My Unique Review of Horizon Forbidden West

I got Horizon Forbidden West Regalia edition that came with the statue, for PS5. I regret getting that, the statue is ugly, and broke right out of the box. Literally, I am very careful as I have piles of statues and figures. It broke right as I got it out of the box. Really pissed me off. I should have just got the non-statue version of the game. I am, and have been, perplexed as to why the statue wasn’t of Aloy like the first game? Aloy is what people want, not some ugly elephant. Who’s idea was it to think that people didn’t want Aloy? Very perplexing to me.

Anyway. About 130 hours of gameplay and I completed it. The story was somewhat interesting. I think the companions were ok, but sometimes the dialogue got to be too much. A five paragraph dialogue could have been trimmed to one, for example. It felt like Mass Effect/KOTOR was a direct influence on this. The home hub facility was kind of nice. However, you needed to be able to FT directly inside, not being forced to FT outside and then enter every single time. I also wanted the doors to ALL auto-open. I got sick of opening doors and the lengthy animation each time. I think more should have been done with the facility, customization for example. The ending of the story was, empty and unsatisfying. It pretty much just sets up the next game or possible coming DLC.

Aloy, and main protagonist, felt like a bitter and nearly mean character a lot of the time. Is this how all “strong, independent” women need to be written now days? Her character in this sequel was sometimes off-putting to me. She seemed somewhat self-absorbed and like everything was on her shoulders, but yet she had people willing to help all around her. Yes, she was trying to be a “hero” and save the world, but going about it all wrong. In the “end” of the game maybe she seemed a little better with her attitude, but it was a somewhat off-putting experience getting her there.

I got every trophy except two. One trophy was pertaining to playing the board game. Why was that thing put in the game? I have absolutely ZERO interest in board games INSIDE a game I am playing. (Such as the card game in Witcher games. ZERO interest in it.) Learning all the mechanics and rules is utterly boring and frankly pointless. The other trophy I didn’t and wont get is the “Horse Race”. Why was that put in the game? The race goes on and on. Utterly ridiculous frankly. Zero use or interest in doing that. These two trophies should not have been trophies for getting 100%. Forcing you to play parts of the game you have zero interest in is ridiculous. So, these two trophies go along with my over-all opinion of the game:

I think the game got away from them and it has too much bulk and repetition. It’s a game of 10000000000 side quests that have WAY too much dialogue. Why do I care about a persons entire freakin’ life, what their favorite color is, and their families past just to do a side quest that gives me a ridiculously small reward? In fact, I think the majority of the rewards for quests were very lackluster. I ended up skipping entire conversations, because I DIDN’T care about the dialogue. Also. Why do I care about their sexual orientation? One “guy” wanted to wear women’s clothing. What was the point in that being somehow “relevant” to the side quest? That all seemed shoe-horned in for “inclusion” imo. Not needed.

The other thing that was ridiculous was that the Legendary armor/weapons require ridiculous amounts of items that require you to kill the same enemies over and over and over and over again. It was BORING. Again, too much repetition. I ended up switching the game to Story mode difficulty because of it. It still gives you the same and even better rewards, so why not?

The climbing is very glitchy. Why does it force you to go clear over someplace else to get up? Very frustrating. Get us up where we want, not detours for no reason.

I encountered a “glitch” when getting to the city with all the singing. I could not hear the dialogue because the constant singing was TOO LOUD. It was REALLY annoying.

The time you spend being knocked down was nearly maddening. Just WAY too long. Have these people not played Ghosts of Tsushima? THAT is how it is done.

I played before the patch that stopped the pick up animation was added. So, I hated the pick up animation and it’s nice it is optionally removed now.

I give the game a 3/5 rating. I think the first game did things better, and I frankly enjoyed it more. This game could have had about 25% of it trimmed out and would have been better for it. Sure, this game looks pretty, but looks imo aren’t everything when it comes to a game. Some of the pretties games are dogcrap games imo. (The Last of Us 1 and 2 “cough”)