I'm not going to mince words here, this is by far one of the worst, most frustrating games I've ever played. There are plenty of NES games that have stood the test of time and remain playable and fun till this day, still regarded as classics of the medium.

This game isn't one of them.

This is cock and ball torture.

The biggest problem this game has is it's enemy design. Enemies hit hard, fast and randomly, seldomly giving you a chance to get a clean strike on them. You'll almost never escape an encounter unscathed.

I had a brief moment in the game were I was enjoying myself, having just finished the first Palace and gaining my first item, the candle. Now I could finally explore dark caves! Then I got to Death Mountain, probably the hardest section in the game and the frustration began anew. Even though you'll progress and "grow stronger", you never feel like you're well- equiped for the journey ahead.

Glad this one's over with.

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.

This is a game of choice. All outcomes are dealt by your hand. There is no room for error, no mistakes to be made, no extraneous activity set up to prey on your downfall. All that is asked of you is to select a case.

Are you confident in your decisions? Do you trust yourself enough to follow through to the end? How long do you believe you can stay confident in your selection? That is not what matters now. At the moment, you have six cases to eliminate from the pool.

One falls. Another. Then another. Four. Five. Six. Some lucky drops. Some higher than you would have liked. Out of obligation, you are now given the choice to finish the game immediately, taking a definitive offer totaled from your remaining potentialities. Usually no higher than ~70,000 dollars. The choice is yours. Deal, or No Deal?

Well, that's ridiculous. Look at the board! You still have several hundred thousands awaiting you! You would be a fool to accept that puny an amount with such high odds of success! No deal, banker.

Continue forward. Please remove five more cases from the stage. One... two... oh, dear. A major hit to your possible winnings. This will not go over well in your next offer. Nevertheless, all you can do is continue forward. Three, four, five.

The banker has returned with a new offer. You have gained an additional ten, maybe fifteen thousand to your deal. All you have to do is accept. But that is not what you are here for. You are behind the podium because of the big one million that still eludes you. It could be sitting right next to you, for all you know. This is another deal you cannot make.

As the game progresses, you start to feel it. Your confidence is waning. Your options are diminishing, and so, too, are your prizes. Your decisions have led you to exhilarating highs, and heart wrenching lows. You have lost your chance at the fabled one million dollar prize, but that does not mean you are out just yet. You can keep going. $750,000 is still a fair amount. If not that, then 500,000. Do not let this one instance tear you away from victory.

The banker has returned. You have done well, and are rewarded with the promise of a definitive 200,000 dollars, at the least. Deal, or No Deal?

Not good enough.

You have made it this far. You can go higher. There is still that non-zero chance of half a million. Do not accept the deal. Do not settle for mediocrity. Is that how you want to live? To spend your restless nights tossing and turning over what could have been? No deal.

Ahead of you lies four more cases. Choose one.

Your best bet crumbles.

The banker is not pleased.

The deal is dropped, and it is now clear to you that perhaps you should have left when you were given a satisfactory result. But that is not what you are here for.

One more case.

Down goes your saving grace. There is nothing left for you.

The banker has given you one final chance. Will you count your losses, accepting the perfect in-between of your last two cases? Or do you still think you can beat the odds?

At what point would you still consider it worth it? The only thing keeping you going anymore is your ego, which has tumbled time and time again as you decline each and every out. If you leave now, you will not only leave unhappy, but unfulfilled. Despite it all, there is still that looming sense of achievement that comes from taking your shot, and making it out stronger than you could have.

Do not accept the deal.

Your odds are now 50/50. There is no middle ground anymore. There is no settlement to be made. You refused what was given to you, because you held out hope. Hope that got you nowhere. You have one final decision. Will you swap your case for what is left on stage, or will you stay true to your first choice, the case that has stayed by your side since the beginning?

Your confidence is what pulled you through to begin with. You promised to see it through to the end. You will not let anything tell you otherwise. Win or lose, you have always stayed true to yourself. You have what you want. You know what is best for you. With no one to blame but yourself, you have lost everything, but you know there is still more waiting for you.

---

I chose to keep my case. Given the possibility of one hundred dollars or five, I decided not to swap.

I walked out with five dollars. I won five dollars. Nothing brought about this result against my wishes. Everything that happened in this game was under my hand. I have trouble even calling myself a winner, given that there was no opponent to beat, no loser to be seen. I can't blame the game, or another person, or any other outside force. I chose this outcome, and I did everything in my power to keep it that way. Myself. Such is the thrill, and the horrors, of Deal or No Deal.

Ah, the RPG in its purest form. A dragon is searing my flesh with its fiery roar? No matter! I dost have the perfect stratagem to slay the fell beast!

decimates the local slime population for an hour

What sayest thou now, green dragon? Mine numbers are higher than thine own! Who'm'st've else could have come up with so bold, so daring, so wonderfully thought out of a plan to rend thy scales from thy wretched hide? Wouldst you flee in terror at my superior level? Wouldst you not fight to the bitter end? But thou must!

Seriously though, despite every fight in this game being a one-on-one slugfest, (and, I know I could put the bad guys to sleep but like, when it doesn't work the first time I'm not too inclined to try it again lmao) it's still a fun game! Alefgard is a charming little kingdom, thanks in large part to its inhabitants. The townsfolk might not say anything particularly interesting, but they speak with such charm. I couldn't help but want to see their kingdom saved.

Unfortunately, this was my third go at saving their kingdom, and this game really suffers on repeat playthroughs. The way the game is structured requires that no real story triggers be hit; if you know which items need to be taken where you can just go do it without talking to anybody. And the bonk-or-get-bonked nature of the combat means the only thing stopping you from having full run of the map is that you'll quickly die if you go too far out. So the only thing left for it is to grind until you can successfully Not Die.

Now all of that is fine on a first playthrough, because there isn't much time spent actually grinding. At least, that's how it feels to me when I'm exploring and just happen to be killing every slime I see along the way. It isn't grinding, it's just a fortunate coincidence of my wanderings! Grinding is only grinding when it feels like a grind. And a second or third playthrough of this game definitely feels like a grind.

But it's one of the first JRPGs ever. So, ya know, can't be too hard on it lol

(One last side note: your mileage may vary depending on which version of the game you play. This Switch port that I played gives you more gold and experience compared to the NES original, which speeds things up tremendously. But it does give you a map that shows you exactly where all the towns and caves are, which could cause similar issues to doing a second playthrough. And it's missing a pleasant graphical effect when you build a bridge near the end of the game. There's always gotta be tradeoffs with these things.)