Horizon Zero Dawn 2 Forbidden West

[Gotmadskillzson]

Re: Horizon Zero Dawn 2 Forbidden West

Skip the Rebel camps until you get better weapons and armor. Better farm for shards and parts because the better stuff in this game are mighty expensive to buy and upgrade. Even when you do get better weapons and armor, Rebel camps should be done stealth. You want to pick them off one by one, makes it easier. Alerting them and having 5 or more come at you at once make it way harder to beat them.

[georgiafan]

Re: Horizon Zero Dawn 2 Forbidden West

That makes sense as my play style is just bust in guns a blazing. I should have a decent amount of shards built up. I'm hoping to find a bow that I can buy now that will be a upgrade i need to rewatch where to find them at.

Skip the Rebel camps until you get better weapons and armor. Better farm for shards and parts because the better stuff in this game are mighty expensive to buy and upgrade. Even when you do get better weapons and armor, Rebel camps should be done stealth. You want to pick them off one by one, makes it easier. Alerting them and having 5 or more come at you at once make it way harder to beat them.

[jrnlgrn]

Re: Horizon Zero Dawn 2 Forbidden West

Patch notes for update 1.08
https://www.reddit.com/r/horizon/com...est_patch_108/

[YuNgWuN]

Re: Horizon Zero Dawn 2 Forbidden West

Just under 59% completion. Over 100 hours thus far and still a ways to go. Overall, enjoying the game but changed the difficulty after 70 hours from hard to custom (easy for damage received and taken) but everything else default.

I see the combat and gameplay as a few steps below the first game. Even using the concentration with a bow and arrow, im still constantly missing shots because first, the bow has to be held down until those four marks around the reticle appear to get off an accurate shot and second, even when you do, the enemy (machine or human) move and you end up missing the shot. It's like, what's the point of slowing down the gameplay if im still missing shots?

Melee combat wise, im not enjoying it as much as the first game. First, there should be a lock on system because my goodness, the amount of melee attacks I miss is staggering. Second, the damage given is minimal unless I use the melee Valor Surge which only lasts a certain amount of time.

Next are the skill trees. Six skill trees is overdoing it. Majority of the skills do nothing and those that do are such a small increase that it doesn't even matter. Not only that but you can only equip a single Valor Surge out of 12. This makes no sense. At least give me one melee and one ranged.

Stealth is pointless on higher difficulty levels especially if the machines/humans are high leveled. Leveling up does nothing but give you skill points and more health. Doesn't actually make you stronger like in pretty much any other action RPG.

The Spear is weak in my opinion and instead of upgrading it through all of these skill trees, I would have preferred an actual upgrade system for it like there is for the bows, slingshots, etc.

Gameplay in general - Aloy feels stiff and clunky. So many times she does what I don't want her to do. And don't get me started on the climbing. It's worse than the first game because even during fights when there's a boulder on the ground and im trying to jump, dodge away, Aloy will literally jump onto the boulder as if she was going to climb it.

It's like, just copy AC Origins/Odyssey. That's all they had to do. Instead, it's worse than the first game. I would rather have just those hooks/handles from the first game. Even worse, so many times, Aloy never pulls herself up to get onto a platform despite it being a half a foot high. Also, while climbing mountains which all the paths highlighted as I have that set to on so I don't have to keep using the focus, Aloy will stop climbing up and go sideways even though I can climb up and are pushing up on the analog stick. It's like, come on.

Oh, and Aloy talks way too damn much. Every few seconds. Even worse, she tells you everything to do regardless of your difficulty level before you even have a chance to survey the area and figure out what to do. This spoils puzzles and pretty much everything as you're playing the game.

Next up is the Grapple Hook. Coming off Halo Infinite and Dying Light 2, this is just bad. It's obvious that it's in the game for puzzles but for traversal, it's useless because if there's no grapple point, you can't use it. I really don't understand the design decisions in this game when it relates gameplay and combat. A lot of it just makes no sense especially when you have a game like AC Origins from over four years ago that showed you the blueprint regarding traversal in an open world game.

Moving on to what's keeping me heavily invested in the game. The story/characters, main quests which have all been great and the side quests/errands. I'm enjoying all of this much more than the combat/gameplay loop which is the opposite of the first game for me in both aspects.

