My biggest complaint of this game is that it suffers from the "here's a reward! But it's not really" syndrome. Every time you get a new item it always starts weak Then what you have and before you upgrade it there is another weapon you got to go and grind since it's statistically better. It sucked my enthusiasm to keep playing.
@@phil_5430 And borderlands 3 ,many games with rpg elements suffer from this problem ,the rewards and progressions are not well thought out which could results in tedious and repetitive gameplay with zero purposes ,its just sad bc the core mechanics of those games are fine and can be ultilized for fun plays
@@phil_5430 I never had that issue with Odyssey I loved the game my only issue is I got to lv 99 and maxed gold and loot and the game got boring but the grinding for the gear and always annoying it did kill the game for me till I I did the XP glitch made the game fun but then I completed everything and got over it
My irritation was more the handholding on telling you what to do. They should have made the help an option and not mandatory. The very second you enter a room she thinks " I should use my glider" or the like, I mean, treat us like adults and let us figure it out and CHOOSE the help if we want it.
One of the most disappointing things for me was how most characters were dealt with in the story. Near the beginning i thought that Fashav guy is gonna have some part in the story, I remember having a loooong conversation with him about his story, and I thought it was interesting, and then he got killed after 5 minutes. Same thing with Regalla, she made an impressive entrance, then her storyline didn’t serve anything in the grand scheme. Even Aloy’s team, like kotallo, who was a really cool and badass character didn’t get any interesting parts in the story. I hated how when i was doing so many crazy things in the world, fighting monsters and saving everyone, and everytime I went back to the base they were all staring into the focus images like they were frozen in time.
Fashav could litterally have been kept instead of Kotallo really. Like Fashav losing his arm and neither feeling useful in the Tenakth or at home in Carja. Giving him reason to follow Aloy, the young fascinating Nora woman who saved his and the other tenakth and Carjas lives. I too felt that Fashav was incredibly likeable and was kind of disapointed when they killed him so early.
Agreed Fashav should have been kept alive. There was really no reason to kill him off. Regalla? The only importance I think people cares for her is what you can get on the "kill or spare" choice. I think she could have made a great end boss if they dedicated her character to be such.
@@coreymartin5981 What do you mean no reason to kill him? There is no reason for anything to happen in a story. Why is Aloy a woman? Why is Regalla a woman? Why are there machines instead of cyborgs? These are all stupid questions. The right question to ask is whether the story is consistent and sensible. And yes, Fashav dying, however tragic it might be, still is consistent with the story. Like you are basically playing the life-story of someone and in real-life, things that shouldn't happen do happen.
One of the biggest issues is Aloy never shuts up, She literally announces everything before you see things and repeats the same maybe two lines every other time you use the glider and picking up medicine etc the entire game.
Yeah, She practically tells you what needs to be done to overcome a obstacle instead of letting the player figure it out for themselves which cheapens the experience.
And if you are doing a puzzle, she straight up tells you what to do .5 seconds into the puzzle. It's like the developers think you are 2 with a mental disability and have to explain everything to you.
Don't you like strong and independent fat female character ? It's symbol of empowerment dude. Majority gamer are dominated by male so it's a strong and independent female to dominate all guy since she is smarter than you.
I agree 10000% with what you said. It's baffling the decissions Guerrilla took with this game really. To add to the stupid choices, one thing that puzzles me how they could get it wrong, the drones thing. They let you change the ceiling in Gaia's chamber to various locations throughout the map... except you have to go and activate it each time you go to speak with her, once you leave the room it reverts to the default ceiling.... WHY???
Even worse, it reverts back to blank when you actual start talking to her, I thought it was there to give u something nice to look at while u waste all this time talking to her but apparently not
My biggest issue right now is the coldrons. When you beat them you automatically unlock the overrides. This one you partiality unlock them. That's the stupidest thing I ever saw.
You need to activate it every time because the enviroment you choose is loaded in and the mountain gets unloaded. The environment you choose can be big enough that it would stick through the mountain top. I thought it was a parallax illusion but no, it's a mini enviromsnt just for you to look at.
I could not put into words why this game never held my attention. I always got tired or found it difficult to keep track of what was going on. Pains me so much cause I really enjoyed Zero dawn and was super hyped for forbidden west.
Yea same here i liked zero dawn and this had alot of potential to beat the first and while it did improve on alot it just dosent snap as the first it seems like a clone now i dont think its a bad game not close but that dosent mean i cant critizise its faults
I loved The first one because of how realistic it felt But the sequel added so much nonsense and stupid stuff it became a mess Also Aloy personality make me hate her, Im still trying to finish the game because I platinum the first one.
I have been wondering why this game felt so off when I keep getting bored time and time again playing it. I loved Horizon Zero Dawn so much and I feel like I should like this one as well. This video put all of my thoughts together so well. I guess it also explains why I still keep going back to Elden Ring after passing NG+4 but I can't seem to finish Forbidden West.
no really. i’ve been forcing my way through some post game stuff just for completion sake because i loved exploring in the first gsme, but i’ve come to terms w the fact that it’s not a great sequel.
@@arielrose9874 yes I've been doing the same just pushing thru these uninteresting side quest and errands it's such a beautiful game but this video brings a lot of issues that the game has to light.
@@megamanx1291 I found the first game very repetitious. To be fair, I have the same problem with Ubisoft games. I don't have the same problem with Elden Ring, even though that is repetitious too. So it's the type of repetition, not the repetition. In Elden Ring the one part I cannot engage with is the crafting system. It's so boring gathering resources. I think Ubisoft-style games just have more of that collect items gameplay and I find it boring.
I've been having the same feeling of open world fatigue as well. It feels like the only AAA games we get now are linear open world action games with stealth, crafting and light-rpg mechanics or multiplayer focused FPS games. I especially feel this way with open world games, like Forbidden West, where I question why they bother making them open world if all it's used for is making you travel between quest givers whilst sprinkled with menial side content. 5 years between releases and the only aspects that feel new are the environment and the spiffy next-gen graphics. I'm convinced that they only make them open world to pad the game time and so they don't have to bother too much with level design outside of key quest areas. Do you think most PS5 exclusives are going to follow this same open world formula?
It's a dichotomy, open world but then most of the quests and especially the horrible jumping puzzles, are all linear. Linear isn't bad if you know what you are doing with it. Mass Effect, before the MEA abomination that was open world, was an example of linear done really well and not feeling too linear. I prefer open world but they should do it right.
@The Rotten💯 We said that after Breath of the Wild came out and made most other open world games look antiquated and yet we're still seeing these kinds of disposable games. They aren't going anywhere, sadly.
I agree. I really enjoyed the mystery of the 1st game, but this one has yet to fully draw me in. It’s not as bad as Cyberpunk (with its huge/lifeless world).
How there haven't been any comments on this yet is so weird to me but I found everything you said to be well presented and grounded in reasonable expectations of what a major sequel should have. Good job!
What he’s talking about is every basic opinion I’ve ever heard. Everyone wants the sequel to be this amazingly different improved installment with some high expectations and as soon as one of those aren’t met they instantly don’t like it and constantly complain abt it smh it’s dumb and no one is ever satisfied
To me hzd felt magical. I absolutely loved it. It was different and fun. Hfw just felt like a chore to complete. I didn't believe how much worse it was until I was done with the story. I agree there was no way they were gonna top the story in hzd but why did they have to add such boring mechanics and make the gameplay/crafting so tedious? Don't get me wrong, I maxed out every one of my favorite weapons but the amount of grinding it took just wasn't worth it.
You know what? I'm just pleased that I'm not the only one with these problems with the game. On places like Reddit you just hear glowing praise for the game and how it's 11/10 best game ever until the next one. I don't enjoy being disappointed, and I generally can express my reasons for being disappointed. In this case, the video does a pretty decent job of explaining many issues. Finding out the the writing team was different for FW really does explain the lackluster story, even if it was always going to be a tough ask to follow ZD. But it's not just the story, the gameplay was ruined by grind and additions that added complexity but didn't improve anything.
@@k9wazere See I didn’t know that hfw had a different writing team. That really does explain it. The story in hzd always kept you on the edge of your seat and fw felt flat.
@@hamoodyman9239 The saddest thing is that the new team basically undid all the good things in ZD. I've said elsewhere in the comments here, they removed all the jeopardy. Before, there was GAIA and if GAIA failed, there was no Plan B. If Aloy failed in her mission, life on Earth ended and would never recover. We accepted that all life had already been wiped out, once. And it could happen again, if GAIA wasn't fixed. Now, in FW there's a race of super-human augmented immortals that can (and have) colonise other planets, so who really cares if GAIA gets rebooted or not. She's old tech, now. Earth is just one planet humans could live on. It's no longer an existential quest for human survival. Now it's a silly class war between tribals and the super-humans. That's not a good continuation of the plot. It's a different story. "Augmented super humans vs normal humans and the ethics of genocide" is not what ZD was about. More than that, it cheapens the events in the first game. It cheapens Sobek's achievement. It cheapens the desperate last ditch sacrifice to buy time for ZD. None of it mattered, because FZ went off and did their own thing, and they perfected human tech and became immortal. It's awful, really, and the worst possible way to go from ZD, imho.
I'm surprised that they made the loot more random now. I really liked the way that certain weapons just always had the same ammo in the same category. So if you wanted to do X thing, you needed that kind of weapon. Making it so hunter bows can just have everything is really bizarre. The game didn't need diabloification of it's loot.
Yeah way too many games adopted the tiered weapon thing, the common through legendary style and most of them don't really need it such as assassins creed. I understand if it's a dedicated looter like borderlands or even some rpgs benefit from it but its becoming over used now just like how every one copied the generic Ubisoft open world formula like this game and it's been tired as f since last gen. Hopefully elden ring will inspire devs to stop with the generic cut n paste filler missions and start actually crafting encounters at least so it doesn't feel like you're doing the same 6 mission types over and over. Rockstar is about the only other open world dev who doesn't do that. Cyberpunk wasn't too bad in that aspect either although I'm tired of icon covered maps too, just let us explore on our own
Too many fucking stupid ammo types, ammo being tied to certain weapons, useless abilities and skills, food buffs, they tried to damn hard to include everything, half of these thing are fucking clutter. Trap skill tree is the most God damn useless tree i have ever seen.
Actually none of the weapons are random, it's just that there's a lot of them in each category of weapon with different available ammo types and upgrade levels based on "quality". they look like they're random loot in terms of the Green-Blue-Purple-Orange rarity category coloring, but they're all handcrafted and specifically placed on quests or vendors by the devs.
Miss your critiques, Chris. I always thought you stood amongst the best on this platform - alongside Matthewmatosis, Joseph Anderson, and Noah Caldwell-Gervais. I genuinely hope all is well with you, and that you’ve moved onto greener pastures if you’ve truly moved on from this platform. Cheers, and thanks for all the wonderful insights you’ve provided the community with, through the years.
Most all the coils and weaves felt useless. 1% bonus when sliding down a hill backward on one knee. But so many of them affected hidden attributes. If you attached a coil with tear, you saw that attribute change, if you added 1% corrosion... nothing changed. was it 1%? or did it start above 1% because of some other bonus? or did it have no affect? I once had Kotallo give me a voice over in a room in the base... before I even met or unlocked him. Cell borders in the ocean between cell grids.. so many bugs :( Legendary weapons worthless because ammunition costs were way out of balance (sludge!)
Swapping Valor Surges and weapons are a pain in the ass because you cannot do that from the weapon wheel. You cannot remove ammo types, food is has this god damn useless 3 minutes boost, the skill tree has shit mixed up all over the place.
@@WheeledHamster to optimize gameplay you need to choose the valor surges you want to spam and unlock them asap. My biggest disappointment, however, is the melee tree. You have the shortbow option as tool for melee characters. But the bad hitboxes and staggered conditions prevent you for actively engage in mid to close combat situations to use the shortbow to its maximum effect. If I ever feel bored I might figure out how to use aoe attacks by weapons asap so melee combat might actually be worthwhile. I hated the vague percentage increments, too. I want to have clear improvements when changing gear. The improvement after upgrading your very first starter bow to max. lvl. is visble. Instead of having to shoot 3-4 times to kill a digger, now you can 1 shot them when targeting a weak spot. That is fine. You invested time and materials and got a visible result. But these annoyingly small percentages for defense or elemental dmg. are useless.
i also got burned out playing this game (i'm guessing i made it to halfway). i think there was just waaay too much going on with the weapon system. waaayy too many side quests, and constant traveling back and forth. which i'm tired of open world games bloating the time spent you play in the game with traveling back and forth. i'd rather have a tighter game with a shorter story thats just fun to play. Returnal has been the best game i have played on next gen so far. so many hours logged playing that game and i didn't even feel like i put that much time in it.
Funny how we're in the same position. Returnal was my goty of 2021 because I could play this game over and over. Its exactly what classic arcade games on Sega and Nintendo used to be: jump in and play until you die. Obviously its much more comfortable now with the added save system. I've played Horizon FW for around 50 hours but eventually got so exhausted by the the constant following of waypoints and searching for upgrade materials. I mean the combat is fun and great but got me frustrated when I never got the loot that I needed. Also there is just WAY to much dialogue everywhere. You could talk with the most irrelevant NPC and he would keep talking forever.... dont get me started with the dialogues with Gaia, holy shi* give me a break. It feels like the devs really, really wanted to create this big lore and get the player to understand everything. Have you played Elden Ring? I've played around 40 hours and for some reason I cant stop playing it. I had so many magical moments in this game unlike in any open world game in years....
And it's a shame too, because I enjoyed the first one a lot more than I initially thought I would. I even did a NG+ playthrough on Ultra Hard, and I never do that, all because I still wanted to be in that world fighting machines. Every sequel to a beloved Sony IP ruins the franchise.
Especially since it seems like they followed an ESG/DIE guide to the letter when creating the characters. Pretty sure Erand is the only white male in the game who isn't a villain and he's made into a buffoon.
The part where you mention that she gets stuck on things where she shouldn't was one of my biggest gripes in zero dawn. It sometimes made battling machines difficult
What I hate most about Forbidden West is actually the story. It was a big deal in the first game that humanity couldn't wait the fallout on a space station, but the Far Zenith did just that and more, they became immortal without ANY downside. When I first saw them, I thought their bodies might be artificial and their real body wasting away in a tube somewhere, or anything that don't totally undermine what happened to humanity in Zero Dawn.
@@barkley611 yes, but in the first one I wanted to read all datapoints. I was thoroughly invested in the lore, loved every second. Preordeded FW the first day it was up. The sequel was such a slog I didn't care about the main plot, let alone reading datapoints.
