Building and improving on the gameplay loop of the first game, it continues to showcase an interesting and fun main character through an enormous map to be explored. Forbidden West likely has enough content to make some completionists easily play for a 100+ hours.

Wikipedia summary:

Horizon Forbidden West is a 2022 action role-playing game developed by Guerrilla Games and published by Sony Interactive Entertainment. The game is set in a post-apocalyptic version of the Western United States, recovering from the aftermath of an extinction event caused by a rogue robot swarm. The player, assuming control of Aloy, must venture into the Forbidden West to find the source of a mysterious plague that kills all it infects.

Review

Setup

  • Version: PlayStation 5
  • Difficulty: Normal
  • Total playing time: 39,5h (no Burning Shores, almost no optional content)

Comments

The first impressions I had were that the game had way better climbing system than the previous. Although I felt like the camera control was worse, as you need to look up way more. Because of how close the camera was compared to the character, it felt awful at the beginning, but got better as I got more used to it.

The skill tree looked way more appealing. It seemed to be better split based on the focus you wanted to have for your playstyle. However, it also felt harder to have an overview due to how the zooming and browsing worked.

Particularly, I disliked the stash. After a while, I got used to it, but honestly I preferred having limited space on the backpack and having to make decisions. The first game had an overwhelming amount of items that I could never wrap my head around, and now it is made worse by not even being able to see them as they are directly sent to some stash I mostly did not use.

I was a bit divided on the upgrading item system. While the system itself felt nicer, the process was more annoying. It felt like the monsters are more rarely displaced on the map, with the areas being filled with too many different “models”, making it just more annoying and hard to find specific models for the items you need. As I was not as motivated to explore the map, due to having less interest into the side content and because part of the side content I had interest in was just locked out for a big part of the game, it just became harder for me to upgrade.

One thing that I would put under the “game’s fault” list, however, is the side content that we could do before that are now randomly blocked. For example, we meet metal flowers in the map for a long time and can not pick them up, until much later in the game when we enable a new ability/gadget to do it. Definitely not my cup of tea to just have things that are collectible not being able to be picked up for no good reason, only to later have them enabled, and now I have to backtrack every place. It is made worse in this instance, because in the previous game it was available to you from the start.

The addition of the gliding mechanic was welcome, specially when bundled together with the better climbing system. It felt a bit like Breath of the Wild, in a good sense. Unfortunately, for a great part of my playthrough, I was not that excited about the exploration side, since I was fatigued from the battle focus, and the side content was not as rewarding or interesting for me.

I don’t know if this is because of the difficulty settings, but one of the previous game’s most menacing machines, the Stalker, just felt dumb in this game. I had a mission to gather some machine parts, and ended up accidentally luring like 3 machines plus however many invisible stalkers there were around, and I just killed one by one. I recall Zero Dawn version of stalkers being much scarier and more dangerous.

Because I was a bit disappointed with how the story went on the previous game, I also gave up and just did not read a single data log. While I respect the work put to create the universe, I just did not really care that much to spend the time and attention. I mostly paid attention to main quest cutscenes and conversations with the friends. A lot of the NPCs did not vibe with me, and so I also just ignored most of the side quests. Although I must say that the dudes we meet in the Poseidon location were really fun and I thought the dialogue and their behaviors were funny and caught my attention immediately.

I had to kind of laugh out loud at the new Quen tribe appearing out of nowhere. It felt so forced and lame. While it was kind of interesting or funny to see how their tribe evolved based on the knowledge of Ted, nothing else was good about it, in my opinion. There were times when I just had to go “WTF?” for the kind of bullshit storyline was being presented for them and their island. A bullshit storyline ends in a bullshit ending, and the “Ceo” guy who out of nowhere had some pull over Aloy to force her to do these stupid things, just dies at the end, and we don’t even get to kill them. Frustrating.

All in all, I am very convinced if I had taken a break between Zero Dawn and Forbidden West, I would have had way more fun. The game is really well-made, it improves on almost every aspect over the previous one, and has so much content that makes it definitely worth it for those who enjoy the side content exploration. The story is going downhill in my humble opinion, but still the universe is quite interesting and the technical side of it is very good. Would definitely recommend for those who enjoy the genre.

Map

The map itself seemed really, really, really huge. But at the same time, it was so filled with stuff that I kind of didn’t feel like doing anything in particular. Maybe it was also a bit of fatigue for side content, having just finished the previous game, but this time I mainly focused on the main quest. The only side content that I really put effort to finishing and actively pursuing, was the bandit camps. I just felt they were still some of the most fun in the game, although in this game most enemies had the very useful epiphany of wearing helmets, so I think I failed to stealthily clear every single camp.

