This is legit better than the base game and pulled me back after it had completely lost me. Almost everything that sucked with it was fixed here. Characters in dialogue don't act like robots anymore, sidequests blend nicely with the main content and don't disrupt the pace, almost everywhere you go feels distinct and beautiful to look at, the story is actually good and managed to give Aloy some personality that's not just being perfect, the side characters are interesting and actually make you care for them, and it has the best quest in the entire game (which is a sidequest). Cheers to my mate Gildun

It has a fair amount of content, more than most other games would give. There's a whole section of the map dedicated to it and feels like a natural part of the game rather than a whole separate section. It also has a fair share of side stuff so if you're worried about amount, it's well worth the 6-10$ you'd spend. I had the expansion pass for Spider-Man PS4 and I think I played this more than any one of those episodes and I'm pretty sure 100%'d 2 out of 3 of those and I didn't even do everything this DLC had to offer, just a good chunk.

Perhaps the biggest upgrade is the spear. You can add mods to your spear now, which I hope stays now and forever because I use close combat whenever I get the chance.

I would suggest playing it during the main campaign of the base game, I started mine around level 33 (which doesn't really gauge where you are in the story) but I think it recommends at least level 30 so I had already finished "The Heart of the Nora" by that time. I was seeing some high level quests (around 40) but I was able to even it out plus you level up pretty quick because they're good for XP. The story doesn't rely on where you are, it's more like the other quests in the game but try to do it before "The Looming Shadow". I mean you can use the stuff exclusive to the dlc in the main game as well, it's all connected so collect your goodies.

I'm going to keep most of the gameplay nuggets a surprise so you can just find out for youself but just know that the final boss was a real pain in the arse. It actually felt plain unfair, I was underpowered and felt underutilized but I have no idea what could've helped me. After I beat it, I looked it up to see how others did it and it seems that spamming the ropecaster and sling helps, both of which I barely used in the game, let alone the boss. They also bought up the "other" exclusive bow for this dlc, which means I apparently chose the wrong one...make good use of your bluegleam.

Overall though, there are 2 very nice side-quests that this DLC offers: Waterlogged and The Survivor. Those were my favorites as well as "some" of the main quest but the quest "Frontier Justice" matters as well if you want to do that (it's not mandatory but you might see why I suggest it later on).

I have a complicated relationship with this game, or rather the base game. When I played it almost three years ago (how the fuck), I had a very mixed and conflicting experience with it. One day I'd get on and play for a few hours, loving every second of it. Then the next day, I'd hate every second. It was very bizarre and unique, as with most open world games there is a bit of a hurdle to get over and then it's just a smooth ride of gameplay loop. Yet, with Horizon Zero Dawn, I never really found that comfort point. Some of the issues I have with the game are seemingly small and nitpicky, but they all really combined to just get under my skin in a way not many other games have.

For starters, I fucking hate the camera so much. In most games, you'll have a fixed camera with the player on the left or the center of the screen; here, it's fluid, meaning that it can change and just go anywhere at any time. That sounds kind of neat, but in execution it's one of the most frustrating and distracting features of any game I've ever played. The only way to "fix" it is to aim or use your focus, which only interrupts you for a few seconds, but it's just not needed. To be fair, I recall Alan Wake having a similar way of angling the camera, but I guess it didn't bother me so much in that game because the FOV was far superior and it wouldn't just move on its own while you're playing, from memory. Whoever thought it was a good idea to shrink the FOV when you're inside a building or a camp has some explaining to do. Also, the waypoint marker is awful, though that isn't unique to just this game. And jumping is also very lackluster, but mainly that camera thing.

Despite those issues that did mostly persist, and some very questionable mission design that had me stumped, I would say I enjoyed this more than the base game. Not to say that it's great, especially since most of the fun I had here was actually with the side missions and collectables of the base game, so I guess I just didn't really enjoy the main quest. Not surprising, as I feel open-world games aren't really known for their great stories, especially ones that rely on urgency but also give you the freedom to fuck off for 200 hours to play a card game. Traversing this world is just very boring and it has the all-too-common issue of being too damn big, for me at least. But even with those caveats, I was able to have fun and I can't really explain why. Something just clicked and when I was left to my own devices, I enjoyed it. And I guess that's the beauty of the open-world game, the freedom and ability to do it your way, or at the very least the illusion to do it your way since it's a game made by people and everything you can do was already thought up and programmed by them, but they don't want you to know that.

So overall, it's fine. I'm sure I'd enjoy the main campaign on a second playthrough, but I can't say I will get around to that any time soon; it's also possible that because I played this game at a tumultuous moment in my life, some of those external feelings and my general mood leaked its way into my time with the game.. or maybe it's just wank. There's just something very off-putting about this game that I can't quite put into words. As NerdCubed once said, "It's a game that does everything very well, but does absolutely nothing new so I don't care about it," or something to that effect, what does it matter. It excels in areas that I suppose I just don't really care about. The game overwhelms me with a plethora of options and weapons and different modifications for those weapons and I just simply can't be arsed most of the time. Idk.