They teased the far zenith in zero dawn we assumed they died in space but they ended up succeeding and now in the next game we have to fight a god that destroyed a highly advanced civilization
Thank you for a more critical review. When game is pretty looking and polished and has a lot of stuff, people feel obligated to consider it at least 8/10, qualifying any criticism by "It's not by any means bad." By the same logic, Game of Thrones' final season is a masterpiece because actors are talented and CG dragons look good.
@Post Rock lmao it was literally nit picks, he wasn’t even making essential and sound arguments bro complained at a point about not being able to crawl through a hole in a mission or being able to go around an enemy camp to beat a mission and having to play within the realms of the game. And don’t get me wrong I definitely think the game has problems and it isn’t a 10/10 but his arguments were ludicrous
I never played zero dawn and I’m really enjoying forbidden west. How miserable do you have to be to not enjoy a game like this? Sure if I’d played the first one I probably wouldn’t be as happy with the second but it’s good to me
@@joshchapman4753 >I never played zero dawn There's your answer. These cookie-cutter open worlds are really fun when you're new to them, but once you played a few of them, it all gets old real quick. Also, a game can be enjoyable and still have problems.
Temporary taking abilities away seems to be a recurring problem (in gaming) nowadays. "The Medium" introduces the ability to run, and a half hour (or less later) the game silently takes that ability away for a short while. It never tells you or explains it; it just takes it away and gives it back a short while later. Leaving the player to fumble around with the controls, wondering if they forgot what button allowed the character to run.
100% agree on everything. Loved HZD, lukewarm on HFW. Outside of jaw dropping graphics and impressive mo-cap, it just feels like a worse game all around. Guerrilla took a “more is more” approach and ended up with something less fun.
Possibly the most relatable review of this game that I’ve viewed. The poor level design and logic behind unnecessary tasks is the reason why I’ve left this game behind.
@@TheConquistor how tf? This game was fkn good and well put together. I’d rather play this than another call of duty don’t you agree? What would you rather play than this?
My biggest complaint with the game is that there's way too much stuff now. I don't like the food mechanic, way too many weapons, too many completionist stuff and way too much water. I also don't care about the story it doesn't grasp me. Also when I'm grinding for parts the machines just vanish sometimes? It's so frustrating
that's so stupid. you're complaining about way too much in the game. I can't make this stuff up lol. just don't do everything then smh. I promise you guys just want to complain.
@@rubbertrain it just seems weird to complain about too much stuff as oppose to there being not enough lol. all you have to do so not do everything geez.
@@introduction1266 you're purposefully missing - or just ignoring - the point he made. the game is contrived and feels phoned in, like everything's just checking a box on a list of 'things other games do' and chasing trends. it's cluttered, too full of things to do in a vain attempt to appeal to everyone. it's annoying, especially when the game treats you like a child that needs to have their hands held and told what to do in nearly everything. complaining about too many things to do is a good thing to complain about, it shows that the game is far too cluttered for anyone to even feel bothered to attempt; like he said, it feels like this was simply filled with things to do for completionists to 10/10 the game. too much stuff means things can feel lazy, uninspired, like the game's devs saw what other open world games did and decided to just add more of it. complaining about not enough things to do in a game is a valid complaint as well, in a different way - if a game is large and has nothing to do it shows the devs just didn't care, or were perhaps forced to make the game as large as it is, and couldn't be bothered or had enough time to fill the world in a way that didn't feel lazy. or perhaps they were lazy. as to your last statement - which was hard to understand but i think i parsed it - if a game has to force certain players to throw their hands up and feel fatigued with the amount of content then, by design, that game is a bad game. it is not player friendly if it just has content that ticks boxes, and it is, by design, a chore when there is so much to do you can't even see the end.
@@rwbybomb2160 half of his complaints were to much water and too many weapons🤔. You don’t have to explore all the water and you also don’t have to use all the weapons. I know I didn’t do either and still enjoyed the game. I guess he thinks it’s also too many collectibles and side missions which in my opinion are dumb ass complaints because like the other guy said literally just don’t do them. The foods you can buy in camps are also something extra you literally don’t have to buy. The weapons part I slightly agree on because I always kept finding myself regretting my latest purchase because I was finding better versions of my weapons every 10 minutes it felt like. I didn’t want to really start upgrading my weapons until I knew I had something really good which I didn’t like
I'm glad aim not the only person that thought Alloy has the poise of a house of cards. It would've been nice if the heavier armors would've kept her more grounded. Perhaps provide a bit of stagger resistance.
@Bloofa I hope they find this video and take everything (from the comments to the video) into consideration. I feel like they were close on making a good game but didn't make it. If they make the ruins in areas where Aloy can use her regular climbing abilities without having to puzzle her way up, and everything else in the video I think they'll be good. I truly do hope Guerilla finds this video though. It would improve their game 100%.
Her stagger is ridiculous. I'm a half-crippled guy over twice her age with arthritis and in a life or death situation (like, say, a robot velociraptor breathing fire at me) I could recover faster than she does. It feels like they intended to have upgrades that bring her recovery to reasonable levels, but then they cut them before launch.
I think the Crux of the problem is that the budget was too big. When you have to make sure a 10 year old won't get frustrated, there's little room for puzzles or combat that'll be engaging for the 30+ crowd. I don't see AAA gaming to be for us anymore outside of specific genre focused games like Doom.
@@Dominicankareem haven't played Spiderman but tsushima was fucking hard tho, and if I remember correctly if you don't take into consideration the "tutorials" that pop up sometimes you were meant to discover everything by yourself, if you didn't explore enough you wouldn't have found health augments or things like that, I think that the game is pretty complex, challenging and it requires good amounts of attention, it has been a while since I played it so I may be wrong or i just fucking suck at games
@@JotaPS88 don’t get me twisted tho Im not some sort of god either I checked my save file & apparently I have 200 hours in it. Personally tho after playing a demanding ninja/samurai game like Sekiro going to ghost of sushi felt like it was made to be very accessible for everybody which is completely fine. I just wish there was a “sekiro mode” that dropped the training wheels.
@@Dominicankareem yeah I completely agree with that sekiro is far more demanding that ghost of tsushima, have you tried the hardest difficulty in ghost of tsushima tho? You kill with 3-4 hits but they also kill you with ease, I think it makes the game more challenging as you have to rely on counters to survive, but it also makes the stance system worthless as you will pick the fastest one because the damage is always the same, still if you haven't tried it I encourage you to do it, in my opinion it makes the combat much better
I'm so glad not everyone is lapping this game up like ambrosia from Olympus. This game symbolizes everything that killed open world games a few years ago and I just can't believe everyone acts like its God's gift.
OMG! That crane quest was maddening! I finished the first HZD but I couldn't get thru a third of HHW. I set the combat on Hard, but it just made the monsters cheat more. So many weapons could have been cut to make a more streamlined process. Why does anyone need 30 different weapons?
I wish they had made the Far Zeniths more of an obstacle/secondary villain. None of them are super fleshed out and they just read as pretty boring. The stuff with Tilda was pretty well done, although I wish we had had more time with her and Sylens to flesh out those characters for this game. Overall, I still enjoyed the game, but I didn't play A LOT of it -- especially the collectathon stuff that was entirely pointless unless the much more "lookout places" from the first game. I think FW suffers greatly from middle trilogy syndrome. I do hope GG figures out some new systems and frankly, I just want them to tighten up their map and filter even more what you can do. They do the Ubisoft formula in a way that doesn't make me jump off the game immediately, but it still could be edited even more to make these games very tight and action packed without losing that immersion and open feel.
Agreed. They felt pretty tacked on. It's like they got to the end and found out the Regalla alone couldn't carry the plot so they'd stick some rich people in there to flesh it out.
It says something when the big bad faction has all except 3 of its members die in the same cutscene we are introduced to them. And of the remaining 3, one is a generic evil bad bald man in charge who does absolutely nothing and dies from nothing you did to him, one is just a brute who has no motivation other than he likes being a sociopath and killing people, and one who, while she does have motivation, is just creepy and became relevant far too late into the story to develop.
@@ShallBePurified I imagined a story where the Zeniths hired Regalla to take over the west coast and move east. They paid her by supporting the rebellion. Then Aloy would have a real reason to fight the rebellion and the Zeniths. There'd be no magic shield. A Shield yes but one Aloy eventually got strong enough to circumvent without needing a Sylins "deus ex". As we move farther west we start fighting more and more Zeniths before we drove them back to their island stronghold and had a large finale . Not much of the stuff in the middle would need to change.
I was shocked how little Sylens in particular was in this game. The ending of the first game sets up him as the main villian of this one yet he does basically nothing the entire story apart from at the beginning and the very end. Even the Zeniths have so little screen time. They're these all powerful god like entities in terms of their abilities and tech yet they do nothing with it.
I find the climbing on Forbidden West actually far more frustrating that the original. As you say computer says no, for arbitrary reasons. Very frustrating. She gets ‘stuck’ on 4 foot high rocks thinking you’re trying to climb when you’re not. In the middle of a battle.
You're 100% correct and I will tell you why. You're correct because in the first game they made it clear that you could climb a extremely limited amount of surfaces so we didn't try to climb when we knew we couldn't. In forbidden west they said "you can now climb anywhere" but that's not true at all so the climbing is so frustrating because we take jumps and do platforming but it never works because they said we could climb anywhere at the same time making climbing again very limited
@Chris Davis, your reviews are so detailed and thorough that you have filled a skillUp sized hole in my heart. Please never stop publishing 1 hour long in depth reviews of Games. Some of us love this format rather than a 10 min IGN score
I am really glad you documented the sliding behavior in attacks(haven't watched far enough to see if you've documented dodges as well). Frequently the robots will slide out of the way when you target small weak points (canisters, etc.) as well, which is particularly frustrating. Taken in combo with frequently small/cramped "arenas" with obstacles that laughably get in the way without affording any sort of protection, what should be epic tactical battles feel cheap and frustrating.
I did not feel this way in Zero Dawn, where I absolutely never grabbed a wall instead of dodging an attack.Battles only began to feel cheap in Frozen Wilds where a scorcher could literally jump from a distance too far for the player to do damage to a swiping attack in less than half a second. I feel like Guerilla too far too many cues from Frozen Wilds and put them on steroids.
@@WoobiewookieBlogspot Glad I'm not the only one who didn't like Frozen Wilds. After completing ZD I started the DLC immediately, played a couple hours, put it down and never looked back. I wanted more story and world building, what I got was a massive and frustrating difficulty spike to appease players who felt ZD was just too easy, and the fix was to dial the cheapness of the AI way up.
I don’t feel this way at all. I think the most fun part of Forbidden West is the combat. I’ve played the game multiple times on Ultra Hard and I just find excitement from learning attack patterns, finding out what the best gear to use is, best way to farm, etc. I don’t find the sliding enemies annoying because most of the time you can wait till their animations is done where they will pause so you can shoot them. It’s all about learning the way the machine moves in my opinion. But of course not everyone find those things fun.
For me the most annoying things in the game(1.17 version) are: - the broken climbing(jerky movement, sudden stop of climbing for no reason, inconsistent animations on the same jumps, after a jump Aloy just hangs for a seconds or two, etc) - to long stun after been hit, sometimes the stun keep me vulnerable until the next hit that kills me. - damage to high, sometimes all the health(6 life pieces) in one hit from a big robot or boss. - extremely long grinding for upgrading the weapons and costumes(most of the time the upgrade job send me to kill some robots for parts and many time those robots dont drop the needed piece. Then repeat the whole job). - Aloy stumbles/stop on details ground, like rock, branches, etc. - the healing where I have to press up on D-pad for a few seconds which keep Aloy on place, vulnerable to been hit, while already on low health, in front of an enemy or boss.
They have near perfect gameplay mechanics. Killing the animals is so fun. - They have near perfect artists. - They have near perfect graphics. - They have great music. x Story x Motivation to keep playing x A world full of life x Missions that don't feel like filler They have the icing. But can't build the cake.
A good analogy is that they have all the right ingredients to make to make the almost perfect cake but they mess up during the mixing, the baking, and the decorations.
Good way to phrase it. All sugar and no substance. The game is eye candy, but I got nothing out of the gameplay or story once I finished it. I was disappointed.
@@SaithMasu12 It's eye candy that doesn't affect me. I was never wowed by Horizon's visuals. It's graphically impressive, but that's it. Ghost of Tsushima was a prettier game in my opinion, because of the art direction.
Even tho there are valid points, the most prominent criticisms in this video are just a case of "I want this game to be a copy of others to call it a copy but since I can't then I'll criticize it for not being one".
I think the thing I hate the most is her constant talking when no one else is around LOL. I hate the climbing in this game so much that I've cursed more doing that versus dying in combat.
@@ddm_gamermentioned this was the last vid bc the channel didn’t grow as fast as he liked. UA-cam prob wasn’t paying enough compared to being a lawyer full time
It is his own fault the channel stopped growing. He was growing quickly and then suddenly he started putting political statements into his review, dumb Reddit level progressive takes. Commenters asked him to just leave his political stuff out and instead he doubled down and did it more. His channel then stopped growing and view numbers dropped off a cliff. He could have become a full time UA-camr if he just didn’t talk politics. But based on his Twitter it seems leftist politics is his entire personality which is just really sad.
The tracking and hitbox issue was so annoying, I cannot overstate how frustrated I got while playing. The game wants you to be strategic while fighting machines yet unfairly restricts your ability to do so. I especially hated the fact each enemy is equally as agile. TremorTusks and Tiderippers turn on a dime, their weight doesn't impact their momentum at all. It makes it nearly impossible to get behind them. The stagger and recovery times are also excruciating. Your point about Varl's death is spot on. I feel like writers have been convinced that having main characters die is necessary, something that just needs to be checked off. I felt horrible about his death because of how pointless it was, not because it hit on an emotional level. He was such a good character with a heart of gold, and did a good job at pushing back against Aloy's stubbornness. Aloy feels like she needs to take on everyone else's burdens and put herself in danger to protect others. I also think she has difficulty trusting other people due to being shunned from birth. Varl was such a good counter to those notions. He challenged her from a place of understanding and compassion. I would be fine with his death if it was more impactful. If they were hellbent on having one of the crew die it should have been Erend. I hate his type of character though so I'm really biased here. The bumbling oaf really annoys me.
You certainly nailed the issue with weapon upgrade crafting. I feel massively de-incentivized to upgrade weapon more than 1-2x when I expect a newer model around the corner. I’m unfathomably bored with creating jobs for specific items, b-lining to the animal/machine territory, easily getting what I need (except those damn widemaw tusks), just to do it again several dozen more times before feeling “okay, is this actually making any tangible difference in my gameplay?” The quest rigidity is beyond the pale. Too many times I’m railroaded into that necessary path, annoyed by Aloy’s sudden inability to climb something, to reach an inane trigger than somehow allows me to progress in the quest. The lack of consistency with climbable objects is pissing me off. Right near the beginning of the game, you climb a tower to drop the space shuttle. One of the jumps looks nearly impossible from your current height, but the edge is highlighted yellow. This seems to infer that any ledge that vertical distance is reachable. But no, nearly all future ledges must be closer in order to jump to them.
