Horizon Forbidden West Review

I did enjoy my time with Forbidden West for the most part but the whole game makes me question why it was event open world to begin with, the strengths of the game comes from it's combat and the various battles you take part in even on easy mode, the combat feels weighty and I did feel pretty good for taking down the gigantic machines and bosses. Constantly dodging out of the way and escaping every encounter with the skin of my teeth felt pretty good. Targeting weak spots with the gyro aiming, concentration and stick aiming can create a pretty unique feeling combat system especially since you are using projectile weapons and making sure the shots land instead of using hitscan guns. But at the same time, the game suffers from so many AAA open world games that has been there since Far Cry 3. Bandit camps, collectibles, simple stealth mechanics, climbing and parkour, automated grappling hooks, skill trees with only Hunter and Surivivor I put skills in, and so many other tropes that I have got sick of seeing after merely seeing it.

If the game was linear, you wouldn't need half this stuff and you can just focus on combat encounters which is what the game excels at. The main missions already feel like linear levels you'd find in a shooter campaign so I am just wondering what is the point of the open world. You don't even have the "climb anything" system like Assassin's Creed and Breath of the Wild do, so the addition of the open world just feels like a lesser version of what those games tried to do as well as the climbing in this game being sub par in it's own right with the animations feeling awkward and stilted with no sense of precesion also with 2 buttons climb and jump and to drop off a ledge which makes for a confusing system.

The story and cutscene driven nature of the game along with what I just mentioned just really makes me wish the game was linear. The story is okay even though the edition of Kryptionians was kind of jarring and the lack of Sylens was disppointing considering he had more scenes and lines in the first game. Another issue I have is the whole being "properly levelled" for missions while it could be because I played on easy mode and I didn't want to engage with the side missions, this whole system feels like a red herring like most games that feature this, since every missions I was way lower leveled for what the mission required and I was able to get past it without even dying and the game in every boss fight and story mission gives you enough resources to beat them. I am thankful the game didn't make me do them but at the same time, I got to wonder what is the point of this since time spent doing side missions robs Aloy of agency for the main quest and it could be possibly to have way more than what the game missions requires from you.

Overall, I do like the game, but I wish the open world rpg crap was just removed entirely since I consider it to be the weakest part of the whole game.