Honestly the one thing i really want from the next Horizon game is to be able to parry human attacks instead of just having to dodge them. Like Aloy is good enough by now to have figured out she can parry some guy trying to wack her with a weapon
@@Whirl435 that was so dumb lol Why couldn't we use it both as a shield and a glider 😑 Then one of their devs had the audacity to criticise elden ring lmao
My issue with melee combat is we need more information about how staggering human enemies works. It feels random as hell as to whether your hits will stagger the enemy or if they'll suddenly break out of it and knock you back for 1/3 of your HP...
The Batman Arkham games have set the standard for melee combat in videogames that the system defined by Rocksteady has become near ubiquitous in every single AAA title that emphasizes melee combat (Middle Earth Series/Spiderman PS4/Ghost of Tsushima). Horizon is still very much a ranged-combat/bow focused game that I don't think Guerrilla Games will ever go as in-depth into their melee system as any of those.... but by now that formula is so, as I said, ubiquitous that it shouldn't be that hard to at least partially implement into Horizon's melee system.
For Aloy talking less, I feel like a simple setting alone for how much or how often she provides hints through dialogue would be more immersive than a hint button.
After about 30 minutes in the game I went digging through the settings looking for just such a setting/slider. I mean there HAD to be one, right? Nope. :( I completely love the game - except for Aloy giving me no time at all to work out puzzles on my own.
About the Black boxes, I still found them worth finding individually because of the bits of (sometimes terrifying) audio that you could hear. Such as the one about the maintenance crew restoring autopilot to a jet, which is then hijacked by the Faro swarm and flown straight into the ground as you listen to the occupants’s screams before being cut off. But yeah, improve the overall rewards for getting all of these, Guerrilla.
@@unbiasedcobra6672 Sorry, a bite sized bit of meaningless lore isn’t good enough for me. Yes, blah blah blah the war against the Faro Plague was bad. Tell me something interesting.
This is my new favorite game, but the upgrade components needed for legendary gear was ridiculous. I wanted to upgrade the ones I got before the final battle because it felt right, but I couldn't farm enough without running out of ammo resources you need to farm high level gear. So I finally gave up and finished and platinumed the game without max gear. It was so good still! But I wanted to be extra and I couldn't.
Honestly the legendary armors were too much of a hassle to upgrade. Also the weapons were so difficult to upgrade with (imo) minimal payoff. By the end of the game I had most of the legendary weapons but only really used 1 or 2 regularly. The ammo cost was too much (I mean the vio sludge could be upwards of 3 per craft but you could only hold a max of 15!) and the are so slow to use most of my slots were taken by draw and reload speed weaves! Also there were percentages on those weaves bit no way to see any difference beyond use, unlike with say the tear damage where you could track how much the weaves change! Anyway sorry for the rant... 😅
Thats what the CREATE JOB is for. Knowing what items to hunt for. Now with hunting apex parts, you simply have to go to shelter and progress time to night time as apex machines only appear at night. I spent a total of 16hrs and 33 mins for all the components and parts of every single armor and weapon from common to legendary for upgrading. I didnt even complain. Thats the purpose of the game, to challenge yourself. Lmao
@@MichaelMurphy-sk8ed I believe the reason she uses it as a glider is because it's damaged so it wouldn't stop attacks. Also Guerilla learned from the first game how OP giving the player an energy shield is, made it disabled in the second, yet it is now a valor surge so if you really need a crutch when dodge roll I-frames exist you can use the surge version in a pinch.
Honestly wish melee was more like Zero Dawn and really a last resort and stealth kill attack thing. I much prefer Alloy using her cool bows and tools over hitting dudes with a spear
@@nilus2k Especially as the melee combos basically all amount to pausing occasionally during your R1 spam to do a slightly fancier animation. Also unless she's doing a stealth/critical attack she doesn't use it as a spear to stab and thrust at things. She uses it as a stick to swing at people
A parry/riposte mechanic would have been the best addition to melee combat, in my opinion. Much better than the clunky and confusing combos, and an alternative to dodging every attack.