Hmm how abt flying and then dropping onto the objective instead of dealing with the climbing which u cannot seem to grasp?. As for weapons once you get kinda deep into the story you’ll get to see the legendary weapons and armor which are the best in the game. So why spend time fully upgrading mediocre gear when u can get the legendary and upgrade those? Sounds like you are making the game harder then it needs to be smh don’t blame the game for that
@@guccii_daddyy that's kinda the point when you get to the legendary equipment it has like 5 upgrades. By point if you keep skipping upgrades along the way, you start making it a habit to not upgrade. You can beat the game without upgrading the legendary weapons. Another thing about the flying mount is that you get it so late in the game and depending on the mood you have, you might as well just say fuck it I am done.
@@dart7585 you don’t get it that late into the game at all that’s no excuse. And making it a habit to not upgrade is your fault smh you shouldn’t blame the game for playing the game badly
@@guccii_daddyyStop posting stupid comments. You are telling players to ignore all quests including mainline ones until you unlock flying at the endgame of the main story? You have brain rot.
I haven’t played Forbidden West but I felt most of this issues with the first game. I tried to play it very recently as I missed out on it when it came out so I tried to play it before the new one. I just got bored. Open worlds are hard to execute and this series is not for me
I played the first one a few months ago, and I just never understood how it had so much hype. The part I enjoyed the most was when I finished the game and I finally got to delete it.
@@altaria2347 yep i had a ps4 pro from 2018-19 just for exclusives. Bought and played horizon, last of us, god of war, spiderman, ratchet and clank(fan of the ps2 games), and the earlier uncharted games for the first time. The only ones that i wouldn't say were overated were last of us and maybe god of war 2018. All of them were GOOD games but not the 9 out of 10 most of them got imo.
If you haven't made it at least 4 hours in the HZD then you haven't actually experienced the real game yet. Sucks that the game starts out so slow but the story and gameplay of the rest of the game that so many people love doesn't get going around until then
Your points are exactly my thoughts on H2. I loved H1 - 5 years ago, i don't know if i would like it now. The issue is that they added more vs making sure that everything is more thought out. I was so waiting for this game - after 3 weeks of trying to like it, i bought Elden Ring (that was not on my list as I'm not a massive souls fan) and was blowned away by how better it is an open world game. The exploration is excising, the map feels full of mystery. It's impressive if you consider that 95% of your exploration is made via a horse double jump and rolling into walls - and it still is more fun than H2. All your points is how i felt playing it - the biggest issue for me on top of bad climbing (that feels so jerky as you mentioned) and all the issues with too many hints and her never shutting up - the biggest issue for me are the pointless clan side quests full of cuscnees - everything has a cutscenes. The horse is just terrible and gets stucked on everything. I think a lot of these issues didn't stick out in H1 as it was a much simpler game and you interacted with its world less. I spoke to it on my IG (adam_spizak) as I have a decent following and do a lot of gaming stories (as an artist) and i said how i don't understand how this game got 9 or 10/10 considering it's so tedious to play. In many ways this is a Ubisfot game made by Sony. Most AAA open world games these days are just linear games with busy work in-between that could have easy be standard linear games. There are exceptions like RDR2, BOTW, Skyrim or ER or even FC3. Most thou could easily not be open world.
This series is emblematic of everything wrong with modern single player games. Handholdy, uninspired characters, tedious grinding, bloated, open world shit.
Remember the days when Sony were more careful with the budget and used it on directors who has incredible visions like Ico, Shadow of the colossus, demon's souls, gravity rush? Now they're giving ridiculous budgets for directors with no vision. 200 million budget for another Assassin's creed clone with grinding 🤦♂️
A lot of stuff that is there just to be stuff, not because it matters. It’s sadly very common in games. It can easily be summed up having 100 weapons but there being very little between those weapons. Choices that don’t matter. Mechanics that don’t matter. Devs pile this stuff on to give the illusion of depth - of good gameplay - and also just to pad out the games length. Just give the player lots of stuff to do and look at. It doesn’t matter that it’s all window dressing to disguise the emptiness at the heart of the game. To me something like Celeste is 1000 times better than HFW because every single mechanic matters. There aren’t 35 different types of jump you can do.
I ran into a similar situation with that same bandit camp you described, only I found the intended exit to the camp first because i just happened to be scaling the cliff towards the bandit camp. I went in, killed all the enemies easily and...nothing happened. I had to leave the camp, walk around, take out the guys outside, and THEN the game let me "properly" enter the camp and proceed straight to the boss fight. Overall, I found this game incredibly average at best, despite adoring Zero Dawn. The story was outright bad, and the pacing is awful, I seear, the game "starts" at least 3 times, possibly 4. It certainly didn't help that Aloy is outright dislikable now, completely shredding her character development between games along with her gear.
There was one camp I went to that literally just didn't spawn the bosses so I couldn't finish the camp. I was absolutely disappointed in the lack of polish and even more disappointed at the lack luster story that never seemed to pick up. I was so excited for this game and it made me feel like I wasted my money the ending felt like a halfway point (probably because of some planned DLC smh)
I feel that way about most of the gameplay but god damn if the plot didnt throw curveball after curveball at me. I didnt expect it to go even remotely the direction it did before launch. The zeniths escaping a robot apocalypse only to get to space and build MORE FUCKING ROBOTS might just be the stupidest, yet most believably human thing ive ever heard. The nemesis reveal made me want to go and smack every single one of them.
great critique, i strongly disagree with the people calling you nit-picky in the comments. almost everything you took issue with i disliked as well, and i found all of it justified. and god finally someone calling out the stupid ruin puzzles, i truly hated those lol
Hey Chris, long time subscriber here. Your stuff is awesome. I know you made comments here and there to the effect that "This UA-cam thing won't pan out" or "this channel is a failed business" but don't give up. Also, why the f can't we give you money? I understand that you don't like the model where only paying users have access to certain things, but come on. Do you have paypal? I want you to take my money, if it means you can keep doing this. You are great; like in the Noah Caldwell-Gervais territory. Come on. Let us give you money.
I just finished and you were quite generous, Chris. The game is a slog, with button mashing melee, buggy traversal and a dozen weapons/systems that could've been cut entirely. It desperately needs a block /parry button as well.
Very well said, you put to words many of my own feelings regarding the game. Though one thing you didn't mention that really bothered me was everyone just hanging out at the base like it was the Normandy from Mass Effect. It felt increasing awkward to have all these people just staying in the base for months at a time, as if they don't have any lives outside of Alloy. It feels like they were supposed to accompany her much more often than they do now. It feels like part of a feature that was cut.
100% agree. I finish the game today and i feel that i waste 30 hours of my life... I change the difficulity to easy towards to the end, only to see the story.
36:30 She forgets for reasons that make sense and don't make sense. In the beginning she says she lost a lot of her equipment on the way to that zenith building. It would make sense that she lost the data on overrides if her focus was broken and didn't make a backup. What doesn't make sense is how she got the override for her mount to ride from meridian to the forbidden west. As for requiring parts for some overrides, that's because of Hephestus. It beefed up security on cauldrons thanks to Aloy. Notice how more difficult it is to get into a cauldron? In ZD it was just a large door to override, with the one exception that you had to find an alternative path. In FW every cauldron has a unique way to enter. Like the one with the tallnecks. Just a metal floor and a crane, no large door to override. Instead you find an entrance inside a ravine. Or the one that's underwater, helps stop the "entity" and gives a birthing port for tiderippers that it manufactures.
My main complaint to the game was nothing really mattered in this game. Take the rebel camps, in the original completing them gave you a extra npc in the final battle. In this one they give you an option to buy resources??? Also there is toooo damn much. Finally ER just blew this out of the water and made it forgettable.
Forgettable? Currently Horizon is outselling Elden ring on Playstation, only reason why Elden ring is selling more is because its available on more platforms while Horizon is only available on one.
Horizon Forbidden West is the kind of game you're exciting to get, then you get it and play it, finish and by week 2 or 3 you completely forgot about it. Like the Men's in black came to your home and flash bomb you with the memory delete device. You forget what was the story about, who were the characters, what you really did playing this game, don't remember if it got senses of exploration,the equipment or anything at all. On a technical aspect the game is top notch quality up there with the best ever, but on the narrative,gameplay elements,loot,quest pathing, mission structure and progression is just mediocre. Not good, not bad, just middle of the road mediocre. Horizon FW is a Open World game that doesn't feel like a open world game because you are requiere to do things in the same exact other is planned. You cannot skip a single step because otherwise the game won't work. Why make it open world then? I don't understand it. This game doesn't got a stand up aspect to make it feel unique or special. Cool got mecha dinosaurs, but is that really enough to put it over the top? No really for a sequel because the shock factor or seeing it for 1st time is not there anymore. Still a wonderful game, but a 4 out of 5 good game. Very good, but not masterpiece good,memorable or game changer which is not bad since not every game need to aim for that.
I feel like Dunkey said it best in his video on Forbidden West - this type of game needs to die. It can be quality, it can be fun, but it’s probably the most boring formula for a video game I’ve ever seen.
I don't understand why they took the surprise ending from Zero Dawn and made a whole new storyline out of it just to have people from space come and completely put Sylens' questline on the backburner. Sylens was easily my favorite character from Zero Dawn and I was soooo damn excited to have him as the main antagonist, but nope. Follow his questline for the first quarter of the game and then just completely ditch it until the very end.
Every Sony game nowadays is a "cinematic experience" which are just plain boring. I used to love Sony 10 years ago but now with their movie games and paying to play online I just don't care anymore
6:44 You actually CAN get onto the scaffolding by hang-gliding onto it from a nearby boulder. You still can't progress the mission without killing all the rebels and making that guy lower the completely unnecessary ladder, though.
Absolutely fair criticism of the game. I had very similar thoughts when playing it and while watching this video, most things you pointed out were aha moments for me as I kept asking myself similar questions during gameplay.
I really like this game. My biggest gripe and something I simply can't get over is the over complication of effect types and bows. If I'm using a Hunter bow with fire, normal and hardened arrows I don't need another bow with corruption, ice and FIRE AGAIN. It felt like swapping a bow out always left me with overlap. While going though the game and solution was to use weaker less rare weapons just for the ammo type you needed.
That I agree and the bandit camp lol I mean rebel camps the humans are spongier then the first I wish the humans was harder like do more damage and more making it hard to sneak but be easy to kill
At the end it gets better tho, after completing the rebel camps (only the big ones) you get a very good hunter bow with 3 advanced elemental arrows, and there's another bow that has the missing 2 advanced elemental arrows (who cares about plasma). One thing I liked from the first was how lean it was, it also made it feel more balanced. I think it was a bit too lean, but in Forbidden West there's just too many weapons, most with bad ammo combinations, too. I hope they go for choosing our own ammo types for each weapon in the third, give us the option to make any combination we want
great video mate! I agree 100% on this. This game is gorgeous but it's not enough for a great sequel. And this super linear quest design in an open world game is just killin' me. From the top of my head - I've discovered a ruin-castle. It was full of these mini-puzzels in order to get to every crate with loot. The last and hopefully most valuable crate was on the top of the tower (focus showed it). There was a ladder inside the tower that Aloy just wouldn't reach no matter how hard I tried. I've spent like 20 minutes trying to reach that ladder, then I looked for other ways to get there... nothing. Turns out you shouldn't try to get there until that castle is a part of a side quest. Only then a grapling hook point MAGICALLY appears right below the ladder. OMFG. And there were far too many instances of such a world&quest design in my playthrough already. I remember when I played the Witcher 3 I had many side quests done before talking to the quest giver - and when I did talk to them, Geralt would say "Actually I've already been to that swamp and killed that monster, here's its head". DONE. And I was satisfied with that. For some reason Guerilla devs are afraid of doing it that way (?). Like, just let me into that tower for gods sake. Modify your quest in such a way that it's still playable but we can skip that tower climbing and Aloy just says - "I've been here before mate, here are your supplies from the top of the tower, now let's move on!"
@@zero59267 Sounds more like "modern day gamers want everything pre-chewed so they can get their easy dopamine hits instead of actually figuring stuff out". A lot of people are negatively commenting on Aloy being too helpful, but something this ^^ commenter found the only point in the game where it wasn't oversimplified and starts a rant about it :p
@@Direct_Dutchy Or its a case of bad world design lol idk if he had the grappling hook before but if he did and the point just didnt appear until that side quest that is just straight up bad design lol.
The whole design of gampelay is one of fear. What if the player does something unexpected? What if the player gets lost? What if... And their answer is putting padded walls on everything and constantly pulling (not even holding) your hand.
That's also why the map is littered with question marks - they're scared you'll miss out on content. Game devs who take risks don't care about that. They know it's up to you. Many areas of Dark Souls are missable, including most of the story which is cryptic and left to you to figure out. Not spoonfed to you like a baby.
God I lost count how many times I died because the machines somehow reached me even when I dodged and I had enough distance between me and the machine. Like it was insane.
@@LevisH21 I can't say I didn't feel the same way when I first heard the idea but the first game was pretty good and the robotic animals were explained. But the second game bored me. I have a lot of non main tasks and I am now just before the final main mission and then I will probably put the game down. But the first one had a pretty good story.
In Elden Ring you have to find memory stones to add a slot to give you more options to use different magic spells. In order to get one you have to take down a magic barrier in this tower. Or...you could just take your steed and jump on one of these jump pads and land on the balcony. This is just one example of how the game gives you an open ended way of solving problems. Because HZD:FW quest/world design is so scripted they have to take away your ability to do things. This isn't to say their way of doing quest design is necessarily wrong. It's just getting really old. Developers have to move away from scripted/linear quest design. Give the power back to the player.
@@giorgosnikolaou7219 I loved Elden Ring but it's getting really old hearing about it non stop, like the Sequel to Zero Dawn was Super fun to me I'm not getting all the hate on this game tbh
@@giorgosnikolaou7219 They're two open world games released very near to one another with very different design philosophies. Comparison is useful here
One thing that I hated in the game is this haze on the map everywhere you haven't been. It felt so frustrating to have tiny bits of it in places and I spent hours trying to get it off of every inch of the map. It's also over every sea so you have to swim back and forth for hours to have a clean map.
Thanks for the detailed critique, you confirmed my suspicions and it'll save me time and money. I really found the 1st game a grind (albeit an often pretty one), always expecting that it would 'click' with me at some point. It didn't. I never want to Google stuff when I'm playing a game. There's enjoyment to be had in the player working things out and experimenting but the obtuse puzzle design and many convoluted mechanics in the 1st had me on my phone way too much, sapped all the fun out of it.
