Spent basically all my free time recently playing
Horizon Forbidden West (hence the lack of updates). I've finished it now, including the
Burning Shores expansion, & I have mixed feelings. Possibly incoherent stream of consciousness rambling ahead.
I expect a sequel to expand on a game's mechanics & add new twists, but it feels like they went way to & over-complicated everything. Every tiny step of every aspect of every mechanic had a bunch of complexity & extra steps added in a way that often felt less like innovating so concepts don't get tired & more like adding random obstacles.
Puzzles in HZD are occasional little brain teasers to add some flavour, where to elements of the puzzle are in one space & you can easily figure out what you need to do, so you can get on with trying to solve the thing. Puzzles in HFW are constant multi-step chores that made it hard to figure out what you next step was because the elements of the puzzle were scattered all over & there was no obvious way of figuring out what your next step was. And there were often steps on top of steps because you'd go through a whole bunch of moving something & then going somewhere else & pulling a lever & then going somewhere else to make a hole in a wall & then moving something else & then & then & then... & you get through it (with the help of a guide) & it turned out that was one to find a key. And then you've got to got through another series of steps to find a code. And then a bunch more steps to find a battery. And then more steps to find a charger for the battery to power something to access wherever the door is. And then you have to - you guessed it! - go through more steps to get to the door. There was one where I looked at the guide for how to solve it, saw the number of steps, saw that it was just for half of an access code (yep, not even the whole code), & it wasn't even an interesting series of steps (go here, move thing, go somewhere else, move thing, etc), & I could just look up the code online by scrolling down on the guide I was following & typing it straight into the console. Which I did. It got to the point where I stopped even trying to figure things out - as soon as I saw signs of a puzzle I'd just check a guide & follow it (usually while muttering, 'how tf was I suppose to figure out I needed to do that particular series of steps in that particular order?'). There were occasional 'ooh this is fun!' puzzling sections where there was a clear next step I could find by looking around where I was, but those were rare.
Aloy is often supposed to drop hints in dialogue, but the implementation of that was... not great. Sometimes she'd only make the comment when she was standing in a spot where the only reason she'd be there was if I'd solved the problem already (the worst instance of that was a cauldron where she was supposed to shoot some cannisters being carried through the area & ride the resulting blast to access platforms, & according to really snide people online when I was looking up how to get through the area, she clearly commented on the cannisters when entering the area. Except she said nothing... until I got to the next area, which used a similar mechanic, & got to a point where I was most of the way through that area, & THEN she mentioned the cannisters!). Other times she'd comment on something as if she was right next to it, because the game decided 'eh, close enough', but she was round a corner & down a corridor & the thing wasn't visible on the Focus from where she was standing so I'm looking around going 'girl what are you talking about???'. Or someone would talk over her.
Some of the added ideas where interesting in theory, but poorly implemented. I loved the idea of having a resource where you could hear a audio cue when you were nearby that you could follow! But why were there different sizes that were treated as different resources? A greenshine slab was bigger than a greenshine fragment, but couldn't be used to buy anything that requires a greenshine fragment. Meanwhile both bluegleam (in Frozen Wilds & brimshine i Burning Shores were worth x number of pieces. The food giving buffs to certain stats was interesting, but I never ended up using it was it wasn't easy to check what its effects where without digging through the menus, so it just took up slots in my inventory & meant more stuff to scroll through while looking for a health potion. I fully support the idea of giving Aloy proper melee combat options, because sometimes close range combat is unavoidable. But it was so slow & clunky & timings on the combos were poorly explained, & it was a nightmare. Maybe I'm expecting too much from decades of playing Devil May Cry games, but I found it awful. Splitting the merchants into specialties made some kind of sense, but resulted in a lot of running around (& getting lost in some maze-like settlements) to figure out what I wanted to buy & what I could afford. Maybe should have been kept for some of the larger settlements & have general merchants for the rest. The idea of adding variants to machines was cool, but was overdone to the point where even at the end of the game I was having to scan every single damn machine to figure out what ammo to use, because I could never remember (why the hell were there so many types of Burrowers that were just minute variants of each other, when the thing is just a glorified Watcher?). The added variety of weapons & ammo was great in theory but in practice making a decent loadout with a variety of ammo types was a nightmare & some of the ammo type slots were redundant because why would you need separate basic & advanced versions of the same ammo? You're not going to use the basic one you've unlocked the advanced variety, so just have them replace them!).
There was other frustrating things that felt more like bugs. A few quests where I was meant to defeat enemies in order to progress, & the enemies are super aggressive & would normally attack on sight, but instead they hid away, & in one case barely reacted even when I started shooting at it. There's also a flying mount you can unlock un override for, & an option to un-invert the controls, which I picked because I found the standard flying controls confusing. But then in Burning Shores you unlock a variant that can also diver into water, in order to do a quest that requires a lot of quick dodging, & THE CONTROLS SWITCH BACK WITHOUT TELLING ME. I was struggling to control the damn thing & not figuring out why it wasn't doing what I wanted. Only later when I was flying around without the stress of being shot at & therefore had the time to notice things properly did I realise it was using inverted controls.
Also getting rid of the lure call ability & throwing rocks instead was annoying as most of the time machines barely reacted, so I had to throw rock after rock after rock to attract their attention. Cool that there was no upper limit on the amount of rocks you can have in your inventory though, as I love the crunching sound as you pick them up.
Despite all the complaining, I didn't totally hate the game. I loved the story, & how it emphasized friendship & teamwork instead of having Aloy be some lone wolf chosen one figure who was apart from everyone else. Though I did get annoyed at them getting in the way at various points.
Having to collect part of machines as an additional step to unlock overrides you learning from a cauldron makes them feel more earned & is an example of an added complexity that actually deepens the gameplay.
THE ROMANCE AT THE END OF BURNING SHORES!!!! I loved the rapport between them from the start & when some of the things Aloy was saying towards the end had me getting a vibe that I was putting down to ship[per brain, & then she went & asked & I hit the 'yes' option so fast I' amazed I didn't break the analogue stick! It almost made up for that chore of a multi-step boss fight. Almost.
GILDUN! <3 I was so happy to see him back! He's one of my favourite side characters, probably because he reminds me of my dad, who has the exact same inability to shut up & a tendency to get distracted. I'm not saying my dad is the type to lose an important object to a Snapmaw & get himself locked in a ruin but... No I am saying that actually. He would. He absolutely would.
The most important improvement: O can cancel out of Focus mode. Thank you thank you thank you! So many occasions in the first game where I automatically hit O to cancel because it's such an ingrained instinct, only to have Aloy do an awkward slo-mo roll & inevitably get smacked about by the machine I was fighting that I needed to exit Focus mode quickly so I could evade or attack properly
I have a bunch of photos already that'll get posted at some point. I need to do a New Game+ playthrough though, & will probably gather more.
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