It's tough to base Hozion Zero Dawn fairly because, as much as I enjoyed my overall time with it, I completed the game without ever having enjoyed the combat - fundementally the only mechanic worth commenting on.

The world building was excellent, and genuinely captivating to piece together. Aspects of it, sure, were obvious, but beneath those layers is a well-written mystery that is enjoyable to uncover. On top of that, probably more importantly, the world built on top of these foundations is even more well fleshed; the societies that interspace the diverse and beautiful environments that make exploring so bountiful are unique, engaging, well crafted, and full of memorable characters and politics. I was honestly far more motivated to dive into human conflict than I ever did mechanical ones.

This is part of my conflict as a player, though. The mechanical beasts themselves invite creative solutions and thoughtful combat, but I never found myself confident enough to differentiate parts of a creature and its weaknesses, and found myself in a loop of trusting the systems that seemed to work for me and being unable to budge when that solution didn't seem to work. And as much as I was emotionally driven to take part in human conflict, these fights were agonising; it didn't seem the game really invested in fighting humans at a mechanical level and I found my options were only cheese, or death.

It's a beautiful game that rises and falls at the right moments, and overall I felt incredibly content to have made the journey. But as much as I had heard The Frozen Wilds was unmissable DLC, the idea of having to suffer more of the gameplay itself was too much of an obstacle for me to overcome.