The game has amazing visuals and great music, but the gameplay is tedious and controls feel as dated as the games from the era they so masterfully emulate with visuals and sound. The story is fun and has some very enjoyable twists, as well as great sense of humor. And although it outstays its welcome, completing it was still a blast. Gameplay alone I would rate at 3 stars at best, but I can't bring myself to give it less than 4. The rest of the package is just too good.
Judging by other reviews this game should have been a disappointment. But it is not. Of course, a lot of it is a fair criticism. The game does have some issues: performance is bad, moment to moment gameplay and shooter / melee mechanics feel quite clunky. But the story is good. Some of the side content is fantastic, and the endings? They have actually nailed them. A rare huge story focused game ends as well as this one. It is quite short if you only go the main story path, but let's be real: if you buy a game like that, you should expect side content to be as much of a main dish as the main story path, right? Do keep in mind that you need a monster of a pc to run this at decent graphics settings, and even then expect to encounter occasional glitch or crash. Gameplay is nothing to write home about. It gets the job done, it's somewhat competent but don't expect any revelations or surprises there: what you see is what you get. Melee is especially unsatisfying, because c'mon. It's a first person game, of course it won't be satisfying. The rest is just clunky. Not the end of the world, but if the only thing you care about is moment to moment gameplay, you might be disappointed. All in all? Could have been better, but it is absolutely worth your time if you like a good story and some open world content and don't mind a glitch or two.
TL;DR the game has a fantastic story and looks amazing. Gameplay is mediocre at best. Let's start with the fact that I like me some great action games. Nioh 2, stuff from FromSoftware, DMC series, Batman Arkham series that kind of thing. Why mention? Because good action game is not what Horizon: Zero Dawn is. Melee combat is rather sluggish and unresponsive, with no lock on and any drive or fun. Weapon variety is not present at all, you only get a boring spear with a couple of boring attacks. Fine then, maybe it's a shooter game with some nice guns? Well, ranged weapon variety is better, and some of the elemental mechanics are rather fun to play with. But without lock on or even target tracking, focusing on ranged weapons with a controller is an exercise in frustration. Fine then, use your keyboard and mouse. But it doesn't work either due to controls scheme being weird and clearly not designed with such a control method in mind. Survival mechanics are poorly implemented as well. You have to actively scavange for your default healing method. Health does not regen between fights (you can get that effect late game, but at a cost.) So you have to do a lot, and I mean a lot of looking for some grass to replenish your health potion supply. Ammo has to be crafted on the go and even the largest ammo pouches can only contain a handful of shots. Wanna sell all the junk? Good luck spending a lot of time looking for trash items in your inventory. You know, the ones that can only be used for selling. God, "sell junk" has been in videogames for so long I can't even remember the first game that had it. Now for the good part. The world-building is great and the setting is the post apocalypse I could have never imagined. Story is fantastic and for the most part, well told, albeit it gets rather weird by the end of the game. Side quests are wel thought-out and are fun just for the sake of the story. It is a shame gameplay does not live up to the setting, story and characters.
The game had so much potential, yet instead the devs decided to make another Symphony of the Night, with all of its awkwardness and jank. The thing is, what was an incredibly fresh and moderately well designed back when SotN was released, now feels very dated. Combat is boring and repetitive. The pacing is generally bad and there are huge difficulty spikes on an occasional boss. The map is too large for its own good. Means to navigate it require one to change the loadout constantly. It may have been cool back in the day, but right now it feels dated and tedious. There are some clever things here and there, with some really well designed "a-ha!" moments. But those are very rare. Backtracking is made annoying, as teleports are few and far between. And fighting game like special weapon moves are just not worth the effort. Controls in general are pretty inconvenient. And don't get me started on visuals and sound. The backgrounds look like they were made for one game and characers for another. The variety of enemies is kinda okay, but there are some completely random things in there, like large cats or bunny girls. I mean... really? And the sound... The sound design in general is very amateur. I'd be okay with sound like that in a student's project, not in a game that asks for $40 five years after its release. The first music theme you hear is catchy and sets the mood great, but sounds very thin. Aside from that, the tunes have never clicked for me. And yeah, the price is the final nail in the coffin. At this price point you can buy Hollow Knight twice and get a coffee or two. And Hollow Knight is a far, far superior game. And don't get me started on the dlc. $15 for the cosmetics in a single player game? Disgusting. An extra star for the great promo materials and a really impressive Kickstarter campaign.
