in the opposite direction. Similar to “Uncharted” the dramatic jumps and near miss grabs got a bit too common and frustrating.

Like other open world games, as soon as I’m free to explore the world I’m all over it, getting all the side quests and collectables so that I’m well prepared for the main story. Instead of taking the Breath of the Wild approach (here is me again comparing other games to BoTW) “off you go, do what you want but you will die if you stray too far”. Horizon prevents players from accessing certain areas blocked off by item unlocks. You need to progress the story to get these items to unlock certain areas. I wasn’t too bothered about this. I’m not typically a completionist but exploring all the wee icons on the map I found very addictive, even campfires that seemed pointless as they were a stone’s throw away from each other. I finished the game around 83% as I could not for the life of me do the pit master side-quests, nor could lots of other people on the internet apparently. One of the games features I never bothered with was eating/cooking meals, I never saw the point or need so just never wasted my time with it.

Like I mentioned previously I played this on a PS5 using a 4K HDR TV and the game is absolutely stunning especially the underwater scenes. The game is not without its graphical glitches though, for example Aloy’s hair bounces about more than Medusa’s head of snakes and quite often characters clipping through scenery.

The cutscenes and motion capture are amazing in this game. I love seeing all the micro emotions on a character's face. However when it came to the side-quests I just skipped those cutscenes as the game was already taking so long to play, plus each side-quest tends to consist of the same scenario. Someone goes missing, you find them dead or alive and you have to fight machines. Some side-quests can send you pillar to post talking to different people which I felt was just wasting the player’s time. I really enjoyed the main story but all the side-quests were throwing so many names at me I lost track, similar to my experience with “Game of Thrones”.

My playstyle typically is a sniper, one-shotting enemies is my bread and butter. So I used the bows mainly in my playthrough. Besides the bows there are so many other weapons to suit other player’s needs. I never really got round to trying them all such as setting tripwires. One weapon I wish I had really clocked onto earlier is setting traps. I never realised how powerful they were until I was a bit into the game. I enjoyed searching for resources to upgrade my weapons as you could set the resources as a quest on the map to make hunting them easier. I appreciated this feature more than any other in the game as it prevents the player from having to do loads of Googling and writing down locations of each item they need to find.

I absolutely loved this game, It was going to be a 4.5 star rating from me but because of the graphical glitches (at time of writing) it brought it down to a 4 star. I am really looking forward to the DLC in 2023.

Graphically stunning game, easily one of the best looking games of all time - even in 60fps mode on PS5. Incredible!

As an evolution of the first game, which I liked a lot, this one floundered slightly for me. I like a sequel that focuses on what made the first game good, and tightens up that experience while removing/improving elements that were criticized. Instead this game is just... more of everything. More items, more skills, more machines, etc. It just feels bloated to me, like no one aspect of the gameplay received enough polish to really be satisfying.