Outside of Strike (meh), racing (also meh) and all the documents that there is to collect, im loving all the side content especially the ruins.

Back to gameplay, this game needed another 3 months minimum. Aloy clips through every ladder, almost every platform when she gets to the top of the ladder. There's some noticeable pop-in. I have had one crash that took me back to the dashboard with an error message. The screen will go black for two seconds randomly for no apparent reason. The Firegleam icons are still on the map after completing them. I had one time where going to open up a car trunk, Aloy froze in the animation. I used fast travel and she was still in the animation. Had to quit and restart the game. Worst of them all was trying to complete a story quest 2/3rds through the game and couldn't because the prompt didn't appear for me to do what I needed to do in order to complete the quest. Quit the game, closed the app and restarted, still didn't work. So I loaded an earlier save file (having ten or so auto save files at various points is one of the game's positives in my opinion) and decided to wait on doing that quest. Lost an hour and 15 minutes of progress. So I did other stuff for 10+ hours in game and finally went back to the quest and thankfully, the prompt appeared and I was able to complete the quest.

This is by far the buggiest game that I have played from Sony since the PS one days. In fact, all those issues listed above surpass all the issues that I had over 20 Sony published games for PS4 combined.

Had two bugs with Rift Apart. A crash/error that sent me back to the dashboard and I fell through the world once. Don't remember any issues with Miles Morales but unlike HFW and Rift Apart, I played that three months after it launched.

Finally, there's an option to change the controller configuration which I did. I'm not a fan of using the R1/R2 buttons for melee combat. Just no. Screw that. I'm not playing a Souls game here. I changed several buttons and because of this, I can't use weapons that are torn off from machines or that human enemies drop after you kill them. Basically, in order for me to do so, I have to change the controller configuration to default. Thankfully, I rarely if ever used the weapons from the machines in HZD and unless im required to, I haven't here either so it's not the biggest deal but this issue also shows that the game clearly wasn't fully tested, polished and ready to go. None of the changes I made conflict with anything according to the game as there's no warning or prompt or anything. When there is conflict, the game highlights it in the controller configuration menu. My setup doesn't have this at all even though, there is clearly a conflict.

Overall, based on how I rate games, HFW will still score high for me but category wise, combat/gameplay is going to be lower than the 10/10 I gave HZD.

Seeing Smallville's post above just reminded me of something. This game takes WAY TOO LONG to give you all the special tools. I still need the last one. It' very annoying because there's stuff in the game I can't do because I need this last special tool.

Reason I don't do the story quests quicker to get the tool is because how I play, once the story is finished, game is done.

Days gone imo was waaay buggier.

Sent from my SM-A520W using Operation Sports mobile app

[Smallville102001]

Re: Horizon Zero Dawn 2 Forbidden West

Don't get the talk about bugs have had none not 1 and sounds like he don't like the game at all lol. I am seeing more pop in than I was expecting though I guess thats because its a cross gen game but still not has much has the first game.

So I am at about 35% now after about 41 hours so likely this game is a 100+ hour game. Just got my first tallneck last night like right at 41 hours.

[peter42O]

Re: Horizon Zero Dawn 2 Forbidden West

Days gone imo was waaay buggier.

Amazingly, the only issue I had with Days Gone was the frame rate dropping and some slowdown. Other than that, I don't remember having any technical issues with the game. I'm sure I have a few posts in the Days Gone topic from when I played the game. If I had any issues, it would be in those posts. Had another bug the other day where I slid into the grass for stealth but Aloy slid inside of a tree, literally. Tried to tear off a component on a Stalker and the arrows bounced off the screen. I'm like what the hell and realized that I was stuck inside the tree. Had to quit the app and restart the game.

Don't get the talk about bugs have had none not 1 and sounds like he don't like the game at all lol. I am seeing more pop in than I was expecting though I guess thats because its a cross gen game but still not has much has the first game.

So I am at about 35% now after about 41 hours so likely this game is a 100+ hour game. Just got my first tallneck last night like right at 41 hours.