A much more focused, solid and satisfying experience than the base game.

I've never been much of a Zero Dawn fan even after loving some of the key elements of the game and most of all praising the intent to define an original concept with fun and deep twists to both visual design and gameplay; having said that, the game extended too much, the balance between the two plots that are ocurring at the same time are unbalanced in quality and even worse the animation and care put on cutscenes and general dialogue is subpar and detracts so much from the whole that I ended up, except for a couple of moments, not feeling what at the beginning was an intriguing and potentially entertaining story.

Frozen Wilds solves this by being just an expansion, which means less content with more polish, less characters but better defined, and the necessary additions to an already fantastic core gameplay that rejuvenates the later arc of the game into a potential look into the future, one with a dna of its own that doesn't fight with it's own nature as a AAA title with massive scope.

I hope Forbidden West learns its lessons and this is just the beginning of Horizon defining itself as a saga as refreshing and fun as its own best concepts.

The Frozen Wilds is an expansion to Horizon: Zero Dawn that adds a new region to the map, where the Banuk, often cited throughout the game, live. It doesn't feel like an expansion, though-- like Rise of the Tomb Raider's Baba Yaga or Control's The Foundation, it gives me this feeling that it's a piece of the main story that hit the cutting room floor due to being complicated to develop and not essential.

Which is not a bad thing in itself -- a lot of people will jump and say that games nowadays cut content and sell it as DLC (which, in fairness, is true for some publishers), but cutting things is an normal part of game development. Basically every game in history has had stuff dropped from it, be it because it didn't fit, detracted from the pacing, or time constraints. And if I'm right, I'd risk saying Frozen Wilds was a mix of pacing and time.

The DLC opens up a new mountainous region to the north of the map, the area where the Banuk, a people mentioned many times over the main game, live. Aloy heads there in the hopes of finding out more about the mysterious ally she meets during the story, and ends up helping the Banuk defeat a mysterious threat that lurks in the mountains.

It tells a complete, self-contained story that is tangentially related to the main one, and there are slight changes to dialogue during main quests if you finish The Frozen Wilds first, which I feel was a nice touch. But it is still a side story, and you don't necessarily have to own it.

As for its overall quality, it's... more of Horizon, and it's not going to change your mind about the main game. Although, to be fair, Aloy's interactions with the Banuk did make me appreciate her even more as a protagonist. Her being an outcast, as well as being somewhat familiar with machines helps a lot with representing the audience's point of view.

There's also puzzles in the DLC! Not super complex ones, mind you, but they beat the completely braindead ones in the main game. It's almost like some higher-up was afraid some players wouldn't get it and completely dumbed down the main campaign levels, but let the level designer have their way on the DLC. Add that to the long list of AAA quirks you can observe in Horizon.

100% of DLC trophies earned, 100% in-game completion and all datapoints located. The Frozen Wilds is an excellent expansion to one of 2017's very best releases, following Aloy as she ventures into the snow-covered northern territory of the game's world. The expansion largely offers more of the same as the base game, but that's no bad thing. I adored [i]Horizon Zero Dawn[/i]'s apocalyptic sci-fi lore, and here we delve further into the spirituality of the world's people, while also further developing some peripheral aspects of the game's lore. We see the addition of some interesting new variants of the dinosaur-like machines that are the game's main enemies, with the environmentally-appropriate hulking 'bears' being a particular highlight, and the quest objectives are consistently interesting. My only real niggle is that some of the collectibles are a little frustrating to locate, with the mountainous terrain combining with only vague in-game location markers to make them harder to locate - but these are optional only, so it's not a particularly strong criticism.

English/German Below

After 10 hours I finished the DLC for Horizon and had fun with it again. Finally a tribe that I liked, that was interesting.

The landscape itself was beautiful but I'm glad that most of the main game didn't take place in the snow. It also has to be said that the facial expressions of the people in cutscenes have improved significantly.

A few cool new weapons and types of monsters have been added, but the machines in particular could have been more.

Overall, the story was okay, but it wasn't nearly as effective as it was in the middle of the main game.

You can definitely take the DIC with you.

3.5/5 snowflakes.

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Nach 10 Stunden hab ich den DLC zu Horizon beendet und hatte nochmal gut Spaß damit. Endlich mal ein Stamm der mir gefallen hat, der interessant war.

Die Landschaft selbst war schön bin aber froh, dass der Großteil des Hauptspiels nicht im Schnee stattgefunden hat. Auch muss man sagen, dass sich die Mimik der Personen in Cutscenes deutlich gebessert hat.

Es sind ein paar coole neue Waffen und Monsterarten hinzugekommen, aber gerade bei den Maschinen hätten es mehr sein können.

Die Story war insgesamt ganz in Ordnung, hatte aber bei weitem nichtmehr so den Effekt wie ab der Mitte des Hauptspiels.

Den DlC kann man auf jeden Fall mitnehmen.

3.5/5 Schneeflocken.