The game would have been much better if not for the over reliance on the Batmobile. I get it, it's a fantastic thing to play around with, but it gets old really, really quickly. Other than that - a solid entry in the series. Solid, but far from being above average. A disclaimer: can't speak about gog version specifically. Played this game on Steam.
The good. Art style is fantastic, with heavy inspiration from multiple sources yet unique and reconizable. Animations are gory and beautiful to look at, they don't get old thanks to how well they are made as well as how they don't get in the way. All the good things you'd expect from a metroidvania are there: exploration is mostly rewarding, the game provides a fair amount of puzzles and collectibles. Locations are varied and are not too large. Bosses are varied, well balanced and feel like a proper challenge. Beating every one of them was a delight and felt properly rewarding. Combat is mostly fair and predictable. If you fail, it is your mistake. The meh. Map is surprisingly useless for a modern metroidvania. Collectibles are not marked at all. I don't know why they keep doing it, looking for that one collectible you somehow missed is tedious. Platforming is mostly serviceable, but the camera does not provide enough ability to look around, falling down to your death because you haven't seen the pit can happen. The way they implemented the DarkSouls-like 'collect your corpse' mechanic is kinda cool, kinda bizarre. It provides a benefit, but as for the punishment, not so much. The bad. Combat is very much a mixed bag. It is fair, yes, but dodging does not always work as expected: some attacks cannot be dodged and it is never obvious which ones. Enabled an item that prevents collision damage? Nah, you're still getting it, but slightly less often. Most of the stuff you find are collectibles. It doesn't feel rewarding enough. Large map is really suffering from the lack of means to fast travel. Navigating can and will be tedious if you aim for the 100% completion. Quests. Dark Souls is a good game, but can we please not borrow bad things from it?.. Quests should be more obvious and better explained. Occasional bugs. I had to restart the game a couple of times because of getting stuck or losing most of the control over the character.
This game looks amazing, but sadly, plays like one from early 90's. Controls are extremely inefficient, the character slides before stopping, hitting an enemy with a sword takes an awful lot of practice and good luck avoiding being stunlocked by a boss in a corner. It's one of those cases where upgrading graphics and music is not near enough, and one should upgrade gameplay as well.
It is an amazing game in many aspects. The animation, art style and voice acting are gorgeous. The story is beautiful and well-told and the metroidvania aspect of the game is undobtedly well-executed. But there is a slight problem to keep in mind. While there is not many games I could recommend more than “Dust...”, the game is extremely easy to play even on the hardest difficulty setting, the enemies just don't scale and after you hit a certain level, you breeze through all the enemies in any area in no time or effort. And while I enjoyed the game a lot, it is still a thing to keep in mind. Oh, and while the game was initially released on consoles, it is one of the best pc ports ever made, keyboard and mouse support is flawless and I have encountered no crashes whatsoever.
It's a fun toy to mess with, has some awkward controls and black humour, but my main problem with it is the price tag. It's too expensive for what it is. Wait for the discount on this one and you will enjoy it. If you want to run it on linux, native version is available on Steam.
It doesn't matter if 3/4 of the game are something in between a strategy game and Overlord. The writing, the style and the music save the day. On easy difficulty level the strategy part is not a problem any more, and seriously, with music by Judas Priest, Black Sabbath, Dark Tranquillity, Manowar, Megadeth and many other famous metal bands this game is totally worth playing. Add some funny jokes, amazing style and awesome voice acting by Jack Black, there is no solid reason to skip this game. PS. The game was released natively on Linux and is available on Steam if you wish to run it on that particular platform.