I'm liking the world, audio (excluding Aloy constantly talking and literally spoiling everything), story and characters. I don't like the combat/gameplay as much as I did in the first game. For example, you can climb more cliffs and whatnot while also having a grapple hook and yet, there's still so many instances where I have to jump through hoops to get where I want to go. It's all a predetrmined path and it's very annoying after playing AC Origins/Odyssey/Valhalla in which you can climb 98% of the world.

Overall, when the game is hitting on all cylinders, it's awesome but when it's not and im getting aggravated, not so much.

Still an excellent game overall but Dying Light 2 will be staying my overall game of the year for the time being.

[Smallville102001]

Re: Horizon Zero Dawn 2 Forbidden West

1. Horizon FW
2. Horizon Zero dawn
3. Ghost of Tsushima
4. Ratchet and clank crack in time
5. Ratchet and clank going commando
6. Spiderman ps4
7. Ratchet and clank rift apart
8. Spiderman miles Morales
9. Ratchet and clank tools of destruction
10. Modnation racers

Those are my top 10 favorite playstation/console exclusives.

I will show my over all top games of all time later but got a lot left to do in this game and yes I love insomniac games lol.

[rudyjuly2]

Re: Horizon Zero Dawn 2 Forbidden West

I just tried playing this morning after the latest patch and my game froze and locked up my entire PS5. Had to hard shut it down and go through safe/repair. I hope that was a very rare incident because this never happens to me.

[jrnlgrn]

Re: Horizon Zero Dawn 2 Forbidden West

Still plugging away here and there going for the platinum. Currently sitting at 61% completion after 72 hours played.

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[peter42O]

Re: Horizon Zero Dawn 2 Forbidden West

Completed HFW yesterday afternoon. Played approximately 145 hours. Completed nearly everything in the game (all side quests, errands, the arena, ruins, etc. excluding one Race which oh my goodness is the worst side activity in the game. Also, I didn’t play Strike as I have zero interest in it.) My overall completion percentage is over 93%. All collectibles were completed but missing a decent amount of datapoints which are basically the notes and documents in the game. Also, still need to upgrade a few ammo pouches. No major story spoilers but there may be a few gameplay spoilers so I spoiler tagged my entire review. And yes, it's a long post.

Spoiler

• VISUALS - 10/10 (superb)

HFW is easily the best looking game that I have completed this generation and while a few other games like Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart and Miles Morales look amazing, HFW easily surpasses both overall especially when it’s a massive open world. The different biomes are excellent, the foliage, character models, cut scenes, facial animations, movements, environments, the water, the machines, just everything is simply, holy crap!!! This is current generation looking and im so looking forward to seeing games that are not cross-gen like HFW is because despite this being cross-gen, the bar has been raised in terms of visuals. If anything and this is funny - it’s too much. Like, there’s too much visuals if that’s even possible. lol.

• AUDIO - 9.0/10 (excellent)

Music is all great as are the sound effects and voice acting is top tier. No issues with the audio at all except for one major issue which is the simple fact that Aloy never shuts the hell up. She’s constantly talking and telling the player what to do for everything and I mean everything. Need to solve a Cauldron, she’ll tell you, need to know if you have to climb up or get higher, she’ll tell you. It’s so freaking annoying and even more so, spoils a lot in terms of already being told what to do before you even have a chance to survey your surroundings and figure it out yourself. Guerrilla Games needs to add an “off/mute” option for Aloy outside of actual conversations.

• COMBAT/GAMEPLAY - 8.5/10 (great)

This will probably be surprising to some as the first game was a 10/10 for me in this category with only the camera being an issue. HFW expands on a lot of stuff in terms of combat, exploration, gameplay, traversal, etc. but for me personally, I had a lot of issues.

First and foremost is that I played the first 70 hours on hard difficulty and simply, you never feel like you get stronger or do any damage in melee or with the hunter bow which is my preference when it comes to the bows. You really need to target the components on the machines and tear them off as that does the most damage. The only time I was doing good damage was when I used the Melee Valor Surge which did far better damage but only lasts a certain amount of time.

