Quite a bad game, especially compared to the other options out there. I think about how this responds to Breath of the Wild which blew the first Horizon out of the water in 2017 in terms of exploration and combat and atmosphere. This game tries to adopt the parasail tool to allow you to glide over the terrain much like Breath of the Wild - but unlike Breath of the Wild which allowed you to open it with a satisfying "pop" by just hitting a button, offering fast maneuvering and flexibility, Horizon needs a long-hold. That, to me, is the crux of everything wrong with the spirit of this game. Maybe it's on theme? Everything is mechanical to the point of sucking the life out of it. The gameplay's sluggish movements, Aloy's magnetic sticking to ledges... it all creates an on-rails-like experience that is the antithesis of the free-form exploration of something like Breath of the Wild that used actually game MECHANICS to make something unique and fun to explore. While Horizon, with its long holds and insanely convoluted menus and items and pouches and sockets, is basically a series of guided paths that it funnels you through giving you some limited form of freedom and experimentation, but all within the confines of the tools it wants YOU to use and places it wants YOU to climb, rather than things that YOU want IT to provide for you.
Taking it a step further, the idiot logic of the game also includes Aloy - a character so annoying she can't help herself but spoil her own puzzles. She is faced with a world of mystery and yet if she sees a mysterious growth on a door she is confident within a second of seeing it that she can't do anything about it. Nevermind that she is an unstoppable force in this world, but this door is too much, she's decided. Of course, she's just telling the player we don't have the tool to open it yet, but her constantly yammering about anything and everything in front of you removes any semblance of atmosphere from the world, as Aloy always holds this tone of bemused impatience. Her story bends over backwards to insist it needs to be told in order to justify this game existing but it's basically just one big McGuffin: chasing a dragon from one place to the next dressed up in some of the corniest "lore" given to a property of this budget. The fact that people attest to this game's world as being compelling is just mystifying to me. They want to make a TV show? Of this? Even efforts to voice-act even trivial conversations actually becomes another burden, not a boon, because the writers can't help themselves but write and write and write for the most benign interactions. Every chore in this game truly does indeed feel like a chore.
There is also a personal element to this: I am, like many people, just tired of opening a map and seeing an onslaught of icons telling me that there is some item to pick up somewhere and I should go there to see it. The world is lavish, and yet completely without personality. Once again to go back to Breath of the Wild: a game with much more limited graphical horsepower and yet it's beautiful and, most importantly, I can actually see things. Horizon, similar to the first game, is so littered with particle effects, sun flares, foliage, mist, ruins that it is a visual mess. Everything is cluttered. The low camera makes it hard to see vistas unless you find the designated "look at the pretty view" spots, riding a mount creates a claustrophobic blur on the edges of frame to, I guess, simulate the pure intense adrenaline of riding.. kinda fast. It's just a big ol dump of colours and textures.
And then, at the end of the day, this really just isn't that fun to play. The AI is atrocious, making it tediously easy to destroy a gang of enemies. When Aloy is hit it doesn't really register so you'll be surprised when you discover you are low on health. I have had many encounters where the AI breaks and the robots just sit around while I wail on them. Melee is unremarkable. And too much of the game is spent digging through a skill tree that is... quite literally... extremely wide and but insanely shallow. You have a half-dozen "options" for what to invest skill points in, and very few of them make you feel stronger or give you new fun abilities to experiment with or change how you play. A lot of it is passive or, frankly, just useless. And then there is the whole armour modding system that puts God of War Ragnarok to shame with its overly complex nature for a game that is brain-dead stupid easy to begin with.
In conclusion, this game is an expensive Big Mac - looks good from afar, but once you've got your hands on it, it's just a reheated mess; a real disappointment.
Taking it a step further, the idiot logic of the game also includes Aloy - a character so annoying she can't help herself but spoil her own puzzles. She is faced with a world of mystery and yet if she sees a mysterious growth on a door she is confident within a second of seeing it that she can't do anything about it. Nevermind that she is an unstoppable force in this world, but this door is too much, she's decided. Of course, she's just telling the player we don't have the tool to open it yet, but her constantly yammering about anything and everything in front of you removes any semblance of atmosphere from the world, as Aloy always holds this tone of bemused impatience. Her story bends over backwards to insist it needs to be told in order to justify this game existing but it's basically just one big McGuffin: chasing a dragon from one place to the next dressed up in some of the corniest "lore" given to a property of this budget. The fact that people attest to this game's world as being compelling is just mystifying to me. They want to make a TV show? Of this? Even efforts to voice-act even trivial conversations actually becomes another burden, not a boon, because the writers can't help themselves but write and write and write for the most benign interactions. Every chore in this game truly does indeed feel like a chore.
There is also a personal element to this: I am, like many people, just tired of opening a map and seeing an onslaught of icons telling me that there is some item to pick up somewhere and I should go there to see it. The world is lavish, and yet completely without personality. Once again to go back to Breath of the Wild: a game with much more limited graphical horsepower and yet it's beautiful and, most importantly, I can actually see things. Horizon, similar to the first game, is so littered with particle effects, sun flares, foliage, mist, ruins that it is a visual mess. Everything is cluttered. The low camera makes it hard to see vistas unless you find the designated "look at the pretty view" spots, riding a mount creates a claustrophobic blur on the edges of frame to, I guess, simulate the pure intense adrenaline of riding.. kinda fast. It's just a big ol dump of colours and textures.
And then, at the end of the day, this really just isn't that fun to play. The AI is atrocious, making it tediously easy to destroy a gang of enemies. When Aloy is hit it doesn't really register so you'll be surprised when you discover you are low on health. I have had many encounters where the AI breaks and the robots just sit around while I wail on them. Melee is unremarkable. And too much of the game is spent digging through a skill tree that is... quite literally... extremely wide and but insanely shallow. You have a half-dozen "options" for what to invest skill points in, and very few of them make you feel stronger or give you new fun abilities to experiment with or change how you play. A lot of it is passive or, frankly, just useless. And then there is the whole armour modding system that puts God of War Ragnarok to shame with its overly complex nature for a game that is brain-dead stupid easy to begin with.
In conclusion, this game is an expensive Big Mac - looks good from afar, but once you've got your hands on it, it's just a reheated mess; a real disappointment.