This review contains spoilers
After spending nearly 65 hours, here are my two cents...
Story :
HFW was, is and will always be in the unfortunate position of being the middle entry in a trilogy series. Meaning that in terms of plot and storyline it will not be as good as the first game, that had genuinely shocking twists and revelations (probably some of the best in gaming) and will not be as epic or conclusive as the third game. That's not to say that it was doomed from the start in having a formulaic story and acting as a mere seque to Aloy's next and possibly final adventure. What bothered me the most is that on the techincal side of things, HFW excels at every level. The motion capturing and voice acting is outstanding, with detailed expressions on the characters faces, and exceptional line delivery (apart from Aloy's constant expositional remarks...). However at it's core, i almost felt like the story was missing... something. Granted, we were really spoiled with what HZD offered us, but here, there were times where I almost wasn't motivated to go on with the main quest, getting lost amidst the abundant, and at times overwhelming amount of side content. "You mean to tell me the world is ending in 4 months? Well... I still have time to race some desert delinquents and help a cook with their perfect recipe, right"?
I'm not saying there shouldn't be any side content, and I appreciate what Guerilla was trying to do for the players. But everything seems so unbalanced as to how the story progresses and how the vast amount of side questing intertwines with the main quest. Every sense of urgency from stopping the Zeniths diminishes when you are shoehorned into doing side missions just for the sake of admiring how much content the game has. I don't know, I guess my lack of time nowadays prevents me from fully getting invested in a massive open world game, but here I always felt that an action adventure game at heart turned into a RPG oriented questfest just to justify how big and interesting the world is.
Sound and Visuals :
Literally the only aspects of the game I have absolutely no complaint about. The world is beautiful and incredibly immersive, with rich and amazing details that bring out the games best qualities. It makes you feel like you're exploring and traversing an ever dynamic environment. The atmosphere, the audio design are top notch, with the pc version making the most out of all of the above, even in my mid to high pc.
Gameplay:
"Sighhhh"... This is where I am most bothered with HFW. Once again, that's entirely subjective, but I never felt the combat here was as engaging or at least... fun as in HZD, probably because they took an ever bigger tactical rpg-like approach to the overall gameplay. Finding new weapons doesn't feel fun and rewarding anymore, because you have to go out of your way everytime to upgrade the sh*t out of it. But that's the fun part right? Yeah, for the most part. But the problem with the game's combat is that it's not as adrenaline fueled as it was in the first entry. Now you need to have a specific approach to nearly every combat. Exploiting elemental weaknesses and carefully picking a machine apart through various types of weapons is fun on paper, but for me it doesn't translate well during combat. There's too much weapon variation and fighting machines mostly felt anxiety inducing, rather than fun.
TL,DR :
The game is an amazing techincal achievement , however it suffers from gameplay flaws and unnecessary side content
Story :
HFW was, is and will always be in the unfortunate position of being the middle entry in a trilogy series. Meaning that in terms of plot and storyline it will not be as good as the first game, that had genuinely shocking twists and revelations (probably some of the best in gaming) and will not be as epic or conclusive as the third game. That's not to say that it was doomed from the start in having a formulaic story and acting as a mere seque to Aloy's next and possibly final adventure. What bothered me the most is that on the techincal side of things, HFW excels at every level. The motion capturing and voice acting is outstanding, with detailed expressions on the characters faces, and exceptional line delivery (apart from Aloy's constant expositional remarks...). However at it's core, i almost felt like the story was missing... something. Granted, we were really spoiled with what HZD offered us, but here, there were times where I almost wasn't motivated to go on with the main quest, getting lost amidst the abundant, and at times overwhelming amount of side content. "You mean to tell me the world is ending in 4 months? Well... I still have time to race some desert delinquents and help a cook with their perfect recipe, right"?
I'm not saying there shouldn't be any side content, and I appreciate what Guerilla was trying to do for the players. But everything seems so unbalanced as to how the story progresses and how the vast amount of side questing intertwines with the main quest. Every sense of urgency from stopping the Zeniths diminishes when you are shoehorned into doing side missions just for the sake of admiring how much content the game has. I don't know, I guess my lack of time nowadays prevents me from fully getting invested in a massive open world game, but here I always felt that an action adventure game at heart turned into a RPG oriented questfest just to justify how big and interesting the world is.
Sound and Visuals :
Literally the only aspects of the game I have absolutely no complaint about. The world is beautiful and incredibly immersive, with rich and amazing details that bring out the games best qualities. It makes you feel like you're exploring and traversing an ever dynamic environment. The atmosphere, the audio design are top notch, with the pc version making the most out of all of the above, even in my mid to high pc.
Gameplay:
"Sighhhh"... This is where I am most bothered with HFW. Once again, that's entirely subjective, but I never felt the combat here was as engaging or at least... fun as in HZD, probably because they took an ever bigger tactical rpg-like approach to the overall gameplay. Finding new weapons doesn't feel fun and rewarding anymore, because you have to go out of your way everytime to upgrade the sh*t out of it. But that's the fun part right? Yeah, for the most part. But the problem with the game's combat is that it's not as adrenaline fueled as it was in the first entry. Now you need to have a specific approach to nearly every combat. Exploiting elemental weaknesses and carefully picking a machine apart through various types of weapons is fun on paper, but for me it doesn't translate well during combat. There's too much weapon variation and fighting machines mostly felt anxiety inducing, rather than fun.
TL,DR :
The game is an amazing techincal achievement , however it suffers from gameplay flaws and unnecessary side content