A game with several appealing features that more or less make up for its abject embrace of some of the more stultifying open world design trends of recent years (filler side quests, a bland loot system, under-baked attempts to incorporate RPG mechanics, etc).
First off, the archery-based combat against the machines is consistently satisfying and engaging. My favorite moments involved staking out enemies from stealth, rigging the battlefield with tripwires, picking my preferred elemental ammo, and finally engaging the targets with precise bow strikes, hitting weak points and breaking off crucial parts to limit the machine’s attack options. It’s a near-perfect mixture of the methodical and the chaotic. It’s not lacking in drawbacks: melee combat feels like an underdeveloped afterthought, and fighting human enemies is consistently bland and generic. Nonetheless, you will spend most of your time in this game fighting robo-dinos, and that never really gets old.
The other element that helped me look past open world bloat is the creative and mysterious sci-fi backstory. Without revealing too much, there are a number of surprising plot developments that provide clever and satisfying explanations for why humanity has regressed back to tribalism and machines roam the earth. Slowly following the trail of bread crumbs to figure out how the world got to the point it’s at in the game is an addictive process that had me hooked from the start, obnoxious appropriations of Native American cultures notwithstanding (I dislike pretty much every story element involving any of various tribal interactions; cliches indulged include sun worship, initiation rites, and ‘chosen one’ mythologizing, among others). In a bit of awkward dramatic irony, I had the big twist figured out well before my player character did, but the finer details of the backstory are so intriguing that my interest never flagged regardless.
While the combat and storyline are good enough to have made this game well worth playing, it doesn’t completely transcend open world fatigue. I wasn’t nearly as engaged when doing anything besides the main storyline. I did all of the side quests, and I would estimate that only about 10-20% of them carried any interest. There are way too many of the uninspiring ‘find my family heirloom’ or ‘save my relative from certain death’ missions that just feel like filler. The one piece of side content that really worked for me were the cauldrons, the short yet challenging dungeon crawls that grant an override ability - these were consistently engaging and fun.
The RPG systems here are also mostly wall dressing. This is most obviously the case with the strange inclusion of role-playing dialogue choices, which only pop up a few times and are never interesting (the whole plot revolves around Aloy being heroic and kind, so these dialogue options mostly just let you choose between ‘good yet vengeful’ or ‘good and forgiving’). Leveling up also felt mostly pointless beyond raising Aloy’s health - this is not really a game where leveling allows for diverse builds or anything like that. I think the game probably would have been better off if the devs had just put in a skill tree and called it a day.
Horizon is a game that I enjoyed in spite of its genre underpinnings rather than because of them. Played as a 25 hour, plot-driven action-adventure game, I imagine I would have loved it unequivocally. As an overstuffed, 50 hour open world game, I have significant quibbles. Still, absolutely a game worth playing, whatever its flaws.
First off, the archery-based combat against the machines is consistently satisfying and engaging. My favorite moments involved staking out enemies from stealth, rigging the battlefield with tripwires, picking my preferred elemental ammo, and finally engaging the targets with precise bow strikes, hitting weak points and breaking off crucial parts to limit the machine’s attack options. It’s a near-perfect mixture of the methodical and the chaotic. It’s not lacking in drawbacks: melee combat feels like an underdeveloped afterthought, and fighting human enemies is consistently bland and generic. Nonetheless, you will spend most of your time in this game fighting robo-dinos, and that never really gets old.
The other element that helped me look past open world bloat is the creative and mysterious sci-fi backstory. Without revealing too much, there are a number of surprising plot developments that provide clever and satisfying explanations for why humanity has regressed back to tribalism and machines roam the earth. Slowly following the trail of bread crumbs to figure out how the world got to the point it’s at in the game is an addictive process that had me hooked from the start, obnoxious appropriations of Native American cultures notwithstanding (I dislike pretty much every story element involving any of various tribal interactions; cliches indulged include sun worship, initiation rites, and ‘chosen one’ mythologizing, among others). In a bit of awkward dramatic irony, I had the big twist figured out well before my player character did, but the finer details of the backstory are so intriguing that my interest never flagged regardless.
While the combat and storyline are good enough to have made this game well worth playing, it doesn’t completely transcend open world fatigue. I wasn’t nearly as engaged when doing anything besides the main storyline. I did all of the side quests, and I would estimate that only about 10-20% of them carried any interest. There are way too many of the uninspiring ‘find my family heirloom’ or ‘save my relative from certain death’ missions that just feel like filler. The one piece of side content that really worked for me were the cauldrons, the short yet challenging dungeon crawls that grant an override ability - these were consistently engaging and fun.
The RPG systems here are also mostly wall dressing. This is most obviously the case with the strange inclusion of role-playing dialogue choices, which only pop up a few times and are never interesting (the whole plot revolves around Aloy being heroic and kind, so these dialogue options mostly just let you choose between ‘good yet vengeful’ or ‘good and forgiving’). Leveling up also felt mostly pointless beyond raising Aloy’s health - this is not really a game where leveling allows for diverse builds or anything like that. I think the game probably would have been better off if the devs had just put in a skill tree and called it a day.
Horizon is a game that I enjoyed in spite of its genre underpinnings rather than because of them. Played as a 25 hour, plot-driven action-adventure game, I imagine I would have loved it unequivocally. As an overstuffed, 50 hour open world game, I have significant quibbles. Still, absolutely a game worth playing, whatever its flaws.