Burning Shores is a bite sized expansion to Horizon Forbidden West. It is simply more of what you've already played only on a smaller scale so if you don't like the previous games there won't be much here to entice you in. If you are a fan though it's a great epilogue with a tiny build up into Horizon 3 whilst expanding further on the lore of this somewhat crazy storyline.

The key phrase for me in that last paragraph though is 'smaller scale'. To be honest I don't like open world games much and Forbidden West had burnt me out around half way through it with it's insanely huge map and repetitive icons but I pushed through as I love the art, music, characters and world. I mean if you've cleared one bandit camp or one tower then you've kind of seen them all. It's empty bloat and while I appreciate the work that goes into these huge worlds, bigger just isn't better. I much prefer smaller yet denser hubs and maps like Deus Ex. While a long way from that, Burning shores is a better size and Alloy having a much better form of traversal available to her making unlocking the map far less tedious generally. Open World games live and die to me based entirely on their traversal mechanics which was always a Horizon weak point until now.

The story carries straight on from the end of the main game so you need a clear file to play it but it takes Alloy to a new location of Los Angeles on the trail of a very dangerous character. On her journey she bumps into a few new characters with the most prominent being Seyka, a pretty untraditional Quen she teams up with to help find her missing sister making their paths align.

The main quests take about 5-6 hours to beat finishing off with a pretty insane set piece at the end. It's a high quality piece of work throughout and at times is simply stunning and still some of the best looking visuals on PS5. The fact it can run at 60 fps in an open world looking this good is insane and the cutscenes especially are pretty nuts. The skin rendering alone looks close to real life without taking things into uncanny valley thanks to the superb art design on display. That said there is some pretty noticeable pop in and slight graphical glitches when in the air and I had one hard crash losing me a good 30 minutes play time which was pretty irritating. Overall it looks and sounds fantastic though.

Main quests aside there are a few side quests, new enemies, skills, equipment and collectables taking my playtime up to about 10 hours or so doing everything. All in all it's pretty good value for money considering the obvious amount of work here for only £15.99 if you want more Horizon.

On a sidenote it just got announced Sony bought Firewalk studios, they already purchased Firesprite, have been working with Ember Labs and now released Burning Shores. I'm starting to think Sony has a few pyromaniacs.

So I actually beat the game a few days ago (Wild Mode, if that matters), but wasnt quite sure on my feelings and wanted to give a bit of the post game a shot before writing a review. I figured I could 100% it, but I decided that I had gotten my fill of the game and was ready to move on. So, this game was really solid. Like, the epitome of solid. Its well made, its fun, and even though there are lots of flaws theres nothing "bad" about it. Kirby is really cute, plus the finale gets pretty bonkers and I thought it was dope as hell. What holds back this game for me I guess is just that, I wasn't really impressed.
Before I continue, I would like to note I have tried Kirby's Adventure through Nintendo Online but for all intents and purposes, this was really my first Kirby game. And for me really, outside of the initial fun of the first world and the epic finale, the game didnt really have much of a wow factor. It shows nearly all of the copy abilities and mouthful modes right at the start and rarely does anything interesting with them outside of the optional challenge trials. They aren't utilized or expanded on in any satisfying ways that makes you feel like you're getting better. Theres also the same couple minibosses scattered throughout the entire game and the most variation they get is fighting more than one of them at a time. This gets very annoying with how often they appear. The main bosses are all pretty good though at least. Kirbys movement also just doesnt really feel all that good but thats not a big deal. The music outside of a few tracks (the vocal one) was honestly pretty forgettable too. Despite all this, the presentation is so strong that I was still having a really great time for the first four worlds, and even went as far to 100% them as much as I could. But once the game starts getting into the end game, the fifth and sixth worlds just felt really uninspired and missing anything particularly interesting. I was really losing interest fast, but thankfully the finale like mentioned before was really enjoyable and unique. Two final nitpicks, the target time for some of the challenges gives like one second of leeway and can feel pretty unfair, but they're still doable. Finally theres certain missions where you have to beat a boss while taking no damage, but theres no restart so you'll have to go through the whole level which can be between like twenty seconds or as long as a few minutes of waiting to try again. Doesnt sound like much but its pretty annoying when it adds up.
Anyway.
Despite the fact that this review was almost entirely negative, I want it to be clear that those were only things that stopped me from loving it and none of it is big enough of an issue to stop the game being from a nice wholesome adventure.
I look forward to playing some more Kirby.

In Game Completion - 77%
Time Played - 25 hours +
Nancymeter - 84/100
Game Completion #43 of 2022
April Completion #12