My biggest complaint was the over abundance of weapons and elemental damages. You can only equip a handful of weapons, so you can't realistically expect to use the best weapon for each enemy, not to mention upgrading each weapon. In Zero Dawn, there weren't so many weapons and elements. Plus, each weapon has better variety of elements. So fully utilizing your weapons is far more reasonable.
Wow. When you showed the the ridiculous hitboxes and damageboxes i was so done with this game. Insane that a so called AAA-Game from 2021 has so many incredibly frustrating flaws.
This explains a lot. I felt like I get hit in situations where it didn't seem like I should've gotten hit. It also doesn't help that this game has the "cinematic camera" angle with Aloy being on the left side of the screen, making it hard to tell where Aloy is in relation to her surroundings. Seriously, give me the option to have my character in the center of the camera at all times.
Thought I was the only one who felt like this. I got it day one and haven’t even reached halfway through due to boredom. Feels like they played it way too safe. Anddd it doesn’t help Aloy is less likable in this sequel. While interacting with other characters, she always seems like she’s bored of them or annoyed. This and dying light 2, was truly underwhelming. Thank GOD for SiFu 🙏
If it wasn't for the beyond excellent Decima Engine making the games look breathtaking, I doubt anyone would rank the Horizon games much higher than a typical Ubisoft open world game.
I used to get weirdly defencive when HZD was bashed for being a ubisoft clone, I still love that game. .. but HFW which I also like (but not as much) highlighted the games weaknesses... biggest being story TELLING.... not story
It's very refreshing to hear someone else voice these criticisms. It's been hard to find others who share these thoughts. At the end of the day, there's not a whole lot that this game offers, that would make me want to replay it later. The graphics are nice though.
@@mrbobo86 Bloodborne is a masterpiece imo. It has some problems but the game completely overshadows the flaws. One of the greatest games ever made definitely.
As a die hard fan of the first game, i must say Im both pleased and displeased with the game. Hfw improved nearly in every aspect for me, weapons, machines and more. But where the games goes downhill for me was that the main story felt rushed and had too many villians going on in the background. The first game did a good job at balancing two villian, since the villians had motive specificaly towards Aloy. All in all i have to rate it a 8.5/10. some may disagree, but for me the game is a masterpiece that could have used a few more months for polishing.
I enjoyed it much more than the first, which I adored, and I don't pay attention to the story when I game, I have movies and books for fiction, so I always skip the cut scenes so I can get back to why I play videogames - to play a game. Not watch hours of time-wasting CG cut scenes.
@@Axolotl_Mischief i feel like the main problem with the game is that its dialoge heavy when it comes to cutscenes, it feels like you’re stuck in a conversation with a wall for 10 minutes.
@@Axolotl_Mischief i mean this game is a waste of time when it comes to cutscenes but some games do have incredible story better than books and for sure better than movies
This game is what I hate about modern games. They don’t let you think. They’d rather you be guided through the entire game meanwhile your brain is turned off completely. Elden Ring is the antithesis to this travesty’s philosophy, so I am quite thankful for that
@@MAJINNOBU Does that make it a thought provoking game? Hell no lol you had to focus in one part of a game that holds your hand the other 99% of the time
@@tylerthomason9461 it’s a narrative driven game. That point is idiocy. It’s like saying RDR2 or Witcher 3 is worse than a game like Elden ring because it tells you the general area to go and or has waypoints for most of the game. The game is just built differently there’s nothing wrong with a game having a goal and set structure. If you don’t like it then don’t play it, it isn’t a flaw whatsoever.
Oh and another thing, just because a game has waypoints doesn't mean you can get past the game completely with your brain turned off and it completely holds your hand throughout the whole experience. That's also an idiotic statement. In virtually almost every mission throughout the game you're going to need to figure your way through an area, figure out enemy weaknesses or remove enemy weapons that prove dangerous to you etc. Saying a game is holding your hand 99 percent through and you don't have to use your brain whatsoever just because a game has navigation markers is the most ludicrous thing I've ever heard
Thanks for the video Chris. Put the game into perspective and helped me to pinpoint certain aspects that were not too obvious for me at first and felt quite off. Sometimes I found myself thinking I was playing the game ''wrong'' as I didn't use most of the weapons and traps and I stuck to bows and the odd boltblaster or blast sling here and there. The fact that I didn't miss them says a lot, and I played the game in hard. Also, the upgrading system was a joke and the amount of times I decided NOT to upgrade just because I knew a better weapon will eventually appear its ridiculous. I have to say though that I really enjoyed the story but the final twist caught me completely off guard, didn't see it coming! Anyway, I hope you are ok and you continue putting out great content like this. Always good to see one of your videos in my suscriptions. Cheers!
It’s so strangely sad watching a random video and then realizing it is an abandoned channel I wouldn’t have realized unless you said it, also my first vid of his. I guess it’s fitting to both start and end on a horizon video, I wonder if that was intentional.
It makes me smile because I've been watching this UA-cam channel for a long time and the very first Horizon was an excellent game that made a big impression on me but it was also the very first video on this UA-cam channel, so I have a bit of nostalgia when I think about it.
I recent started to play Ghost Of Tsushima again, taking break from Elden Ring, and I find it's open-world much MORE engaging than Forbidden West's, quests are great, combat really fun and exploration is entertaining. I'd like to hear your thoughts of it someday.
This is exactly how I feel. Lots of systems I felt no motivation to engage with. I missed the first tutorial board game and never went back. I'm always missing one thing for the crafting, but the upgrades aren't worth the hassle. Finally I never look at the map or world when exploring cause the compass has the direction for everything. (Edit:) I also get stuck on the world geometry all the time. It's too crowded.
Absolute on point. Thank you so much for addressing the tedious staggered and stunned conditions with abso-fucking-lutely every enemy attack. You'd think a melee tree gave options for defending against those effects to change the way you play but in the end my tactics from Zero Dawn were the best for FW as well. Lock in your sharpshooter bow with triple arrows then kill from very far away to avoid bad hitboxes and constant ragdoll Aloy. I love the visuals but I have to say, this sequel is not fun. The rules of interacting with the enviornment are changed constantly to justify platforming and tension so that you cannot adapt as you actually should considering the too many options of taking downs machines. One thing, though: the spike thrower you disregarded in a sidenote is probably the easy button of killing machines. You once get that drill spike. This weapon staggers machines every time and is more effective than rope casters or any other control weapon while dealing damage and tearing armor. I ended up completing the game with drill spikes and sharpshooter bow.
Although I love this game, I am SOO happy to see this video. The irritatingly dull puzzles, lack of free movement, agonizingly linear quests, and ubiquitous bugs definitely take away from the experience. Also, Aloy's commentary is omnipresent to the extent it makes me miss more silent protagonists like master chief. Thank you for making this video. Your pin point descriptions of the mechanical problems in particular were satisfyingly precise. Very well done!
Congrats on predicting the twist. I listened to every audio-log in H:ZD but Odyssey crew never really stood out to me as anything more than a footnote, seriously, well predicted.
After seeing multiple reviews for this game, praising it to high heaven, it's refreshing to see one that critique's it like this. Because even though I enjoyed the game quite a bit, I'm also really dissapointed with it. I played the game for 70 hours and platinumed it. On my PS4 pro, if you can imagine that. The game looks great, even on my PS4. I was really impressed with how good it looks. I loved fighting the machines, and how real most of the npc's felt. They really put a lot of effort in that. But the story was indeed much less interesting than Zero Dawn. I especially disliked the final mission, because it has this awesome cut-scene with loads of machines under our control, storming the enemy base. While that cool stuff is going on, I had to do some boring walking around and fight that Erik guy. The final boss was uninspired as well. Also, I thought I for sure would get to fight on of those Horus things. You know, the big old world machines. Zero Dawn's teaser at the end implies that you will fight one in the sequel. But no. Basically all critique you have, I agree with. I did like the races, though :) Hope you'll do an Elden Ring review at some point. Would be interesting to see what you think of that one.
Oh wtf I am actually enjoying my experience right now, but I really thought the Big Spider machine would definitely be the final boss, since we have suspected that since the end of the First Game! If they don’t do something with it in the 3rd Game I‘ll be very disappointed …
Yea the zenith guys weret really fleshed out correctly like not look intimidating and also typical rich narcicist rich guys eriks fight was really easy for him being this superhuman sadist with military backround i enjoyed fighting the specters more theres cliche to varl died and his girls pregnant wow didnt see that coming... your team also just sits in the base doing nothing 90%of the game overall i like this game and alot of the new things added like melee combat is funner but that has its own problems i like being able to ride more machings and flying it has some decent story some cool cutscenes but at the same time theres many problems that just dosent make it spark as much as i thought it would i prefer the first one.
I hate how so many western AAA games are extremely formulaic these days, same with their bad writing. Reeks of corporate interest on maximizing profit.
HFW feels like the kind of game I should be head-over-heels in love with. It's fun, it looks great, and its story is so over-the-top sci-fi that I can't help but love it. There are just little things that hold it back for me, many of which are covered in this critique. I'd still rank it as an overall excellent game, just not much of an improvement over the original in terms of gameplay, and maybe even a step back in some ways.
Chris, we all miss you so much! Baldur's Gate 3 and Starfield are out, but I would be happy for any video, including just your casual travel vlog! :)
Miss my king
😬
My biggest complaint of this game is that it suffers from the "here's a reward! But it's not really" syndrome. Every time you get a new item it always starts weak Then what you have and before you upgrade it there is another weapon you got to go and grind since it's statistically better. It sucked my enthusiasm to keep playing.
Yeah its kinda like in Assassins Creed Odyssey where loot always feels pointless because you can upgrade your current gear on the same level
@@phil_5430 And borderlands 3 ,many games with rpg elements suffer from this problem ,the rewards and progressions are not well thought out which could results in tedious and repetitive gameplay with zero purposes ,its just sad bc the core mechanics of those games are fine and can be ultilized for fun plays
@@phil_5430 I never had that issue with Odyssey I loved the game my only issue is I got to lv 99 and maxed gold and loot and the game got boring but the grinding for the gear and always annoying it did kill the game for me till I I did the XP glitch made the game fun but then I completed everything and got over it
Sounds similiar to the problem I've heard with ratchet and clank.
My irritation was more the handholding on telling you what to do. They should have made the help an option and not mandatory. The very second you enter a room she thinks " I should use my glider" or the like, I mean, treat us like adults and let us figure it out and CHOOSE the help if we want it.
One of the most disappointing things for me was how most characters were dealt with in the story. Near the beginning i thought that Fashav guy is gonna have some part in the story, I remember having a loooong conversation with him about his story, and I thought it was interesting, and then he got killed after 5 minutes. Same thing with Regalla, she made an impressive entrance, then her storyline didn’t serve anything in the grand scheme. Even Aloy’s team, like kotallo, who was a really cool and badass character didn’t get any interesting parts in the story. I hated how when i was doing so many crazy things in the world, fighting monsters and saving everyone, and everytime I went back to the base they were all staring into the focus images like they were frozen in time.
A.C odyssey will remain the best game in the world...no one can beat A.C odyssey
Fashav could litterally have been kept instead of Kotallo really. Like Fashav losing his arm and neither feeling useful in the Tenakth or at home in Carja. Giving him reason to follow Aloy, the young fascinating Nora woman who saved his and the other tenakth and Carjas lives.
I too felt that Fashav was incredibly likeable and was kind of disapointed when they killed him so early.
Agreed Fashav should have been kept alive. There was really no reason to kill him off. Regalla? The only importance I think people cares for her is what you can get on the "kill or spare" choice. I think she could have made a great end boss if they dedicated her character to be such.
@@zicuvalentin2251 Garbage take. Garbage game
@@coreymartin5981 What do you mean no reason to kill him? There is no reason for anything to happen in a story. Why is Aloy a woman? Why is Regalla a woman? Why are there machines instead of cyborgs? These are all stupid questions. The right question to ask is whether the story is consistent and sensible. And yes, Fashav dying, however tragic it might be, still is consistent with the story. Like you are basically playing the life-story of someone and in real-life, things that shouldn't happen do happen.
One of the biggest issues is Aloy never shuts up, She literally announces everything before you see things and repeats the same maybe two lines every other time you use the glider and picking up medicine etc the entire game.
Yeah, She practically tells you what needs to be done to overcome a obstacle instead of letting the player figure it out for themselves which cheapens the experience.
This, lol
And if you are doing a puzzle, she straight up tells you what to do .5 seconds into the puzzle. It's like the developers think you are 2 with a mental disability and have to explain everything to you.
@@robbiea5040 B-but game journalists say that that's good unlike Elden Ring!
Don't you like strong and independent fat female character ?
It's symbol of empowerment dude.
Majority gamer are dominated by male so it's a strong and independent female to dominate all guy since she is smarter than you.
I agree 10000% with what you said. It's baffling the decissions Guerrilla took with this game really. To add to the stupid choices, one thing that puzzles me how they could get it wrong, the drones thing. They let you change the ceiling in Gaia's chamber to various locations throughout the map... except you have to go and activate it each time you go to speak with her, once you leave the room it reverts to the default ceiling.... WHY???
Yeah wtf was that, and you have to wait for it to load each time so why would you ever bother?
Even worse, it reverts back to blank when you actual start talking to her, I thought it was there to give u something nice to look at while u waste all this time talking to her but apparently not
My biggest issue right now is the coldrons. When you beat them you automatically unlock the overrides. This one you partiality unlock them. That's the stupidest thing I ever saw.
This was a very embarrassing video for you to tell people not to embarrass themselves in the comments.
You need to activate it every time because the enviroment you choose is loaded in and the mountain gets unloaded. The environment you choose can be big enough that it would stick through the mountain top. I thought it was a parallax illusion but no, it's a mini enviromsnt just for you to look at.
This review applies to a shocking number of open world games.
which other open world games cancel a character ability temporarily just to solve a puzzle?
@@isaaccruel3994 botw for example, in the shrines
@@isaaccruel3994 btow u can't climb in the santuaries hehe if that counts as a power.. But it makes sense because the material is different i think
@@01chris do u also mean climbing or the champions power's?
@@Retrogirlgamer both :)
I miss you video essays.
I could not put into words why this game never held my attention. I always got tired or found it difficult to keep track of what was going on. Pains me so much cause I really enjoyed Zero dawn and was super hyped for forbidden west.
Yea same here i liked zero dawn and this had alot of potential to beat the first and while it did improve on alot it just dosent snap as the first it seems like a clone now i dont think its a bad game not close but that dosent mean i cant critizise its faults
@@rafaelgomez1200 it feels Incomplete.
