I've never played a game that felt like a perfect well crafted story AND incredible addicting and fun gameplay. HZD truly nailed it. This is probably the most complete and well polished experience I've had in a game since the original Portal game.
I was waiting for this game to come to GOG for ages and now that I've had a chance to sink some time into it I can safely say that It's a mediocre game. The characters are pretty cool, the gameplay is okay, the combat get's a bit repetitive and the storyline is really weird. I can certainly understand why people like this game, but it's not for me.
First of all, this game is not for you if your penis falls off when you have to play as a female character. Yes, you have to play as a girl - boohoo - get over it.
Now for the awesome game:
-It's still good looking by 2021 standards. Could be better, could be alot worse.
-It responds surprisingly well to PC-controls for a console port. This translates to: Most of the time Aloy does what you want her to do. Sometimes though, she just clings to some rock or tree and refuses to budge until you move her a few millimetres left or right. I've seen far worse ports.
-The ingame tutorials do what they are supposed to do. They tell you what you should do but don't hold your hand. The perfect equilibrium between babysitting and Souls.
-It is fun to play just running around and hunting machines while trying different tactics. And it feels really rewarding when a new approach suddenly works out and a seemingly invincible opponent becomes just a tough challenge.
-The NPCs have well written dialogues overall.
-The story is good, at least up to the point I was able to get to.
The last point is the reason why I give the game only 3 out of 5 stars: I would have given the otherwise well deserved five stars if it were not for the horrible stability issues. The game sometimes froze for no apparent reason when I was still learning the ropes, i.e. before being made a seeker.
After becoming a seeker the game moved on to freezing/crashing regularly after a few minutes playing. When this happens, you have the option to send a crash report, though I seriously doubt anybody cares about that anymore. Why do I doubt this? If you would like to contact support, following the instructions in the crash report just takes down a rabbit hole that ultimately brings you to Sony's support for the PS4 version. Which is exactly as helpful as you'd think owning the PC version. Maybe there is still an official support for PC gamers out there for this game. But if so, they have hidden like ninjas.
I played the game through on a PS4 pro, but that gave at most 60fps (performance mode) with okay visuals or a much better looking game that couldnt even hold 30fps (quality mode) utilizing 4k checkerboard rendering instead of native 4k.
On PC with an rtx 3090 I can maintain well over 60 fps at 4k. Visual settings are substantially improved from the PS4 pro quality mode. The game looks absolutely stunning on PC and the combat feels much better/more fluid with the increased fps. I am pretty sure even with a gtx 970 gpu and i7-4790k processor one would have a much better experience in terms of visuals and fps than the PS4 version which makes it well worth playing again.
For those who have never played, horizon has fantastic story, voice acting and game systems. Along with bloodborne and god of war, it is the reason I even purchased a PS4.
I fell in love with Aloy. The character is just so ... right. It just works, fits perfectly.
Love open world games.
The moment I really started to appreciate the story was when I was trying to explain the whole thing to a friend, and while I was doing so I thiught "Holy crap, there's actually a lot going on in this game".. and it has it's movie worthy moments.
I've completed it on PS4 with over 80% accomplishments.
I'm soooooo tempted to buy it on PC and start the adventure again.