Compared to Zero Dawn, where I explored a lot (almost everything), in this game I mostly ran through from one destination to another. After running for more than 20 hours in Forbidden West, the map still had so, so, so much more to be explored. I imagine that a new player or someone not as fatigued would have had easily a hundred or more hours of exploration material available.

For the minimap, I thought it was too zoomed out by default. Every time I opened it, I had to zoom in, which makes it quite annoying after repeating this through the whole game.

Difficulty

Started the game on Hard difficulty, but immediately switched back to Normal after the first fight. It was very clear that I would not have fun if the first enemies were hitting that much, considering how resourceful some of the previous game’s machines were.

After switching, though, I felt the game was just chilling. The exploration part had not that much challenge, but enough to keep you busy in the huge map. The boss fights were too easy, unfortunately, and posed no threat in this difficulty setting. Ultimately, I felt it was a good choice to switch, as I would probably not have been motivated enough to finish the game otherwise.

A detail that seems to be a general problem I face when playing multiple sequential games in a short period, is how annoyed I feel to become instantly weaker than I was one day before (e.g.: when playing the last game’s final stages). Obviously not a game fault, just a general thought that I should keep in mind for future playthroughs. I hope to remember/learn from this experience, as I had already had similar problems with God of War 2018 and starting Ragnarok immediately after finishing. Probably will think twice before starting two sequential games similar to these.

Story

I will just summarize it: we continue the story of the first game. Aloy learns Sylens has taken HADES and is up to no good in the “Forbidden West” region. The world starts to die because of some sickness, and Aloy has to figure out a way to heal it.

Upon exploring, she finds out a GAIA backup and plans to use it to restore the world. A group of “space” humans arrive, and another clone of Sobeck, Beta, is with them. They are basically invulnerable due to their advanced technology, and try to kill Aloy, which barely escapes. Aloy finds a control center where she restores the GAIA backup. GAIA tells Aloy that she could restore the Earth, if multiple other systems were rejoined to her to bring it to a more powerful state. Aloy captures multiple systems, but still not able to make GAIA strong enough to be able to absorb a more advanced one, HEPHAESTUS.

Aloy tracks and finds Beta, and she reveals that the space human group are actually “Far Zenith”, humans from old Earth who left a long time ago to build a colony in another part of the galaxy. They are the ones behind the HADES awakening signal, which also corrupted it and made it try to destroy all life. Now, they are also collecting systems to make their own backup of GAIA strong enough, but Beta has stolen the backup, and that buys Aloy some time to do it first. Aloy finds more systems, with the help of the friends she made along the way.

Finally, Aloy’s GAIA backup is strong enough to absorb HEPHAESTUS, and they make a trap to capture it. The trap caught the attention of the Far Zenith, that attack Aloy’s group, kill Varl, and recapture Beta. Before everything is lost, one of the Far Zenith members, Tilda, double crosses them and helps Aloy escape. Eventually, Tilda reveals she had a romantic relationship with the original Elisabet Sobeck, having regrets on how things ended. Feeling inspired by Aloy’s behavior and mission, she decided to betray Far Zenith and support Aloy.

With this new ally, a plan is made to attack the Far Zenith’s base. Sylens is convinced by Aloy to help in this fight, bringing in a weapon that can disable their impenetrable shields. The invasion starts, and a lot of the Far Zenith die. Aloy finally learns that the Far Zenith were almost brought to extinction in their new world, and that is why they are back to Earth. However, she also learns the “thing” that almost destroyed the Far Zenith, Nemesis (a failed experiment), is on pursuit and will soon arrive at Earth and destroy everything. Tilda tries to convince Aloy to escape the planet with her and go live somewhere else together. Aloy refuses to leave Earth behind, and a final confrontation ends with Tilda being killed.

Sylens reveals HADES had told him about Nemesis, and he plans to leave Earth as he sees no chance for salvation. The game ends as Aloy’s friends stand by her side to prepare for the fight against Nemesis, and this makes Sylens have a change of heart and decide to stay to help against the threat that will soon arrive.

Pros

  • Gigantic amount of side content, map is huge and allows for a lot of exploration
  • Technically, very well-made. Graphics are amazing, the voice acting is incredible
  • A lot of different settings to tune the game for your own preferences
  • The game design is good, and has some good mechanics. Overall it feels like an improvement over the previous game

Cons

  • Story is going kind of crazy, which is fine if you don’t care but can be annoying if you do
  • Some part of the game just feels unnecessary, I personally thought the Quen did not belong. Or, more correctly, the Quen are interesting but the Ceo storyline was just not good enough to feel like it belongs.