*because it is indeed is, yeah.*
Pretty nice platinum on ps though 👌
I loved The first one because of how realistic it felt
But the sequel added so much nonsense and stupid stuff it became a mess
Also Aloy personality make me hate her, Im still trying to finish the game because I platinum the first one.
I felt the exact same way!
I have been wondering why this game felt so off when I keep getting bored time and time again playing it. I loved Horizon Zero Dawn so much and I feel like I should like this one as well. This video put all of my thoughts together so well. I guess it also explains why I still keep going back to Elden Ring after passing NG+4 but I can't seem to finish Forbidden West.
no really. i’ve been forcing my way through some post game stuff just for completion sake because i loved exploring in the first gsme, but i’ve come to terms w the fact that it’s not a great sequel.
@@arielrose9874 yes I've been doing the same just pushing thru these uninteresting side quest and errands it's such a beautiful game but this video brings a lot of issues that the game has to light.
I was already bored out of my mind with the first one back in 2019 when it dropped on pc
@@megamanx1291 I found the first game very repetitious. To be fair, I have the same problem with Ubisoft games. I don't have the same problem with Elden Ring, even though that is repetitious too. So it's the type of repetition, not the repetition. In Elden Ring the one part I cannot engage with is the crafting system. It's so boring gathering resources. I think Ubisoft-style games just have more of that collect items gameplay and I find it boring.
@@garrick3727 Agreed. it's the only mechanic that I don't like too. thankfully they are optional.
I've been having the same feeling of open world fatigue as well. It feels like the only AAA games we get now are linear open world action games with stealth, crafting and light-rpg mechanics or multiplayer focused FPS games.
I especially feel this way with open world games, like Forbidden West, where I question why they bother making them open world if all it's used for is making you travel between quest givers whilst sprinkled with menial side content. 5 years between releases and the only aspects that feel new are the environment and the spiffy next-gen graphics.
I'm convinced that they only make them open world to pad the game time and so they don't have to bother too much with level design outside of key quest areas. Do you think most PS5 exclusives are going to follow this same open world formula?
It's a dichotomy, open world but then most of the quests and especially the horrible jumping puzzles, are all linear. Linear isn't bad if you know what you are doing with it. Mass Effect, before the MEA abomination that was open world, was an example of linear done really well and not feeling too linear. I prefer open world but they should do it right.
Probably yeah. I'm expecting uncharted 5 to be a full open world game with skills trees, levels ect. Which is quite a shame.
Seeing how god of war is basically that
Yea... They will...
@The Rotten💯 We said that after Breath of the Wild came out and made most other open world games look antiquated and yet we're still seeing these kinds of disposable games. They aren't going anywhere, sadly.
I agree. I really enjoyed the mystery of the 1st game, but this one has yet to fully draw me in. It’s not as bad as Cyberpunk (with its huge/lifeless world).
Glad to hear a review that doesn't just focus on the positives, not too many out there for this game, great job.
Yea but if ur just gonna bash the game u can't take that serious either
How there haven't been any comments on this yet is so weird to me but I found everything you said to be well presented and grounded in reasonable expectations of what a major sequel should have. Good job!
What he’s talking about is every basic opinion I’ve ever heard. Everyone wants the sequel to be this amazingly different improved installment with some high expectations and as soon as one of those aren’t met they instantly don’t like it and constantly complain abt it smh it’s dumb and no one is ever satisfied
@@guccii_daddyy Kinda like what youre doing now, gucci daddy
@@cchristianjeremy nah not really
To me hzd felt magical. I absolutely loved it. It was different and fun. Hfw just felt like a chore to complete. I didn't believe how much worse it was until I was done with the story. I agree there was no way they were gonna top the story in hzd but why did they have to add such boring mechanics and make the gameplay/crafting so tedious? Don't get me wrong, I maxed out every one of my favorite weapons but the amount of grinding it took just wasn't worth it.
Yeah the grinding was a bit much tbh!
@@aaronwilson7798 slaughterspine circulator jesus, and the amount of dreadwing parts you need is insane and I only found 2 locations 4 them badbois
You know what? I'm just pleased that I'm not the only one with these problems with the game. On places like Reddit you just hear glowing praise for the game and how it's 11/10 best game ever until the next one.
I don't enjoy being disappointed, and I generally can express my reasons for being disappointed. In this case, the video does a pretty decent job of explaining many issues.
Finding out the the writing team was different for FW really does explain the lackluster story, even if it was always going to be a tough ask to follow ZD. But it's not just the story, the gameplay was ruined by grind and additions that added complexity but didn't improve anything.
@@k9wazere See I didn’t know that hfw had a different writing team. That really does explain it. The story in hzd always kept you on the edge of your seat and fw felt flat.
@@hamoodyman9239 The saddest thing is that the new team basically undid all the good things in ZD. I've said elsewhere in the comments here, they removed all the jeopardy. Before, there was GAIA and if GAIA failed, there was no Plan B. If Aloy failed in her mission, life on Earth ended and would never recover. We accepted that all life had already been wiped out, once. And it could happen again, if GAIA wasn't fixed.
Now, in FW there's a race of super-human augmented immortals that can (and have) colonise other planets, so who really cares if GAIA gets rebooted or not. She's old tech, now. Earth is just one planet humans could live on.
It's no longer an existential quest for human survival. Now it's a silly class war between tribals and the super-humans. That's not a good continuation of the plot. It's a different story. "Augmented super humans vs normal humans and the ethics of genocide" is not what ZD was about.
More than that, it cheapens the events in the first game. It cheapens Sobek's achievement. It cheapens the desperate last ditch sacrifice to buy time for ZD. None of it mattered, because FZ went off and did their own thing, and they perfected human tech and became immortal. It's awful, really, and the worst possible way to go from ZD, imho.
Please come back, Chris, we need your review of Baldur's Gate 3.
I'm surprised that they made the loot more random now. I really liked the way that certain weapons just always had the same ammo in the same category. So if you wanted to do X thing, you needed that kind of weapon. Making it so hunter bows can just have everything is really bizarre. The game didn't need diabloification of it's loot.
But hunter bows don't have everything lol
You'd go through so much effort to get somewhere and your reward is more scrap. It felt like the reward system made it tedious to do things.
Yeah way too many games adopted the tiered weapon thing, the common through legendary style and most of them don't really need it such as assassins creed. I understand if it's a dedicated looter like borderlands or even some rpgs benefit from it but its becoming over used now just like how every one copied the generic Ubisoft open world formula like this game and it's been tired as f since last gen. Hopefully elden ring will inspire devs to stop with the generic cut n paste filler missions and start actually crafting encounters at least so it doesn't feel like you're doing the same 6 mission types over and over. Rockstar is about the only other open world dev who doesn't do that. Cyberpunk wasn't too bad in that aspect either although I'm tired of icon covered maps too, just let us explore on our own
Too many fucking stupid ammo types, ammo being tied to certain weapons, useless abilities and skills, food buffs, they tried to damn hard to include everything, half of these thing are fucking clutter. Trap skill tree is the most God damn useless tree i have ever seen.
Actually none of the weapons are random, it's just that there's a lot of them in each category of weapon with different available ammo types and upgrade levels based on "quality". they look like they're random loot in terms of the Green-Blue-Purple-Orange rarity category coloring, but they're all handcrafted and specifically placed on quests or vendors by the devs.
Shame you're not around anymore, but wherever you are and whatever you are doing I hope life is treating you well :)
Miss your critiques, Chris. I always thought you stood amongst the best on this platform - alongside Matthewmatosis, Joseph Anderson, and Noah Caldwell-Gervais.
I genuinely hope all is well with you, and that you’ve moved onto greener pastures if you’ve truly moved on from this platform. Cheers, and thanks for all the wonderful insights you’ve provided the community with, through the years.
Joe is a toxic clown, and Noah is a pretentious rambler
Most all the coils and weaves felt useless. 1% bonus when sliding down a hill backward on one knee. But so many of them affected hidden attributes. If you attached a coil with tear, you saw that attribute change, if you added 1% corrosion... nothing changed. was it 1%? or did it start above 1% because of some other bonus? or did it have no affect?
I once had Kotallo give me a voice over in a room in the base... before I even met or unlocked him. Cell borders in the ocean between cell grids.. so many bugs :( Legendary weapons worthless because ammunition costs were way out of balance (sludge!)
Swapping Valor Surges and weapons are a pain in the ass because you cannot do that from the weapon wheel. You cannot remove ammo types, food is has this god damn useless 3 minutes boost, the skill tree has shit mixed up all over the place.
@@WheeledHamster to optimize gameplay you need to choose the valor surges you want to spam and unlock them asap.
My biggest disappointment, however, is the melee tree. You have the shortbow option as tool for melee characters. But the bad hitboxes and staggered conditions prevent you for actively engage in mid to close combat situations to use the shortbow to its maximum effect.
If I ever feel bored I might figure out how to use aoe attacks by weapons asap so melee combat might actually be worthwhile.
I hated the vague percentage increments, too. I want to have clear improvements when changing gear. The improvement after upgrading your very first starter bow to max. lvl. is visble. Instead of having to shoot 3-4 times to kill a digger, now you can 1 shot them when targeting a weak spot. That is fine. You invested time and materials and got a visible result. But these annoyingly small percentages for defense or elemental dmg. are useless.
Yoooo! Man, Accurate!
"We decided that a 1% buff was too much so we nerfed it to .025%."
You’re playing it wrong. I was to deal crazy damages just by playing around with the coils and different weapon perks.
i also got burned out playing this game (i'm guessing i made it to halfway). i think there was just waaay too much going on with the weapon system. waaayy too many side quests, and constant traveling back and forth. which i'm tired of open world games bloating the time spent you play in the game with traveling back and forth. i'd rather have a tighter game with a shorter story thats just fun to play. Returnal has been the best game i have played on next gen so far. so many hours logged playing that game and i didn't even feel like i put that much time in it.
Funny how we're in the same position. Returnal was my goty of 2021 because I could play this game over and over. Its exactly what classic arcade games on Sega and Nintendo used to be: jump in and play until you die. Obviously its much more comfortable now with the added save system. I've played Horizon FW for around 50 hours but eventually got so exhausted by the the constant following of waypoints and searching for upgrade materials. I mean the combat is fun and great but got me frustrated when I never got the loot that I needed. Also there is just WAY to much dialogue everywhere. You could talk with the most irrelevant NPC and he would keep talking forever.... dont get me started with the dialogues with Gaia, holy shi* give me a break. It feels like the devs really, really wanted to create this big lore and get the player to understand everything.
Have you played Elden Ring? I've played around 40 hours and for some reason I cant stop playing it. I had so many magical moments in this game unlike in any open world game in years....
And the annoying climbing in those labs like puzzles
Just gast Travel lmao
@@slimboarder.o7 you need to discover camp fire for that atleast they made fast travel pack for 25 shards instead of that in zero dawn
That’s not even a real game.
It ultimately felt like a safe and corporate-calculated sequel.
Yep.
It felt like a Sony exclusive so... yeah
And it's a shame too, because I enjoyed the first one a lot more than I initially thought I would. I even did a NG+ playthrough on Ultra Hard, and I never do that, all because I still wanted to be in that world fighting machines. Every sequel to a beloved Sony IP ruins the franchise.
Feels like somethings off. It did feel achieving i was not satisfied
Especially since it seems like they followed an ESG/DIE guide to the letter when creating the characters. Pretty sure Erand is the only white male in the game who isn't a villain and he's made into a buffoon.
The part where you mention that she gets stuck on things where she shouldn't was one of my biggest gripes in zero dawn. It sometimes made battling machines difficult
What I hate most about Forbidden West is actually the story. It was a big deal in the first game that humanity couldn't wait the fallout on a space station, but the Far Zenith did just that and more, they became immortal without ANY downside. When I first saw them, I thought their bodies might be artificial and their real body wasting away in a tube somewhere, or anything that don't totally undermine what happened to humanity in Zero Dawn.
I mean they kinda lost their humanity which led to their downfall
@@barkley611 yes, but in the first one I wanted to read all datapoints. I was thoroughly invested in the lore, loved every second. Preordeded FW the first day it was up. The sequel was such a slog I didn't care about the main plot, let alone reading datapoints.
Yeah, all of humanity, not just a couple hundred billionaire assholes
@@barkley611
Nay, that's Red Dead Redemption 1-2. Change my mind...
They teased the far zenith in zero dawn we assumed they died in space but they ended up succeeding and now in the next game we have to fight a god that destroyed a highly advanced civilization
Thank you for a more critical review. When game is pretty looking and polished and has a lot of stuff, people feel obligated to consider it at least 8/10, qualifying any criticism by "It's not by any means bad." By the same logic, Game of Thrones' final season is a masterpiece because actors are talented and CG dragons look good.
Good point
Ngl most of his arguments were just straight nit picks
@Post Rock lmao it was literally nit picks, he wasn’t even making essential and sound arguments bro complained at a point about not being able to crawl through a hole in a mission or being able to go around an enemy camp to beat a mission and having to play within the realms of the game. And don’t get me wrong I definitely think the game has problems and it isn’t a 10/10 but his arguments were ludicrous
I never played zero dawn and I’m really enjoying forbidden west. How miserable do you have to be to not enjoy a game like this? Sure if I’d played the first one I probably wouldn’t be as happy with the second but it’s good to me
@@joshchapman4753 >I never played zero dawn
There's your answer. These cookie-cutter open worlds are really fun when you're new to them, but once you played a few of them, it all gets old real quick.
Also, a game can be enjoyable and still have problems.
Temporary taking abilities away seems to be a recurring problem (in gaming) nowadays. "The Medium" introduces the ability to run, and a half hour (or less later) the game silently takes that ability away for a short while. It never tells you or explains it; it just takes it away and gives it back a short while later. Leaving the player to fumble around with the controls, wondering if they forgot what button allowed the character to run.
100% agree on everything. Loved HZD, lukewarm on HFW. Outside of jaw dropping graphics and impressive mo-cap, it just feels like a worse game all around. Guerrilla took a “more is more” approach and ended up with something less fun.
Spot on.
Possibly the most relatable review of this game that I’ve viewed. The poor level design and logic behind unnecessary tasks is the reason why I’ve left this game behind.
Poor level design and logic and unnecessary tasks? You must be blind. You act like your playing some random free game
@@guccii_daddyy I think if you enjoyed this game, you are totally blind
@@TheConquistor how tf? This game was fkn good and well put together. I’d rather play this than another call of duty don’t you agree? What would you rather play than this?
