Horizon Zero Dawn™ Complete Edition

I really like this game, the visuals are so good and I love the story. It's must!

This isn't a proper review: I've only played the game about 10 hours. Too long for a refund, too short for a review. So far, the game seems to run quite well, it hasn't had a single crash or even bug on me, and it looks and sounds great. I'm on a Ryzen 5 5600X, 16G memory and an RTX 2080. Running at 4K, I can set basically everything on High and use DLSS Quality mode for a pretty solid 60FPS. Content-wise it's a more mixed bag. I think Aloy as a main character is pretty okay: It's cool that we're getting a female lead who isn't overly sexualized but instead a competent human being. There is still a whiff of "the chosen one" type character building here, this time through some tech Aloy finds at the beginning of the game. The problem with that is, this is never really adressed between the characters of the game, so eventually it's functionally like being just another chosen one. What isn't so hot is the game hasn't really pulled me in to its world or plot. I get that 10 hours isn't that long to play in the general RPG scale, but honestly, 10 hours SHOULD be enough to build something. But within our 10 hours there's not really any characters around to care for, nor anything I'd be super excited to explore. The one real plot twist in the opening was so easy to anticipate and so worn out I actually blew a raspberry at my screen when it happened, thinking "Really? Really?" So, for now, I'm giving the game 3 stars out of five for excellent presentation and some intriguing elements, but for lacking any real pull into the world or plot.

I've got this game a long time ago, but I could never play since then. Whenever I want to start it, the game always crashes immediately. The game developer's support doesn't even care to answer to my message. The GOG only gives useless and general "solutions", like "restart PC" - but it doesnt't help. After reading other reviews I think it's better if it doesn't even start.

I bought the game on GoG after playing it on PS4 and it's just exiting to see the game runs very well on my hardware and improves the whole experience I had on my previous gameplay. There are some minor glitches (nothing to be worried about), but crafting ammunition for your bow, waiting for the exact moment to attack the giant enemies and controlling Aloy on the field is one of the best experiences I had in many years. I totally recommend this game in its GoG version.

While a lot of people will complain a bit about how much of a 'monster hunter' game this is on the harder difficulty settings, it's a pretty apt comparison. However, while I don't enjoy monster hunter that much, this game is pretty flipping epic on Ultra Hard. Yes, flinging arrows into a giant metal monstrosity will not yield much damage on its own, and will necessitate significant scavenging/crafting even mid-fight to grind many enemies down. Tearing off armor and disabling enemy weapons and critical components to cripple enemies is absolutely necessary, or pulling off guerrilla warfare tactics to whittle an enemy down before an open engagement is possible. Yes, the damage values are skewed to heavily favor the enemies, and multiple enemies can attack at once greatly increasing the difficulty of each combat. However, few games have ever given me the sweaty palm feeling and the absolute elation I get when fighting a massively overpowered and agressive Thunderjaw and turning the beast into a hobbling mewling mess that finally gives out and collapses. Graphics are beautiful, nuff said. Story, decent but not as heavy as what I was expecting. Honestly, they could have done a bit more to make the different societies in this game appear more organic. Aside from basic shops and some quest hubs, lots of dead space in many cities that (while being great eye candy) get old passing through it time and time again.