I started this last week after beating Cyberpunk 2077. Horizon Zero Dawn was on my playlist for a long time as I have never had a PS4 and they released it for PC last year. I had heard it was a disastrous release, but has been updated multiple times since then.
I’m about 10 hours in and this are my thoughts on the game. Would love to hear any other thoughts on the game from anyone.
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PC only – the strangest way to handle graphical issues I have ever seen. It runs a “optimize shader” sequence every time you load up the game. It took 20-25 minutes the first time and only takes about 3 minutes on my PC now. I will say this: The game loads quickly and runs just fine on my PC. I’ll take a 3-5 minute “get to the game” wait time if the game runs smoothly after that.
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Neat game, not what I expected. It’s a stealth game, primarily. The game expects you to set traps, tripwires, and sneak past enemies. I was hoping for a combination of that, but also the ability to really attack if I wanted. It strongly discourages full-on attacks. I am constantly overpowered if I do that. I am not sure how big a fan of this I am. It has discouraged my exploration. Each battle with a major machine(well, what I call major at this point) is a laborious sequence.
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Game looks beautiful. Yep, expected it and glad to see it. Gorgeous and I am up over 45-55 FPS consistently on medium settings. Very happy about that.
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Limited inventory space is tough and while I craft to get more space, it is too slow of an increase and I constantly seem to have to leave behind things due to reaching maxed out inventory. Kind of not fun, to be honest.
I would say that while I am not entirely disappointed, I am somewhat disappointed. This is entirely because of my expectations, though. It is a great game in many ways, but I hoped to be punished less severely for attacking the machines. I’m just not good enough at stealth and trap laying to be successful that way. I wish I could build my character to be more physically aggressive, but the game pushes you towards stealth big time.
I did, however, just realize I can rapid-fire arrows with no punishment to my damage inflicted. I guess that is obvious to everyone else, but was not to me until I just started trying it.