My biggest complaint with the game is that there's way too much stuff now. I don't like the food mechanic, way too many weapons, too many completionist stuff and way too much water. I also don't care about the story it doesn't grasp me. Also when I'm grinding for parts the machines just vanish sometimes? It's so frustrating
that's so stupid. you're complaining about way too much in the game. I can't make this stuff up lol. just don't do everything then smh. I promise you guys just want to complain.
@@introduction1266 oh no I have 4 complaints about a game I put over 90 hours in I'm such a terrible person
@@rubbertrain it just seems weird to complain about too much stuff as oppose to there being not enough lol. all you have to do so not do everything geez.
@@introduction1266 you're purposefully missing - or just ignoring - the point he made. the game is contrived and feels phoned in, like everything's just checking a box on a list of 'things other games do' and chasing trends. it's cluttered, too full of things to do in a vain attempt to appeal to everyone. it's annoying, especially when the game treats you like a child that needs to have their hands held and told what to do in nearly everything.
complaining about too many things to do is a good thing to complain about, it shows that the game is far too cluttered for anyone to even feel bothered to attempt; like he said, it feels like this was simply filled with things to do for completionists to 10/10 the game. too much stuff means things can feel lazy, uninspired, like the game's devs saw what other open world games did and decided to just add more of it.
complaining about not enough things to do in a game is a valid complaint as well, in a different way - if a game is large and has nothing to do it shows the devs just didn't care, or were perhaps forced to make the game as large as it is, and couldn't be bothered or had enough time to fill the world in a way that didn't feel lazy. or perhaps they were lazy.
as to your last statement - which was hard to understand but i think i parsed it - if a game has to force certain players to throw their hands up and feel fatigued with the amount of content then, by design, that game is a bad game. it is not player friendly if it just has content that ticks boxes, and it is, by design, a chore when there is so much to do you can't even see the end.
@@rwbybomb2160 half of his complaints were to much water and too many weapons🤔. You don’t have to explore all the water and you also don’t have to use all the weapons. I know I didn’t do either and still enjoyed the game. I guess he thinks it’s also too many collectibles and side missions which in my opinion are dumb ass complaints because like the other guy said literally just don’t do them. The foods you can buy in camps are also something extra you literally don’t have to buy. The weapons part I slightly agree on because I always kept finding myself regretting my latest purchase because I was finding better versions of my weapons every 10 minutes it felt like. I didn’t want to really start upgrading my weapons until I knew I had something really good which I didn’t like
I'm glad aim not the only person that thought Alloy has the poise of a house of cards. It would've been nice if the heavier armors would've kept her more grounded. Perhaps provide a bit of stagger resistance.
@Bloofa I hope they find this video and take everything (from the comments to the video) into consideration. I feel like they were close on making a good game but didn't make it. If they make the ruins in areas where Aloy can use her regular climbing abilities without having to puzzle her way up, and everything else in the video I think they'll be good. I truly do hope Guerilla finds this video though. It would improve their game 100%.
Her stagger is ridiculous. I'm a half-crippled guy over twice her age with arthritis and in a life or death situation (like, say, a robot velociraptor breathing fire at me) I could recover faster than she does. It feels like they intended to have upgrades that bring her recovery to reasonable levels, but then they cut them before launch.
I think the Crux of the problem is that the budget was too big. When you have to make sure a 10 year old won't get frustrated, there's little room for puzzles or combat that'll be engaging for the 30+ crowd. I don't see AAA gaming to be for us anymore outside of specific genre focused games like Doom.
My same issue with spiderman & Ghost of sushi good games with GREAT potential that have to make 10 year olds understand everything
doom is dumb as shit. Just pure adrenaline rush like a drug addict. Stop the cap.
@@Dominicankareem haven't played Spiderman but tsushima was fucking hard tho, and if I remember correctly if you don't take into consideration the "tutorials" that pop up sometimes you were meant to discover everything by yourself, if you didn't explore enough you wouldn't have found health augments or things like that, I think that the game is pretty complex, challenging and it requires good amounts of attention, it has been a while since I played it so I may be wrong or i just fucking suck at games
@@JotaPS88 don’t get me twisted tho Im not some sort of god either I checked my save file & apparently I have 200 hours in it. Personally tho after playing a demanding ninja/samurai game like Sekiro going to ghost of sushi felt like it was made to be very accessible for everybody which is completely fine. I just wish there was a “sekiro mode” that dropped the training wheels.
@@Dominicankareem yeah I completely agree with that sekiro is far more demanding that ghost of tsushima, have you tried the hardest difficulty in ghost of tsushima tho? You kill with 3-4 hits but they also kill you with ease, I think it makes the game more challenging as you have to rely on counters to survive, but it also makes the stance system worthless as you will pick the fastest one because the damage is always the same, still if you haven't tried it I encourage you to do it, in my opinion it makes the combat much better
I'm so glad not everyone is lapping this game up like ambrosia from Olympus. This game symbolizes everything that killed open world games a few years ago and I just can't believe everyone acts like its God's gift.
Who is everyone? I've seen hardly any praise for this game.
No one acts or acted like Horizon is Gods gift. Even the first game was not seen as amazing at all.
OMG! That crane quest was maddening! I finished the first HZD but I couldn't get thru a third of HHW. I set the combat on Hard, but it just made the monsters cheat more. So many weapons could have been cut to make a more streamlined process. Why does anyone need 30 different weapons?
Sounds like hard was just too hard for you lol.
@@hitrapperandartistdababy Nope. It's just fucking boring and repetitive. Thanks for trying tho.
@@aphillyate1 My guy you literally just accused the enemies of cheating lmao, The game really isn’t just gotta approach each machine differently
@@hitrapperandartistdababy Of you love it, great! Why are you bothering me?
@@aphillyate1 you suck huh lol
I wish they had made the Far Zeniths more of an obstacle/secondary villain. None of them are super fleshed out and they just read as pretty boring. The stuff with Tilda was pretty well done, although I wish we had had more time with her and Sylens to flesh out those characters for this game. Overall, I still enjoyed the game, but I didn't play A LOT of it -- especially the collectathon stuff that was entirely pointless unless the much more "lookout places" from the first game. I think FW suffers greatly from middle trilogy syndrome. I do hope GG figures out some new systems and frankly, I just want them to tighten up their map and filter even more what you can do. They do the Ubisoft formula in a way that doesn't make me jump off the game immediately, but it still could be edited even more to make these games very tight and action packed without losing that immersion and open feel.
Agreed. They felt pretty tacked on. It's like they got to the end and found out the Regalla alone couldn't carry the plot so they'd stick some rich people in there to flesh it out.
It says something when the big bad faction has all except 3 of its members die in the same cutscene we are introduced to them. And of the remaining 3, one is a generic evil bad bald man in charge who does absolutely nothing and dies from nothing you did to him, one is just a brute who has no motivation other than he likes being a sociopath and killing people, and one who, while she does have motivation, is just creepy and became relevant far too late into the story to develop.
@@ShallBePurified I imagined a story where the Zeniths hired Regalla to take over the west coast and move east. They paid her by supporting the rebellion. Then Aloy would have a real reason to fight the rebellion and the Zeniths. There'd be no magic shield. A Shield yes but one Aloy eventually got strong enough to circumvent without needing a Sylins "deus ex".
As we move farther west we start fighting more and more Zeniths before we drove them back to their island stronghold and had a large finale .
Not much of the stuff in the middle would need to change.
I was shocked how little Sylens in particular was in this game. The ending of the first game sets up him as the main villian of this one yet he does basically nothing the entire story apart from at the beginning and the very end. Even the Zeniths have so little screen time. They're these all powerful god like entities in terms of their abilities and tech yet they do nothing with it.
A.C odyssey will remain the best game in the world...no one can beat A.C odyssey
I find the climbing on Forbidden West actually far more frustrating that the original. As you say computer says no, for arbitrary reasons. Very frustrating. She gets ‘stuck’ on 4 foot high rocks thinking you’re trying to climb when you’re not. In the middle of a battle.
Maybe dont jump towards rocks in the middle of a battle???
You're 100% correct and I will tell you why. You're correct because in the first game they made it clear that you could climb a extremely limited amount of surfaces so we didn't try to climb when we knew we couldn't.
In forbidden west they said "you can now climb anywhere" but that's not true at all so the climbing is so frustrating because we take jumps and do platforming but it never works because they said we could climb anywhere at the same time making climbing again very limited
not saying ou are wrong but if you could climb anywhere then that would make the game very glitchy and everywhere like c'mon@@haunteddreams7856
@@philipsparks6089What a stupid thing to say. Grow a brain.
@Chris Davis, your reviews are so detailed and thorough that you have filled a skillUp sized hole in my heart. Please never stop publishing 1 hour long in depth reviews of Games. Some of us love this format rather than a 10 min IGN score
I am really glad you documented the sliding behavior in attacks(haven't watched far enough to see if you've documented dodges as well). Frequently the robots will slide out of the way when you target small weak points (canisters, etc.) as well, which is particularly frustrating. Taken in combo with frequently small/cramped "arenas" with obstacles that laughably get in the way without affording any sort of protection, what should be epic tactical battles feel cheap and frustrating.
I did not feel this way in Zero Dawn, where I absolutely never grabbed a wall instead of dodging an attack.Battles only began to feel cheap in Frozen Wilds where a scorcher could literally jump from a distance too far for the player to do damage to a swiping attack in less than half a second. I feel like Guerilla too far too many cues from Frozen Wilds and put them on steroids.
@@WoobiewookieBlogspot Glad I'm not the only one who didn't like Frozen Wilds. After completing ZD I started the DLC immediately, played a couple hours, put it down and never looked back. I wanted more story and world building, what I got was a massive and frustrating difficulty spike to appease players who felt ZD was just too easy, and the fix was to dial the cheapness of the AI way up.
I don’t feel this way at all. I think the most fun part of Forbidden West is the combat. I’ve played the game multiple times on Ultra Hard and I just find excitement from learning attack patterns, finding out what the best gear to use is, best way to farm, etc. I don’t find the sliding enemies annoying because most of the time you can wait till their animations is done where they will pause so you can shoot them. It’s all about learning the way the machine moves in my opinion. But of course not everyone find those things fun.
So in other words you are trash at the game
@@k9wazere I actually liked the frozen wilds more than the main game.
Hope all is well Chris
For me the most annoying things in the game(1.17 version) are:
- the broken climbing(jerky movement, sudden stop of climbing for no reason, inconsistent animations on the same jumps, after a jump Aloy just hangs for a seconds or two, etc)
- to long stun after been hit, sometimes the stun keep me vulnerable until the next hit that kills me.
- damage to high, sometimes all the health(6 life pieces) in one hit from a big robot or boss.
- extremely long grinding for upgrading the weapons and costumes(most of the time the upgrade job send me to kill some robots for parts and many time those robots dont drop the needed piece. Then repeat the whole job).
- Aloy stumbles/stop on details ground, like rock, branches, etc.
- the healing where I have to press up on D-pad for a few seconds which keep Aloy on place, vulnerable to been hit, while already on low health, in front of an enemy or boss.
That's so on point. I am now playing stealth instead of combat because controls are so infuriating.
Same man this 💩pissed me off so kuch i stopped playing like halfway thru
@@isaiah797 get good
I ain’t reading allat ☠️
Sounds like a really skill issue problem here
They have near perfect gameplay mechanics. Killing the animals is so fun.
- They have near perfect artists.
- They have near perfect graphics.
- They have great music.
x Story
x Motivation to keep playing
x A world full of life
x Missions that don't feel like filler
They have the icing.
But can't build the cake.
A good analogy is that they have all the right ingredients to make to make the almost perfect cake but they mess up during the mixing, the baking, and the decorations.
Good way to phrase it. All sugar and no substance. The game is eye candy, but I got nothing out of the gameplay or story once I finished it. I was disappointed.
@@ShallBePurified But you haver to admit its the most pretty eye candy game to date.
The rest i can agree with
@@SaithMasu12 It's eye candy that doesn't affect me. I was never wowed by Horizon's visuals. It's graphically impressive, but that's it. Ghost of Tsushima was a prettier game in my opinion, because of the art direction.
This is what I was saying but in a far better way of explaining it
Even tho there are valid points, the most prominent criticisms in this video are just a case of "I want this game to be a copy of others to call it a copy but since I can't then I'll criticize it for not being one".
I think the thing I hate the most is her constant talking when no one else is around LOL. I hate the climbing in this game so much that I've cursed more doing that versus dying in combat.
It’s crazy how much she talks.
It is interesting, how the channel have started and ended on a Horizon game.
Did he ever make a statement or anything about the lack of uploads?
@@ddm_gamermentioned this was the last vid bc the channel didn’t grow as fast as he liked. UA-cam prob wasn’t paying enough compared to being a lawyer full time
@@tawkoeh
I see, thats pretty surprising
It is his own fault the channel stopped growing. He was growing quickly and then suddenly he started putting political statements into his review, dumb Reddit level progressive takes. Commenters asked him to just leave his political stuff out and instead he doubled down and did it more. His channel then stopped growing and view numbers dropped off a cliff.
He could have become a full time UA-camr if he just didn’t talk politics. But based on his Twitter it seems leftist politics is his entire personality which is just really sad.
That damn ladder guy got me too. I actually tried birding up over the fence only to find out even THAT didn’t progress the mission
The tracking and hitbox issue was so annoying, I cannot overstate how frustrated I got while playing. The game wants you to be strategic while fighting machines yet unfairly restricts your ability to do so. I especially hated the fact each enemy is equally as agile. TremorTusks and Tiderippers turn on a dime, their weight doesn't impact their momentum at all. It makes it nearly impossible to get behind them. The stagger and recovery times are also excruciating.
Your point about Varl's death is spot on. I feel like writers have been convinced that having main characters die is necessary, something that just needs to be checked off. I felt horrible about his death because of how pointless it was, not because it hit on an emotional level. He was such a good character with a heart of gold, and did a good job at pushing back against Aloy's stubbornness. Aloy feels like she needs to take on everyone else's burdens and put herself in danger to protect others. I also think she has difficulty trusting other people due to being shunned from birth. Varl was such a good counter to those notions. He challenged her from a place of understanding and compassion. I would be fine with his death if it was more impactful. If they were hellbent on having one of the crew die it should have been Erend. I hate his type of character though so I'm really biased here. The bumbling oaf really annoys me.
Well said
Elden Ring Hit boxes make me feel the same way.
@@John-996 give some examples of these 'bad' hitboxes
@@Akechifan lol watch video troll
@@John-996 elden ring has the best hitboxes of any of fromsoftwares games so far.
You certainly nailed the issue with weapon upgrade crafting. I feel massively de-incentivized to upgrade weapon more than 1-2x when I expect a newer model around the corner. I’m unfathomably bored with creating jobs for specific items, b-lining to the animal/machine territory, easily getting what I need (except those damn widemaw tusks), just to do it again several dozen more times before feeling “okay, is this actually making any tangible difference in my gameplay?”