Sunwing is fun one. As it doesn't have weapons when you override it, yet it can fight (quite capably so) when you agro Sunwings. It's annoying to fight too as it uses Plasma blasts... -.-
I think with variant skill on armor now is fine. Shield weaver is too OP and obsolete all other armors. But i guess we can have one more slot for activate the skill from skill tree, one for attack, and other for armor/invinsible
@@inhuahua1it’s a single player game Having one piece of equipment that is overpowered after completing a big challenge is very rewarding for this type of game and it doesn’t hurt anything at all. Gives you the feeling of “ you own this world “ and you feel badass.
I would love to see them put the long dodge roll back in the game next time. I'm not sure why they removed it for this one. Instead, they made you stumble after performing two rolls, effectively shaming you for trying to dodge. Kinda weird.
@@dr.science_0177 Yep, you only get a short dodge, and it will cue a stumble animation if you do too many in a row. You could try running and sliding to avoid some attacks, but fair warning that I've found Aloy sometimes crouches instead of sliding which has led to some unfortunate deaths 😢
That's why you need to buy the blue and purple tier attires too, and upgrade them until you can unlock the mods that grant you things like an extra roll before stumbling (Which is bs), to use them in the legendary tier ones. I don't know if those mods stack. Others do I believe.
@@zensoredparagonbytes3985 true but it's still annoying to have it even be needed. It does help, though but I can't help but feel it was to make things tougher for speed running since rolling was faster than running XD
I think I would just settle for Aloy getting up off her butt when she gets knocked down. She’s a seasoned hunter who’s taken on Corruptors and Deathbringer’s and Hades by herself. She should know how to roll with the punches or, in this instance, Thunderjaw cannons.
Yeah, she should get up quicker when she’s at decent health. Although I do think it would make sense for her to struggle to get up when her health is lower (trade-off for critical health boosts).
@@Hanakin-Sidewalker or those damn shock attacks that scroungers use you have to go through the animation of being stunned and falling to the ground then the animation for getting up I've died idk how many times spamming the roll button but having to wait for the animations. It's very annoying especially against a lot of machines at once where one basically stun locks you and the other agro attacks
The main one I want is the ability to bring companions along kinda like in Fallout 4 and have them add to the dialogue/cutscene or adds to the gameplay. The companion sidequests were good but it just seems off Aloy going on these adventures while her gang all just loiters at base.
oooo yes, I really wanted more companion missions! I loved the ones I went on, gave Aloy a better reason to talk, and was nice characterisation. I especially loved making paths for people and them being impressed, was super cute! (see, this was not an exhaustive list haha!) - E
Whereas I want the option to ask NPCs to not help; I was trying to stealth First Forge, and Erend would yell that he "couldn't get to me, there" and he'd "wait there." Then, thirty seconds later would run across line-of-sight of the bandits/rebels/Sons of Prometheus, and towards me, as I crouched stealthily in implausibly long cave-grass. Drawing fire. Thanks, Erend.
I had not beaten the new game yet but are there any romance options. I kinda love how Alloy has no time for that shit even though she is surround by so many very kissable boys and girls. But I also kinda secretly wanna kiss all my in game friends too
@@nilus2k There's none. Well, there was one in the game's prologue who asked Aloy out on a date and you can choose how to response but as far as I know, nothing came of it. Not even a date since you can never meet that guy anymore. I'm fine with having no romance options (sorry Jane) because unless they do it really well, it will just feel so forced and hamfisted.
Oh my god, I just finished my own re-playthrough of Zero Dawn and started watching others play Forbidden West (no PS5 :/). All these people you met! Petra, Talanah, Erend, Itamen and Avad! Everyone who helped you in Meridian in the end of ZD. Yeah, they're all there in the beginning of Forbidden West, but THEN WHAT? Give them a bit more agency, do better companions. Also Romance options would be interesting, not just Avad but also Varl... or Petra. Actually Aloy is surrounded by good partners, but I think they wouldn't give players choice in the matter. That simply isn't what the game is about, there never has been any choice in narrative in ZD and FW. Not like your decisions carry over into the next game, as far as I can tell. Itamen and Talanah always show up at the spire in FW, regardless of if you did their side quests in ZD. So it's fun to think about and flirt, but I don't think they're making it a full RPG. It's more likely Aloy just gets a canon romance partner and that's it.