After 70 hours, I switched to custom difficulty. Easy for how much damage enemies take from Aloy and normal for how much damage Aloy receives. Even on easy (and near the end, story for damage given), enemies still feel like they have too much HP. Stealth is good but not great because you rarely can take out the machines in one hit which to me, defeats the purpose of stealth. The bombs are the best weapon to use because they’re stronger and easier to hit your targets. There’s plenty of other weapons but I didn’t like any of them to be honest.

For melee combat, I wish that there was a “lock on” feature because there’s so many times where you’ll miss attacks or Aloy will attack in the wrong direction. The Valor Surges are fine I guess. I used a Melee Valor Surge that did do more damage when activated but overall, there’s 12 in total but you can only have 1 equipped at a time which just isn’t enough considering how many there is. There’s 6 skill trees and honestly, even early on in the game maxing out the stealth attacks, I never felt like I was strong enough. You never upgrade your spear like you do other weapons. Instead, it gets stat increases based on the armor that you wear. Not a fan of this at all. Wish I could have upgraded the spear like any other weapon. There’s a little more I could say but let me move on.

Traversal is worse than the first game because while there’s much more that can be climbed, it’s not like Assassin’s Creed where you can just climb 98% of the game. Here, you’re still limited to what can be climbed and in what direction. It’s more annoying, aggravating and frustrating than anything. You get a grappling hook early on in the game and you can obviously see why the climbing isn’t like AC because if it was, there would be no need for a grappling hook. This is cool in regards to opening up blocked paths or pulling out of reach chests to you so you can open them and collect the loot inside but what can be grappled is all pre-determined with “grapple points”. It’s not like Halo Infinite or even Dying Light 2 where you can either grapple at will or at least close to it. Those two games aren’t the most realistic in this regard so I can understand it but at times, I do prefer convenience over realism and this was one of those times.

There’s underwater areas which are pretty damn awesome, however, there’s no underwater combat which coming off the last 3 AC games is very disappointing. You basically have to hide in seaweed and stealth past any machines that may be underwater. Think AC IV: Black Flag because that’s exactly what it is. There’s also a glider which is pretty damn awesome. It feels great to just glide from a high mountain and not worry about some bullcrap stamina meter.

There’s another gameplay element which I won’t mention but doesn’t include combat which again, is disappointing. This aspect is cool but underwhelming. One other note, you get four “special items” in this game during the story quests. Two of which are in the second half of the story which is very annoying because you will be back tracking if you want to complete what you couldn’t access earlier.

Regarding AI, I would say that even on easy difficulty, the enemies aren’t stupid, especially the machines. You will still have some battles unless you max out a late game slingshot that allowed me to kill machines quickly compared to not having it even on easy. Human enemies will swarm you, circle around you, shoot you from a distance, etc. Machines are tough and some of their attacks and animations, like holy crap, you can see an extreme amount of work was put into all of this.

When everything is “hitting”, the combat and gameplay is better than what I rated it but compared to the first game, I think they added too much instead of just simplifying everything. There doesn’t need to be 6 skill trees especially when most of the skills are “meh”, at least for me and you can only equip 1 Valor Surge at a time. Simply, it’s trying to be a jack of all trades but is more of the master of none scenario. Of course, im definitely one of the few that didn’t like the combat/gameplay as all I have seen and read is mostly 95%+ positive about this category so it could just be me coming off of Dying Light 2 or just not being into it as much as I was in the first game.

Now the technical issues. I had one major error crash to the dashboard and had to restart the game completely. Aloy got frozen in an animation where you open up a car trunk and after using fast travel, she was still in the frozen animation which was funny. So that was a restart. The screen goes black for 2 seconds randomly and this happened a lot. However, this could be connected to a patch or me changing the difficulty settings because I didn’t have this the entire game. More like the second half of the game. This happened a few times within a few minutes during a major battle but thankfully, since I was playing on custom/easy at this time, I was still able to win the battle despite being “blind” a few times due to this technical issue.

One issue I had late during a side quest was a machine enemy doing an attack and going literally underground and getting stuck. Couldn’t kill the machine and thus, couldn’t advance. Had to reload the save. This happened a second time. Reloaded the save. Third time, I went in with my strong slingshot and killed both machines very quickly and thus, was able avoid this issue from happening again. And finally, there’s a main story quest which was around the halfway point that needed a “prompt” in order to complete the quest but the prompt never appeared. Restarted the game twice. Same issue. So I reloaded an earlier save file, lost just over an hour of progress and decided to do a bunch of other stuff in the game. Went back 10 hours or so of in game time later and was able to complete the quest.