The quest rigidity is beyond the pale. Too many times I’m railroaded into that necessary path, annoyed by Aloy’s sudden inability to climb something, to reach an inane trigger than somehow allows me to progress in the quest.
The lack of consistency with climbable objects is pissing me off. Right near the beginning of the game, you climb a tower to drop the space shuttle. One of the jumps looks nearly impossible from your current height, but the edge is highlighted yellow. This seems to infer that any ledge that vertical distance is reachable. But no, nearly all future ledges must be closer in order to jump to them.
Hmm how abt flying and then dropping onto the objective instead of dealing with the climbing which u cannot seem to grasp?.
As for weapons once you get kinda deep into the story you’ll get to see the legendary weapons and armor which are the best in the game. So why spend time fully upgrading mediocre gear when u can get the legendary and upgrade those?
Sounds like you are making the game harder then it needs to be smh don’t blame the game for that
@@guccii_daddyy that's kinda the point when you get to the legendary equipment it has like 5 upgrades. By point if you keep skipping upgrades along the way, you start making it a habit to not upgrade. You can beat the game without upgrading the legendary weapons. Another thing about the flying mount is that you get it so late in the game and depending on the mood you have, you might as well just say fuck it I am done.
@@dart7585 you don’t get it that late into the game at all that’s no excuse. And making it a habit to not upgrade is your fault smh you shouldn’t blame the game for playing the game badly
@@guccii_daddyyStop posting stupid comments. You are telling players to ignore all quests including mainline ones until you unlock flying at the endgame of the main story? You have brain rot.
It’s not open world fatigue. People keep saying that, but it’s not true. The new open world games just aren’t good. It’s that simple.
I haven’t played Forbidden West but I felt most of this issues with the first game. I tried to play it very recently as I missed out on it when it came out so I tried to play it before the new one. I just got bored. Open worlds are hard to execute and this series is not for me
Just gotta sit and listen to the story especially on ps5 it's no bugs, and it looks amazing I think throughout my entire playthrough I ran into 2 bugs
@@Jqweex Will definitely give it another shot eventually
I played the first one a few months ago, and I just never understood how it had so much hype. The part I enjoyed the most was when I finished the game and I finally got to delete it.
@@altaria2347 yep i had a ps4 pro from 2018-19 just for exclusives. Bought and played horizon, last of us, god of war, spiderman, ratchet and clank(fan of the ps2 games), and the earlier uncharted games for the first time. The only ones that i wouldn't say were overated were last of us and maybe god of war 2018. All of them were GOOD games but not the 9 out of 10 most of them got imo.
If you haven't made it at least 4 hours in the HZD then you haven't actually experienced the real game yet. Sucks that the game starts out so slow but the story and gameplay of the rest of the game that so many people love doesn't get going around until then
Your points are exactly my thoughts on H2. I loved H1 - 5 years ago, i don't know if i would like it now. The issue is that they added more vs making sure that everything is more thought out. I was so waiting for this game - after 3 weeks of trying to like it, i bought Elden Ring (that was not on my list as I'm not a massive souls fan) and was blowned away by how better it is an open world game. The exploration is excising, the map feels full of mystery. It's impressive if you consider that 95% of your exploration is made via a horse double jump and rolling into walls - and it still is more fun than H2. All your points is how i felt playing it - the biggest issue for me on top of bad climbing (that feels so jerky as you mentioned) and all the issues with too many hints and her never shutting up - the biggest issue for me are the pointless clan side quests full of cuscnees - everything has a cutscenes. The horse is just terrible and gets stucked on everything. I think a lot of these issues didn't stick out in H1 as it was a much simpler game and you interacted with its world less. I spoke to it on my IG (adam_spizak) as I have a decent following and do a lot of gaming stories (as an artist) and i said how i don't understand how this game got 9 or 10/10 considering it's so tedious to play. In many ways this is a Ubisfot game made by Sony.
Most AAA open world games these days are just linear games with busy work in-between that could have easy be standard linear games. There are exceptions like RDR2, BOTW, Skyrim or ER or even FC3. Most thou could easily not be open world.
This series is emblematic of everything wrong with modern single player games. Handholdy, uninspired characters, tedious grinding, bloated, open world shit.
Remember the days when Sony were more careful with the budget and used it on directors who has incredible visions like Ico, Shadow of the colossus, demon's souls, gravity rush?
Now they're giving ridiculous budgets for directors with no vision. 200 million budget for another Assassin's creed clone with grinding 🤦♂️
@HawkeyedSentinel if you actually believe this game is in the same realm as ac that's sad asf
Lmao
A lot of stuff that is there just to be stuff, not because it matters.
It’s sadly very common in games. It can easily be summed up having 100 weapons but there being very little between those weapons.
Choices that don’t matter. Mechanics that don’t matter. Devs pile this stuff on to give the illusion of depth - of good gameplay - and also just to pad out the games length.
Just give the player lots of stuff to do and look at. It doesn’t matter that it’s all window dressing to disguise the emptiness at the heart of the game.
To me something like Celeste is 1000 times better than HFW because every single mechanic matters. There aren’t 35 different types of jump you can do.
Remember when elden ring was criticized about quest design by someone who worked on this?
I ran into a similar situation with that same bandit camp you described, only I found the intended exit to the camp first because i just happened to be scaling the cliff towards the bandit camp. I went in, killed all the enemies easily and...nothing happened. I had to leave the camp, walk around, take out the guys outside, and THEN the game let me "properly" enter the camp and proceed straight to the boss fight.
Overall, I found this game incredibly average at best, despite adoring Zero Dawn. The story was outright bad, and the pacing is awful, I seear, the game "starts" at least 3 times, possibly 4.
It certainly didn't help that Aloy is outright dislikable now, completely shredding her character development between games along with her gear.
Agreed, Aloy’s personality was so irritating. It’s like she learned nothing from the entire first game. In fact she went the opposite direction.
There was one camp I went to that literally just didn't spawn the bosses so I couldn't finish the camp. I was absolutely disappointed in the lack of polish and even more disappointed at the lack luster story that never seemed to pick up. I was so excited for this game and it made me feel like I wasted my money the ending felt like a halfway point (probably because of some planned DLC smh)
This review is far better than the one you did for the first game.
Sadly the developer did not grow in their skills as you did.
Crazy how they can make something that looks so good feel so bad. A chore to play once the eye candy wears off
That's Basically almost every Sony exclusive
@@ShoXwavee come on let’s not get crazy here .
Last of Us , Spider-Man PS4 and God of War are some of the best games in modern gaming
@@phantom3146 I said almost
And Spiderman PS4 was alright, nothing revolutionary
@@ShoXwavee that’s 99% of games , hardly anything new to develop in a game when everything’s been done . Can just improve existing features
@@phantom3146 Very defeatist mentality
I feel that way about most of the gameplay but god damn if the plot didnt throw curveball after curveball at me. I didnt expect it to go even remotely the direction it did before launch.
The zeniths escaping a robot apocalypse only to get to space and build MORE FUCKING ROBOTS might just be the stupidest, yet most believably human thing ive ever heard. The nemesis reveal made me want to go and smack every single one of them.
great critique, i strongly disagree with the people calling you nit-picky in the comments. almost everything you took issue with i disliked as well, and i found all of it justified. and god finally someone calling out the stupid ruin puzzles, i truly hated those lol
His complaints are largely about core aspects of the game, to call them nit-picking is desperate.
I don’t expect another vid,at least anytime soon. But if I never see your channel again, good luck with anything and everything, I’m gonna miss ya
Hey Chris, long time subscriber here. Your stuff is awesome. I know you made comments here and there to the effect that "This UA-cam thing won't pan out" or "this channel is a failed business" but don't give up.
Also, why the f can't we give you money? I understand that you don't like the model where only paying users have access to certain things, but come on. Do you have paypal? I want you to take my money, if it means you can keep doing this. You are great; like in the Noah Caldwell-Gervais territory. Come on. Let us give you money.
I just finished and you were quite generous, Chris. The game is a slog, with button mashing melee, buggy traversal and a dozen weapons/systems that could've been cut entirely. It desperately needs a block /parry button as well.
How tf you gonna block a Thunderjaw?
oddly fitting if this is the last thing our boy uploads... started and ended with the same series..
Very well said, you put to words many of my own feelings regarding the game. Though one thing you didn't mention that really bothered me was everyone just hanging out at the base like it was the Normandy from Mass Effect. It felt increasing awkward to have all these people just staying in the base for months at a time, as if they don't have any lives outside of Alloy.
It feels like they were supposed to accompany her much more often than they do now. It feels like part of a feature that was cut.
100% agree. I finish the game today and i feel that i waste 30 hours of my life... I change the difficulity to easy towards to the end, only to see the story.
You didn't play the game if you say' you finished in 30 hours. Sorry...But you're full if s*** and I calls it how I sees it.
36:30
She forgets for reasons that make sense and don't make sense. In the beginning she says she lost a lot of her equipment on the way to that zenith building. It would make sense that she lost the data on overrides if her focus was broken and didn't make a backup. What doesn't make sense is how she got the override for her mount to ride from meridian to the forbidden west.
As for requiring parts for some overrides, that's because of Hephestus. It beefed up security on cauldrons thanks to Aloy. Notice how more difficult it is to get into a cauldron? In ZD it was just a large door to override, with the one exception that you had to find an alternative path. In FW every cauldron has a unique way to enter. Like the one with the tallnecks. Just a metal floor and a crane, no large door to override. Instead you find an entrance inside a ravine. Or the one that's underwater, helps stop the "entity" and gives a birthing port for tiderippers that it manufactures.
My main complaint to the game was nothing really mattered in this game. Take the rebel camps, in the original completing them gave you a extra npc in the final battle. In this one they give you an option to buy resources??? Also there is toooo damn much. Finally ER just blew this out of the water and made it forgettable.
Forgettable? Currently Horizon is outselling Elden ring on Playstation, only reason why Elden ring is selling more is because its available on more platforms while Horizon is only available on one.
@@omario3400 outselling doesn’t mean it’s better. Go back to playing Valhalla Ubisoft boy
@@osobad1127 its better to regular ppl, hell only 20% of elden ring players have finished the since launch 😭, finished both and i prefer Horizon.
@@omario3400 considering it sold million, that percentage that you provide (if it even accurate) Hella impressive than HR lol
@@omario3400 elden ring is long as fuck, i have 45+ hours in the game and I don't think I have done more than 10% of it.
You are missed, Chris. Hope you’re well mate.
I second this!
Horizon Forbidden West is the kind of game you're exciting to get, then you get it and play it, finish and by week 2 or 3 you completely forgot about it.
Like the Men's in black came to your home and flash bomb you with the memory delete device. You forget what was the story about, who were the characters, what you really did playing this game, don't remember if it got senses of exploration,the equipment or anything at all. On a technical aspect the game is top notch quality up there with the best ever, but on the narrative,gameplay elements,loot,quest pathing, mission structure and progression is just mediocre. Not good, not bad, just middle of the road mediocre.
Horizon FW is a Open World game that doesn't feel like a open world game because you are requiere to do things in the same exact other is planned. You cannot skip a single step because otherwise the game won't work. Why make it open world then? I don't understand it.
This game doesn't got a stand up aspect to make it feel unique or special. Cool got mecha dinosaurs, but is that really enough to put it over the top? No really for a sequel because the shock factor or seeing it for 1st time is not there anymore. Still a wonderful game, but a 4 out of 5 good game. Very good, but not masterpiece good,memorable or game changer which is not bad since not every game need to aim for that.
I feel like Dunkey said it best in his video on Forbidden West - this type of game needs to die. It can be quality, it can be fun, but it’s probably the most boring formula for a video game I’ve ever seen.
The hype is there because of the graphics. That’s it.
I don't understand why they took the surprise ending from Zero Dawn and made a whole new storyline out of it just to have people from space come and completely put Sylens' questline on the backburner. Sylens was easily my favorite character from Zero Dawn and I was soooo damn excited to have him as the main antagonist, but nope. Follow his questline for the first quarter of the game and then just completely ditch it until the very end.
I feel this is a huge issue for Sony. They barely focus on and build up smaller devs, nowadays, and their games feel so predictable.
Every Sony game nowadays is a "cinematic experience" which are just plain boring. I used to love Sony 10 years ago but now with their movie games and paying to play online I just don't care anymore
It started with Uncharted. They don't even feel like their own games feels like Uncharted with a different paint.
@@Walamonga1313 agreed. They even turned God of war into a cinematic experience. Yea there is some good stuff there but man am I bored of it
It was just a quick sequal for ps5 ,nothing more.
@@Walamonga1313 you will be happy to know they 12 live Service games in development.
6:44
You actually CAN get onto the scaffolding by hang-gliding onto it from a nearby boulder. You still can't progress the mission without killing all the rebels and making that guy lower the completely unnecessary ladder, though.
Absolutely fair criticism of the game. I had very similar thoughts when playing it and while watching this video, most things you pointed out were aha moments for me as I kept asking myself similar questions during gameplay.
I really like this game. My biggest gripe and something I simply can't get over is the over complication of effect types and bows. If I'm using a Hunter bow with fire, normal and hardened arrows I don't need another bow with corruption, ice and FIRE AGAIN. It felt like swapping a bow out always left me with overlap. While going though the game and solution was to use weaker less rare weapons just for the ammo type you needed.
Yes! I could never decide which bow was worth upgrading because of that overlap.
Love the series, but this game def has its issues with fixing things no one asked for.
1 on 1 combat needs work and all the weapons need to be trimmed to half
That I agree and the bandit camp lol I mean rebel camps the humans are spongier then the first I wish the humans was harder like do more damage and more making it hard to sneak but be easy to kill
At the end it gets better tho, after completing the rebel camps (only the big ones) you get a very good hunter bow with 3 advanced elemental arrows, and there's another bow that has the missing 2 advanced elemental arrows (who cares about plasma). One thing I liked from the first was how lean it was, it also made it feel more balanced. I think it was a bit too lean, but in Forbidden West there's just too many weapons, most with bad ammo combinations, too. I hope they go for choosing our own ammo types for each weapon in the third, give us the option to make any combination we want
great video mate! I agree 100% on this. This game is gorgeous but it's not enough for a great sequel. And this super linear quest design in an open world game is just killin' me. From the top of my head - I've discovered a ruin-castle. It was full of these mini-puzzels in order to get to every crate with loot. The last and hopefully most valuable crate was on the top of the tower (focus showed it). There was a ladder inside the tower that Aloy just wouldn't reach no matter how hard I tried. I've spent like 20 minutes trying to reach that ladder, then I looked for other ways to get there... nothing. Turns out you shouldn't try to get there until that castle is a part of a side quest. Only then a grapling hook point MAGICALLY appears right below the ladder. OMFG. And there were far too many instances of such a world&quest design in my playthrough already. I remember when I played the Witcher 3 I had many side quests done before talking to the quest giver - and when I did talk to them, Geralt would say "Actually I've already been to that swamp and killed that monster, here's its head". DONE. And I was satisfied with that. For some reason Guerilla devs are afraid of doing it that way (?). Like, just let me into that tower for gods sake. Modify your quest in such a way that it's still playable but we can skip that tower climbing and Aloy just says - "I've been here before mate, here are your supplies from the top of the tower, now let's move on!"