This is easily one of the best DLC expansions I've ever played. It's basically just more of the main game, which isn't a bad thing, but it still feels unique. What really makes it so great is that it doesn't feel like typical DLC. Instead, the quality is on the same level as the base game, making it hard to tell what's The Frozen Wilds and what is the actual game. Doing the quests here even slightly affects parts of the normal story, making it blend together even more. This is what I wish other DLC expansions were like.

This is my second time playing Frozen Wilds, as a story and gameplay refresher for Forbidden West. This also marked my third time playing through the campaign of Zero Dawn and second starting from a completely fresh save. Unlike my New Game+ run in 2019, this time I integrated Frozen Wilds into the main story, diverting to it as soon as I hit level 30 rather than being terrified of the Scorchers and Fireclaws the way I was on my New Game+ despite starting from such an overpowered position.

While certain aspects of this game haven't aged well, even in the two years since my second run - namely, there's far too many markers on the map, a lot of errands and side quests that aren't very rewarding narratively, some pretty rough facial animation during conversations and on the harder difficulties there are way more ways to get one-shot killed than you might expect - the core combat loop of Horizon is so, so, so goddamn satisfying that none of that matters. In fact, I appreciate how many junk side quests there are if only because it's another excuse to go shred some metal.

For some reason this isn't a universally beloved combat, but for me there's nothing more satisfying than setting all your traps, optimizing your outfit and weapon loadout, sneaking around for a bit capturing or stealth-killing a machine or two and then, suddenly and often without warning, cover's blown and the shit's constantly whipping through the fan. It's exhilarating in a way that never feels cheap (maybe my most disagreeable take) and often inspires a true sense of desperation I often feel held at a distance from in other hard games like, say, Bloodborne. Where a FromSoft game often feels like there's a prescription to its mechanics, so many of Horizon's encounters boil down to "good luck, good hunter" as you retry three or four different times, sometimes honing in on a particular strategy and sometimes altering it completely. The big open spaces help substantially with this, especially when you think you're in a small, intimate encounter with some huge beast only to have suddenly caught the attention of a heard of Broadheads or flock of Glinthawks because you started spamming blast bombs.

But besides all that, Frozen Wilds is an excellent DLC because it hints at a lot of different avenues Guerilla Games will likely take for Forbidden West. There are more fights with companions that have elemental affinities, often but not always in conflict with the enemies you'll be facing, which adds a neat RPG layer as well as offers a little more freedom to improvise because enemies aren't ALWAYS keyed on you. Likewise, animation and cutscene direction is notably improved from the base game despite being released in the same calendar year which should inspire a lot of hope for that side of the game in the sequel.

But more importantly, similar to legendary Mass Effect 2 DLCs Overlord and Shadow of the Power Broker, Frozen Wilds is both integrated into the main game (playing it before the major reveals of the main game will prompt Ashley Burch and Lance Reddick to have extra dialogue concerning how the events in the Ban-Ur relate to the Sundom) in smart ways but additive to the lore of the game without feeling either superfluous or 100% necessary. It's a tough balancing act, much in the same way the primary game's tone wobbles between melodrama and deeply humanistic empathy and humor without ever losing its footing, and quite a joy to experience again.

So...yea. Third time playing this game, really no reason to play a lot of the side quests other than an excuse to play more of the game...so why not dump over 60 hours into this game one more time, just because?

Absolute magic, man.

No reinventing the wheel here. This is just more Horizon, with all of the accompanying caveats. The area this expansion adds to the game is impressively large and utterly gorgeous in a way that stands out in what was already an attractive game. With that being said, the stuff that you actually do in the new area has barely changed. There’s a fairly enjoyable main quest that once again hinges on a clever connection between a tribal society and the AI left behind by a more advanced civilization. Unfortunately, the appropriation of real world tribal customs is more egregious than ever here; there are aspects of the relationship between Aloy and the Banuk that made me audibly groan while playing. Still, there is a satisfying narrative payoff if you can look past the clunky portrayal of tribal society.

The side content is slightly better than it was in the base game, but it still wasn’t much to write home about for me. The addition of the control towers that buff and heal hostile machines is a cool idea that is a significant improvement on the corrupted zones from the main game. The side content also does a slightly better job of offering incentives for completing it, including potential spear upgrades and improved XP rewards. I just always ended up feeling like I was playing a Ubisoft checklist game whenever I diverged too far from the critical path - as with the base game, I think I would’ve liked this more as a 5 hour linear adventure rather than as 15 hours of open world bloat.

I have the least to say about the combat aspect of the expansion. They added a couple of rather challenging new machine types, which adds in a bit of welcome novelty to the fights. But really, little has changed from the main game - as long as Aloy is taking on massive robo-creatures, the archery-based combat remains deep and satisfying as hell.

The inability to imagine more substantial tweaks on the gameplay and world-building of the base game here irks me slightly. But nonetheless, if you had a good time with the main campaign, then there’s little reason to believe that you won’t have fun with this. In that sense, this expansion’s lack of innovation is both a strength and a weakness.