One final note, changing the controller configuration to where the attack buttons are square/triangle instead of R1/R2 and picking up items, starting conversations, etc. with R2 instead of triangle caused an issue where I couldn’t shoot the heavy weapons like those that you can tear off a machine. Pressing R2, Aloy would simply drop the weapon. I had to change the buttons a few times in order to advance a main or side quest due to what is required. Also had to do this once or twice for the Arena and Hunting Grounds activities. There’s also some pop-in but all minor. None of it was major or even close to what Skill Up for example showed in his review video.

• STORY/CHARACTERS - 9.0/10 (excellent)

Won’t say too much here. Story starts slow and picks up about a 3rd of the way into it and by the halfway point, something unexpected happens which adds more to the story. I will say that the game leans heavily into the sci-fi stuff especially as you progress through the main quests. I didn’t love any single character but I liked them all. Didn’t dislike a single character. There are several story lines in the game and I think that they should have had their own quest lines (like AC Odyssey for example) because for what is an action RPG to me, the main story should have been longer.

There are dialogue choices but no real consequences which is fine because it’s what I prefer to be honest. I do wish that the conversations didn’t have dialog choices and was instead like AC Origins where it’s basically all scripted and just goes in one motion until concluded. I think that setup would work better here. Other than that, I wish that the antagonists (which is more than one) had more screen time. None of them are truly fleshed out and gone in depth like they should have been. It’s more quantity than quality for this lone reason and because I liked the antagonists, I would have preferred more quests and more in depth details about them. I won’t really comment on the ending.

All I will say is that again, it’s heavily sci-fi based and I am intrigued and interested to see where the story goes next. The biggest positive for the story/characters are actually the quests. All of them are good or better. They will take you throughout the game world, give you some damn good enemy encounters (humans and/or machines) and just overall, I really enjoyed every main story quest which is another reason why I wish it was longer than what it actually is. This category is what kept me engaged for the entire game since I had many issues with the combat/gameplay.

• OPTIONAL SIDE CONTENT - 8.5/10 (great)

This will be debatable depending on what side content you like in open world games. There’s a lot of side content. The side quests/errands were all at least decent or better. I did them all and didn’t have one where I was like, this sucks. However, I did like all the characters and the Tribes so if you’re someone who doesn’t get invested into these two aspects, you’ll probably feel differently. Overall quality is better than the first game but is nowhere close to The Witcher 3 which in my opinion is still the bar for side quests and whatnot. At least for me anyway.

There’s your Rebel Camps/Outposts. Basically small/big. I do love these in open world games so im definitely playing favorites here. I always do all of these in every open world game. I would say that the battles are good, get tougher as you progress through them all and there’s a connection story wise to them which is pretty cool as opposed to them just being there.

The Cauldrons are so damn cool. There’s not many but you need to complete these if you want to override the machines which isn’t really for me so I saved these for the last 15 hours or so.

One of the surprises were the Ruins. These are small areas that are basically puzzles that require traversal and just figuring out how to get the Orb that’s inside a locked area. I really liked these and wish there were more of them.

There’s melee pits, the arena and other stuff as well. I pretty much did everything. There’s races which is by far the worst activity in the entire game because it plays and controls like crap and even on easy, is a pain to complete. I still need to win the last race but im like, meh. lol. Strike is basically a board game that looks like a turn based strategy RPG. It’s fine but not for me.

The Tallnecks return but you can’t just climb them. They’re basically a platforming/traversal puzzle that may or may not include enemies in the area. I love the Tallnecks. Basically, a walking tower but man, looks so freaking cool. Especially from a distance.

• OVERALL - 9.0/10 (excellent)

Overall, HFW is an excellent game and regarding combat/gameplay, I think that it’s more me having issues than the game itself because I have seen 95% of videos/impressions/etc. love all this and say it’s best/strongest part of the game. For me, it could be due to expectations as I was expecting certain things and didn’t get it.