Sounds like a modern rockstar games design syndrome. Except that at least rockstar games are still carried by their stories and strong performances.
@@zero59267 Sounds more like "modern day gamers want everything pre-chewed so they can get their easy dopamine hits instead of actually figuring stuff out".
A lot of people are negatively commenting on Aloy being too helpful, but something this ^^ commenter found the only point in the game where it wasn't oversimplified and starts a rant about it :p
The Witcher 3 & Red Dead 2 ruined open world games for me forever. Wish I could whipe my memories of those games again
@@Direct_Dutchy Or its a case of bad world design lol idk if he had the grappling hook before but if he did and the point just didnt appear until that side quest that is just straight up bad design lol.
@@zero59267 i played the GTAV campaign for the first time a few months ago and jesus christ...
what a piece of shit
The whole design of gampelay is one of fear. What if the player does something unexpected? What if the player gets lost? What if... And their answer is putting padded walls on everything and constantly pulling (not even holding) your hand.
That seems to fit in with most single player, story based games. And I agree that its bad. Its too restrictive.
That's also why the map is littered with question marks - they're scared you'll miss out on content. Game devs who take risks don't care about that. They know it's up to you. Many areas of Dark Souls are missable, including most of the story which is cryptic and left to you to figure out. Not spoonfed to you like a baby.
God I lost count how many times I died because the machines somehow reached me even when I dodged and I had enough distance between me and the machine. Like it was insane.
I seriously can't get into this franchise because having robotic animals is so absurd and stupid.
@@LevisH21 I can't say I didn't feel the same way when I first heard the idea but the first game was pretty good and the robotic animals were explained. But the second game bored me. I have a lot of non main tasks and I am now just before the final main mission and then I will probably put the game down. But the first one had a pretty good story.
Come back man, we need more of your video game essays!
In Elden Ring you have to find memory stones to add a slot to give you more options to use different magic spells. In order to get one you have to take down a magic barrier in this tower. Or...you could just take your steed and jump on one of these jump pads and land on the balcony. This is just one example of how the game gives you an open ended way of solving problems.
Because HZD:FW quest/world design is so scripted they have to take away your ability to do things. This isn't to say their way of doing quest design is necessarily wrong. It's just getting really old. Developers have to move away from scripted/linear quest design. Give the power back to the player.
Elden ring is the same XD that tower you are on about? You have to jump from that "jump pad" to get into it no other way around it
Gamers still aint over the ER vs hfw thing huh
well to be fair, those towers that u can jump because it is the ONLY way to get in. Some towers require solving riddles tho.
@@giorgosnikolaou7219 I loved Elden Ring but it's getting really old hearing about it non stop, like the Sequel to Zero Dawn was Super fun to me I'm not getting all the hate on this game tbh
@@giorgosnikolaou7219 They're two open world games released very near to one another with very different design philosophies. Comparison is useful here
One thing that I hated in the game is this haze on the map everywhere you haven't been. It felt so frustrating to have tiny bits of it in places and I spent hours trying to get it off of every inch of the map. It's also over every sea so you have to swim back and forth for hours to have a clean map.
You can just fly over it. It's much more efficient.
That's it?
There are a few spots that stay clouded, though the Tallnecks usually cover the necessary spots
Thanks for the detailed critique, you confirmed my suspicions and it'll save me time and money.
I really found the 1st game a grind (albeit an often pretty one), always expecting that it would 'click' with me at some point. It didn't.
I never want to Google stuff when I'm playing a game. There's enjoyment to be had in the player working things out and experimenting but the obtuse puzzle design and many convoluted mechanics in the 1st had me on my phone way too much, sapped all the fun out of it.
My biggest complaint was the over abundance of weapons and elemental damages. You can only equip a handful of weapons, so you can't realistically expect to use the best weapon for each enemy, not to mention upgrading each weapon.
In Zero Dawn, there weren't so many weapons and elements. Plus, each weapon has better variety of elements. So fully utilizing your weapons is far more reasonable.
Wow. When you showed the the ridiculous hitboxes and damageboxes i was so done with this game. Insane that a so called AAA-Game from 2021 has so many incredibly frustrating flaws.
hitboxes can be patched clown and probably has been. you're just being negative to be negative.
@@introduction1266 Everything can be patched, technically. The likelihood of them doing second pass on all hitboxes? Unlikely.
This explains a lot. I felt like I get hit in situations where it didn't seem like I should've gotten hit. It also doesn't help that this game has the "cinematic camera" angle with Aloy being on the left side of the screen, making it hard to tell where Aloy is in relation to her surroundings. Seriously, give me the option to have my character in the center of the camera at all times.
I really hate when the machines change direction mid air during a leap to make sure they hit you
@@introduction1266 sony fan spotted
Thought I was the only one who felt like this. I got it day one and haven’t even reached halfway through due to boredom. Feels like they played it way too safe. Anddd it doesn’t help Aloy is less likable in this sequel. While interacting with other characters, she always seems like she’s bored of them or annoyed. This and dying light 2, was truly underwhelming. Thank GOD for SiFu 🙏
Sifi is such a little gem of a game. They killed it with that one. You a fan of Elden Ring?
@@MilesWilliams88 not a fan of those type of games (soul games) 😅heard tons of great things about it though.
@@juno346 give it a try when it on discount next. Don't be afraid to swap class that suit you more. Cheer mate~
If it wasn't for the beyond excellent Decima Engine making the games look breathtaking, I doubt anyone would rank the Horizon games much higher than a typical Ubisoft open world game.
I used to get weirdly defencive when HZD was bashed for being a ubisoft clone, I still love that game. .. but HFW which I also like (but not as much) highlighted the games weaknesses... biggest being story TELLING.... not story
It's very refreshing to hear someone else voice these criticisms. It's been hard to find others who share these thoughts. At the end of the day, there's not a whole lot that this game offers, that would make me want to replay it later. The graphics are nice though.
I feel the same way about Bloodborne. I thought the game was shit yet everyone thinks it's a masterpiece despite it's many many problems
@@mrbobo86 Bloodborne is a masterpiece imo. It has some problems but the game completely overshadows the flaws. One of the greatest games ever made definitely.
time for game devs to wake up and realize this is not 2015 anymore. we are fcking tired of these types of games
As long as these games sell as much and review as well as they do they have no reason to change their ways.
As a die hard fan of the first game, i must say Im both pleased and displeased with the game. Hfw improved nearly in every aspect for me, weapons, machines and more. But where the games goes downhill for me was that the main story felt rushed and had too many villians going on in the background. The first game did a good job at balancing two villian, since the villians had motive specificaly towards Aloy. All in all i have to rate it a 8.5/10. some may disagree, but for me the game is a masterpiece that could have used a few more months for polishing.
I enjoyed it much more than the first, which I adored, and I don't pay attention to the story when I game, I have movies and books for fiction, so I always skip the cut scenes so I can get back to why I play videogames - to play a game. Not watch hours of time-wasting CG cut scenes.
@@Axolotl_Mischief i feel like the main problem with the game is that its dialoge heavy when it comes to cutscenes, it feels like you’re stuck in a conversation with a wall for 10 minutes.
masterpiece is the wrong description for this game
@@Axolotl_Mischief i mean this game is a waste of time when it comes to cutscenes but some games do have incredible story better than books and for sure better than movies
Why do people call everything a masterpiece nowadays 😂
Glad you're sticking around! You were one of the early longform game reviewers, and still one of the best 😁
This game is what I hate about modern games. They don’t let you think. They’d rather you be guided through the entire game meanwhile your brain is turned off completely. Elden Ring is the antithesis to this travesty’s philosophy, so I am quite thankful for that
Some of the puzzles in Horizon made me think more than any other game
@@MAJINNOBU Does that make it a thought provoking game? Hell no lol you had to focus in one part of a game that holds your hand the other 99% of the time
@@tylerthomason9461 it’s a narrative driven game. That point is idiocy. It’s like saying RDR2 or Witcher 3 is worse than a game like Elden ring because it tells you the general area to go and or has waypoints for most of the game. The game is just built differently there’s nothing wrong with a game having a goal and set structure. If you don’t like it then don’t play it, it isn’t a flaw whatsoever.
Oh and another thing, just because a game has waypoints doesn't mean you can get past the game completely with your brain turned off and it completely holds your hand throughout the whole experience. That's also an idiotic statement. In virtually almost every mission throughout the game you're going to need to figure your way through an area, figure out enemy weaknesses or remove enemy weapons that prove dangerous to you etc. Saying a game is holding your hand 99 percent through and you don't have to use your brain whatsoever just because a game has navigation markers is the most ludicrous thing I've ever heard
@@MAJINNOBU oh wow it did the bare basics to be even slightly challenging. Here’s your equal attention cookie 🍪
I remember watching your horizon critique and wanting more and more. Hearing your opinions about a sequel surely feels nostalgic
Thanks for the video Chris. Put the game into perspective and helped me to pinpoint certain aspects that were not too obvious for me at first and felt quite off. Sometimes I found myself thinking I was playing the game ''wrong'' as I didn't use most of the weapons and traps and I stuck to bows and the odd boltblaster or blast sling here and there. The fact that I didn't miss them says a lot, and I played the game in hard. Also, the upgrading system was a joke and the amount of times I decided NOT to upgrade just because I knew a better weapon will eventually appear its ridiculous. I have to say though that I really enjoyed the story but the final twist caught me completely off guard, didn't see it coming!
Anyway, I hope you are ok and you continue putting out great content like this. Always good to see one of your videos in my suscriptions.
Cheers!
No videos 2 years...I hope you are OK.
It’s so strangely sad watching a random video and then realizing it is an abandoned channel I wouldn’t have realized unless you said it, also my first vid of his. I guess it’s fitting to both start and end on a horizon video, I wonder if that was intentional.
It makes me smile because I've been watching this UA-cam channel for a long time and the very first Horizon was an excellent game that made a big impression on me but it was also the very first video on this UA-cam channel, so I have a bit of nostalgia when I think about it.
I recent started to play Ghost Of Tsushima again, taking break from Elden Ring, and I find it's open-world much MORE engaging than Forbidden West's, quests are great, combat really fun and exploration is entertaining.
I'd like to hear your thoughts of it someday.
Don’t give up on the channel 😭
This is exactly how I feel. Lots of systems I felt no motivation to engage with. I missed the first tutorial board game and never went back. I'm always missing one thing for the crafting, but the upgrades aren't worth the hassle. Finally I never look at the map or world when exploring cause the compass has the direction for everything. (Edit:) I also get stuck on the world geometry all the time. It's too crowded.
Absolute on point. Thank you so much for addressing the tedious staggered and stunned conditions with abso-fucking-lutely every enemy attack. You'd think a melee tree gave options for defending against those effects to change the way you play but in the end my tactics from Zero Dawn were the best for FW as well. Lock in your sharpshooter bow with triple arrows then kill from very far away to avoid bad hitboxes and constant ragdoll Aloy.
I love the visuals but I have to say, this sequel is not fun. The rules of interacting with the enviornment are changed constantly to justify platforming and tension so that you cannot adapt as you actually should considering the too many options of taking downs machines.
One thing, though: the spike thrower you disregarded in a sidenote is probably the easy button of killing machines. You once get that drill spike. This weapon staggers machines every time and is more effective than rope casters or any other control weapon while dealing damage and tearing armor. I ended up completing the game with drill spikes and sharpshooter bow.
Shu up xflop user
Although I love this game, I am SOO happy to see this video. The irritatingly dull puzzles, lack of free movement, agonizingly linear quests, and ubiquitous bugs definitely take away from the experience. Also, Aloy's commentary is omnipresent to the extent it makes me miss more silent protagonists like master chief. Thank you for making this video. Your pin point descriptions of the mechanical problems in particular were satisfyingly precise. Very well done!
Congrats on predicting the twist. I listened to every audio-log in H:ZD but Odyssey crew never really stood out to me as anything more than a footnote, seriously, well predicted.
After seeing multiple reviews for this game, praising it to high heaven, it's refreshing to see one that critique's it like this.
Because even though I enjoyed the game quite a bit, I'm also really dissapointed with it. I played the game for 70 hours and platinumed it. On my PS4 pro, if you can imagine that.
The game looks great, even on my PS4. I was really impressed with how good it looks. I loved fighting the machines, and how real most of the npc's felt. They really put a lot of effort in that.
But the story was indeed much less interesting than Zero Dawn. I especially disliked the final mission, because it has this awesome cut-scene with loads of machines under our control, storming the enemy base.
While that cool stuff is going on, I had to do some boring walking around and fight that Erik guy. The final boss was uninspired as well.
Also, I thought I for sure would get to fight on of those Horus things. You know, the big old world machines. Zero Dawn's teaser at the end implies that you will fight one in the sequel. But no.
Basically all critique you have, I agree with. I did like the races, though :)
Hope you'll do an Elden Ring review at some point. Would be interesting to see what you think of that one.
Oh wtf I am actually enjoying my experience right now, but I really thought the Big Spider machine would definitely be the final boss, since we have suspected that since the end of the First Game! If they don’t do something with it in the 3rd Game I‘ll be very disappointed …
Yea the zenith guys weret really fleshed out correctly like not look intimidating and also typical rich narcicist rich guys eriks fight was really easy for him being this superhuman sadist with military backround i enjoyed fighting the specters more theres cliche to varl died and his girls pregnant wow didnt see that coming... your team also just sits in the base doing nothing 90%of the game overall i like this game and alot of the new things added like melee combat is funner but that has its own problems i like being able to ride more machings and flying it has some decent story some cool cutscenes but at the same time theres many problems that just dosent make it spark as much as i thought it would i prefer the first one.
I hate how so many western AAA games are extremely formulaic these days, same with their bad writing. Reeks of corporate interest on maximizing profit.
HFW feels like the kind of game I should be head-over-heels in love with. It's fun, it looks great, and its story is so over-the-top sci-fi that I can't help but love it. There are just little things that hold it back for me, many of which are covered in this critique. I'd still rank it as an overall excellent game, just not much of an improvement over the original in terms of gameplay, and maybe even a step back in some ways.