Story
[Spoiler alert] The story of horizon follows a girl called Aloy who was set as an outcast of her tribe since she did not have a mother. Aloy did not like being an outcast since the tribe members either bullied or ignored her most of the time, so she trained all of her childhood so that she could take part in a trial that would make her a part of the tribe again if she managed to win it. As she wins the trial, she and everyone else near her is attacked by a mysterious cult and after she survives the attack it is revealed to her that she indeed does not have a mother and she was found outside an ancient bunker to where she can not enter due to corrupted data. Aloy starts a journey to recover this data so that she could enter the bunker and find out who her mother is. Along the journey it is revealed that her mother, or rather who she is clone of, was a scientist who created an AI that overlooks the life on the whole earth to make sure that it doesn't die out and the cult that attacked her is part of that AI that has gone rogue.
[No more spoilers] The way the game hands out bits of story, with all it's twists and turns, is done in a way that always leaves you wanting for more. When you have discovered an answer to a question you were asking before, you are simultaneously given another question that you now have to figure out. And the story doesn't just all from the same place, sometimes you discover it on your own from various different sources of ancient technology, sometimes it is given to you by a fellow traveler. The story is the main aspect of the game that makes you come back again and again and it never disappoints.
Gameplay
This is probably the part where the game has most of it's issues. While the gameplay is a healthy mix of old school and more modern implementations, it still stumbles quite a bit. First issue with the gameplay might just be the fact that I am mainly a PC gamer and I find controllers quite inaccurate but even so the fact that this game is first released on console with PC release over three years later is a bit odd. The fighting mechanics, and most of the game on itself is based on the fact that you have to shoot weak spots on enemies if you want to kill them within a reasonable amount of time, and trying to do that on a controller is quite difficult, at least for me. The second issue that I found mainly affected the stealth, but also movement somewhat. A big part of the game is stealth gameplay, trying to hide in bushes from the enemies but unless the mission is specifically scripted for stealth, it does seem like the enemies do not really care about the bushes as much as they should. This was especially true with the rolling mechanic when trying to roll around bushes, or any obstacles where you would quite easily get stuck or just fail to roll properly.
Sound Design
In the game the main character has a scanning tool that made a quick scanning noise when scanning, and that scanning noise came out of the controller speakers. I found it really cool when I found out that it did that but it became very irritating within 15 minutes and then after couple of hours I just completely ignored it.
Open world
The game is set in a very generic open world, where the game is a one big map with several different biomes and it also has objectives that you need to climb in order to scan and reveal parts of the map. When take a little bit closer look into those biomes we can see that each one is made to represent a certain tribe that has a certain culture and is very much tied into their surroundings. So even with being such a generic open world map with your standard side missions and certain enemies in certain places, it does tie in very well with the overall story. The design of the entire setting of the world is also very interesting. Where the game sets in places that could probably be recognized by some people, but in general the world is set in so much in the future that the surroundings are nothing like we would have now.
Comparison to the previous one
There is no previous one. As far as I know Horizon: zero dawn is, or was, a brand new ip. Horizon: zero dawn 2 when?
The Review
I had heard some good things about this before I played it and found it to be even better than I expected. The only thing that put me off was the jankiness of the matter of how the character controls behaved, especially during combat. Otherwise I am trying to look past the fact that this maybe shouldn't have been only console release originally but here's to hoping that the issues that were in PS4 version will be fixed in the PC version
Overall: one of the most interesting games I have played in a while and I would like to give it 8/10