Story/characters is what really kept me fully invested as I enjoyed this aspect. Wish the main story quest line was longer but the quality of the quests themselves easily makes up for it. Voice acting is top notch and the music is great. Visually, best looking game thus far bar none. If anything, it’s too much.

For reference, HZD was a 9.5/10 and my 2017 game of the year with combat/gameplay being a 10/10. I just would have preferred less depth combat/gameplay wise and simply fine tune what was already there instead of changing/adding a lot of stuff because in some ways, it just didn’t click for me most of the time. Still an excellent game and if you own a PS5 and enjoyed the original game, I definitely recommend it.

[IHateDuke32]

Re: Horizon Zero Dawn 2 Forbidden West

It’s taken me a few months and even though I’m still sucked into too many games at the moment, I fired this up over the weekend and now I’m hooked haha. I’m still very early on, I just learned somewhat where the story is heading and I never would have guessed what they came up with, it’s pretty damn cool. At least so far haha, we’ll see where it all leads.

I redownloaded Zero Dawn to finish trophy hunting for the platinum so close to the release of Forbidden West, and I think that was the main factor I wasn’t grabbed by Forbidden West right at launch like so many of you here. However I’m finally there and can’t wait to keep discovering things in this world. I love Aloy and this universe. And anytime Sylens shows up, it only makes me want to fire up a random episode of the best damn television show ever created in The Wire.

[IHateDuke32]

Re: Horizon Zero Dawn 2 Forbidden West

Well I was playing last night and without spoiling anything, I had to go through a certain place to get where I needed to go, but there’s guards blocking the way. A short convo ensues and they realize who Aloy is and decide to let me pass. Except when that is about to happen and the convo ends, Aloy is sunken into the floor lol. I recorded a video of it but no clue how to post it. But yea, I just exited out the game and went back in and the same thing kept happening over and over again. Each time I’d go talk to these guards and each time the convo would end, I’d warp into the floor and would be unable to get out. The only thing that fixed it was I shut down my PS5 and when I went back into the game, I progressed time from night to day. The next time I approached the guards during the in-game daytime, everything worked fine and I was able to process. Really weird.

[Smallville102001]

Re: Horizon Zero Dawn 2 Forbidden West

Well I was playing last night and without spoiling anything, I had to go through a certain place to get where I needed to go, but there’s guards blocking the way. A short convo ensues and they realize who Aloy is and decide to let me pass. Except when that is about to happen and the convo ends, Aloy is sunken into the floor lol. I recorded a video of it but no clue how to post it. But yea, I just exited out the game and went back in and the same thing kept happening over and over again. Each time I’d go talk to these guards and each time the convo would end, I’d warp into the floor and would be unable to get out. The only thing that fixed it was I shut down my PS5 and when I went back into the game, I progressed time from night to day. The next time I approached the guards during the in-game daytime, everything worked fine and I was able to process. Really weird.

I had something odd the other night my self the sound wasn't come in like normal and the rumble on the controller stopped working. I close the game back to ps5 menu and went back to the game and everthing was fine.

[Smallville102001]

Re: Horizon Zero Dawn 2 Forbidden West

At 75% after 86 hours the game really is like 100 hours to do everthing has I have not been just messing around. Love the story will be interesting to see where it ends may be a while before I get to the end though with nba playoffs starting this weekend I will not have any time for anything besides watching playoffs and working and sleeping for like a month.

[Smallville102001]

Re: Horizon Zero Dawn 2 Forbidden West

Just beat the game last night 92 hours and 80% so still some side stuff to do. I loved zero dawn but this is a pretty good improvement. The end of zero dawn I liked better but over all forbidden west is better. The credits are like the most beautiful cool credits ever. I do have 1 major disappointment just something that feels like a missed opportunity. How do I post a spoiler? The game cracks my top 10 all time favorite games list now.

1.Zelda BOTW
2. Zelda Oot
3. Batman Arkham knight
4. Zelda TP
5. Batman Arkham city
6. Tony hawk 4
7. Tony hawk underground 2
8. DKCTF
9. Tony hawk 3
10. Horizon forbidden west.