Please check out the most helpful reviews and please think twice about giving away your data to sony. It concerns us all and having integrity against audacious company practices will benefit in the long run. Something I wish GOG would show here too.
Only a few hours into it, it runs pretty well
https://imgur.com/a/rIH23Pf benchmarks
Might run warm in beginning since it does shader compiling's in the back
Gameplay itself is reminiscent of AC odyssey and every other console game, its all third person something something, in any case its a high fidelity experience with a unique presentation to itself.
Im super glad this game arrived on this platform, gog once again worth the wait.
Horizon Zero Dawn is an absolute gem of character development, world building and writing. From the lead protagonist Aloy, an absolute benchmark on how well written, deep female lead through an intricate and beautiful open world, this game can shackle someone to the screen for quite a while.
The main portagonist, Aloy, thrives through logically and emotionally sound characterization. I thoroughly enjoyed every single response she gave and made me deeply care for her as a character.
Both the main narrative, while taking a few hours to really start picking up pace, but then really goes wild, with great pacing and unexpected story beats around every odd corner that left me guessing as to the grander picture throughout the game, as well as the diverse, well written sidequests are really driving this game home.
The open world exploration, while a bit worn out due to its shared DNA with Ubisoft open world titles, still stay interesting due to the visual storytelling through the world itself. Theres something uniquely defining at every corner of the world.
While servicable, the character progression is a bit of a mixed bag. Traits unlock abilities that, especially early on, feel rather bland and could have well been part of Aloy's core capabilities and the itemization feel like far more was planned for it but scrapped in the end.
Now to the bad thing: The PC port. While by no means broken, the shoddy handling of shaders lead to quite a few loading screens in the open world interrupting gameplay and texture-streaming and LOD-handling needs a few fixes still. There was more than one occasions where cutscenes played out using puppet-like looking models.
Overall, a masterpiece that doesn't quite realize its full potetential but gets really darn close to it, further burdened by few, but noticable, technical issues on the PC platform.
However, I still heavily recommend this game, if not for the excellent writing and world building alone!
I bought this game full price and I regret nothing. Fantasy, Sci-fi, Survival like, extensive semi open world. Great story, memorable hero's and villains, beautiful landscape. Stealth gameplay, ability to climb and jump over any terrain. Extensive attention to detail, clothes get wet in rain or in water and covered in snow! Foot prints in sand, dirt and mud too. No annoying quick time events, every second is logical and extreme emphasis on story telling. World is big enough to feel full but small enough to make fast travel not necessary. Combat is great, different options to win fights, never too draining or tedious. Satisfying game all around.