BIGGER DOESN'T EQUAL BETTER
2 years ago, I played through the 1st game in this trilogy and had a pretty good time. That was right before the sequel came out. I had devoured 2 like I was a rabid animal. So, of course, I was very excited for this one. While I did enjoy it, I'm sad to say I'm not a fan of a lot of the changes that were made.
I had the same problem that I had with Horizon: Zero Dawn, in that a lot of the main story missions were just not... Fun. At a certain point, all the story missions are just you watching cutscenes of the characters figuring out what to do next. It's nice that the story takes its time to help you understand what is going on (it gets kinda complicated and convoluted at points), but it really drags on.
Instead of the limited spaces you got to explore in the previous games, everything is seemless, sprawling open world areas now. I don't like this one bit. In the other games, the limited spaces meant you always knew where the materials you needed were and it was never a hassle to gather them. That's pretty crucial in a game that can be as grindy as this series. Yes, the areas were somewhat linear in previous games, but it always felt like you had to take time to explore and grind to get through them. 2 had a perfect way to motivate you to explore and fight enemies by rewarding you for connecting the dots of the past. The only thing that motivated me to explore here was finding the landmarks in each area so I can see the map and fast travel. At a certain point it just became pointless to fight enemies as well, outside of gaining experience, but even that felt uneccessary with how easy it is to become overpowered. I thought turning up the difficulty to Hard would fix that, but I clearly need to play on Legendary or something.
The story is similar to the others in that you're trying to learn history so you can understand the antagonist (which is always a fairly unseen foe) and find a way to beat them. However, there are a lot of moments where main missions involve the slice of life elements that are present in the rest of the trilogy, but inserted into spots that either don't make sense, or could've been left to side quests. Did I mention this one has a billion side quests? There are so many games out right now that I can't be motivated to see every quest right now. I'm glad they really take time to flesh these characters and give you more to do, but I just found myself overwhelmed in a game that already overwhelms me with its incredible crafting system.
At the very least, the core gameplay is still present and addicting as hell, but that's the problem. I feel like the story barely asked me to engage with the actual gameplay that much. About 50% of the way through the game, I was completely overpowered, and anything you are asked to craft for story purposes is so easy to make that you won't spend more than a minute on it. So all you're left with at that point is again, the problem I had with Horizon: Zero Dawn which is that I enjoyed everything about the game when I WASN'T doing the main story.
At the very least, this was a nice close to the trilogy. I did feel sad knowing this is goodbye for Ryza and company. If you take away anything from this review, just know that I did have fun with this, but I'm looking forward to my next playthrough of 2 now.
2 years ago, I played through the 1st game in this trilogy and had a pretty good time. That was right before the sequel came out. I had devoured 2 like I was a rabid animal. So, of course, I was very excited for this one. While I did enjoy it, I'm sad to say I'm not a fan of a lot of the changes that were made.
I had the same problem that I had with Horizon: Zero Dawn, in that a lot of the main story missions were just not... Fun. At a certain point, all the story missions are just you watching cutscenes of the characters figuring out what to do next. It's nice that the story takes its time to help you understand what is going on (it gets kinda complicated and convoluted at points), but it really drags on.
Instead of the limited spaces you got to explore in the previous games, everything is seemless, sprawling open world areas now. I don't like this one bit. In the other games, the limited spaces meant you always knew where the materials you needed were and it was never a hassle to gather them. That's pretty crucial in a game that can be as grindy as this series. Yes, the areas were somewhat linear in previous games, but it always felt like you had to take time to explore and grind to get through them. 2 had a perfect way to motivate you to explore and fight enemies by rewarding you for connecting the dots of the past. The only thing that motivated me to explore here was finding the landmarks in each area so I can see the map and fast travel. At a certain point it just became pointless to fight enemies as well, outside of gaining experience, but even that felt uneccessary with how easy it is to become overpowered. I thought turning up the difficulty to Hard would fix that, but I clearly need to play on Legendary or something.
The story is similar to the others in that you're trying to learn history so you can understand the antagonist (which is always a fairly unseen foe) and find a way to beat them. However, there are a lot of moments where main missions involve the slice of life elements that are present in the rest of the trilogy, but inserted into spots that either don't make sense, or could've been left to side quests. Did I mention this one has a billion side quests? There are so many games out right now that I can't be motivated to see every quest right now. I'm glad they really take time to flesh these characters and give you more to do, but I just found myself overwhelmed in a game that already overwhelms me with its incredible crafting system.
At the very least, the core gameplay is still present and addicting as hell, but that's the problem. I feel like the story barely asked me to engage with the actual gameplay that much. About 50% of the way through the game, I was completely overpowered, and anything you are asked to craft for story purposes is so easy to make that you won't spend more than a minute on it. So all you're left with at that point is again, the problem I had with Horizon: Zero Dawn which is that I enjoyed everything about the game when I WASN'T doing the main story.
At the very least, this was a nice close to the trilogy. I did feel sad knowing this is goodbye for Ryza and company. If you take away anything from this review, just know that I did have fun with this, but I'm looking forward to my next playthrough of 2 now.