I'd like the weapons to be more customizable. Maybe like an attachment where you can choose what ammo you want on them? I like having different weapons with different ammo types on my weapon wheel so I don't have to go into the menu to change, but it took me near the end of the game to be able to do that while still having decent weaponry. Or, like souls games, the more you progress, you unlock the resources to buy at a vendor so you don't have to farm the rng.
@@outsidextra I meant weapon customization. Like take the bow and make it add fire damage sort of branching upgrades and not anything you spend skill points on.
Yeah I found that confusing as well. A lot of times games get criticized for when their upgrades only increase stat numbers and don't offer meaningful gameplay changes. But I guess that shows the subjectivity of it all
Oh, how I've missed Ellen shoehorning in an Kindoms of Amular reference into a non-Kingdoms of Amular video. That gets the video a like all on its own even though, I agree with all the points she made regarding Horizon Forbidden West.
To be fair, the Sunwing was more of a test for the game as it was very highly requested for the player to be able to fly in the first game. Players saw the Stormbird and other such flying machines and wanted one they could fly. Guerrilla Games decided to give the players that but needed to also make sure that the basic function wouldn't be too much for the game and make it crash. That's why the missing attack abilities. Also, the "lack of interesting flying levels" is because you only get the Sunwing at the end of the game. This all falls back to the Sunwing being a test feature for the series. People don't seem to understand that the whole of the Horizon series is a new territory for Geurrilla Games as they've never done a game like this. They want to make a massive beautiful masterpiece but need to make sure each element works as well as they need it to.
I only want 2 things: 1. To have an actual robot animal companion not a mount and actual run along side get attached to animal companion (wanted this since the first game). 2. More Kotallo (as well as the other companions but Kotallo really stole the show for me).
Now there's mounts Guerilla is obligated to one-up themselves by allowing us to ride a Stormbird or Thunderjaw as a mount. Even if it's just in certain missions, it's the one thing everyone thought when they saw the mounts.
Also, more customization on dyeing you armor. You only get presets for the most part and it would be nice to have more options to make your armor look more unique. When you go to different dyers they pretty much offer the same as the other dyers.
Loved the game but between text-based datapoints and upgrades that required killing one machine multiple times, it really did feel bogged down by unrewarding busywork
I agree with everything you say... except for the fact that I like listening to Aloy talking to herself. Also, I remain super salty about the changes to Sticky bombs, both making them use a much rarer resource and also making them a stamina special. Two different nerfs that made me all but abandon one of my favorite weapons from the last game.
All right, everyone! We know what we have to do. A huge petition to have more greenshine shards for Ellen in the next game. All the greenshine shards. *All. Of. Them.*
@@Nonlifting_breezy I've only found it is an upgrade material but Aloy insists that a merchant might want it. I've yet to find anyone who trades for it.
22:55 That Horizon 2 was released so close to Elden Ring wasn't really Guerrilla Games' fault, Elden Ring was supposed to come out in January but got delayed. And I feel like Horizon couldn't be delayed further as it would have pushed it into the next fiscal year.
If Elden Ring had been released in January, Horizon would have sold even less because everyone would have just compared how generic Horizon is compared to Elden Ring.
@@Blaine_St_Cloud lol I mean keep dreaming that Horizon isn’t anything more than a footnote on generic open world games while Elden Ring is an expansion on the game media itself. But keep having fun with the game is you enjoy by-the-books generic open world games. I’m sure the focus groups that helped craft Horizon 2 enjoy the validation.
@@Blaine_St_CloudI love horizon but I’m gonna have to agree with cee on this Elden ring is on another level. I don’t even play that game but I admit it’s incredible. I still love horizon tho
Improving the melee combat, it felt like they made it more complicated than zero dawn without giving any real motivation to use it since ranged is better and melee combat usually ends up as button mashing
I think people would use combos more if the game told you outright "to do a cool move and feel badass press the attack button when u see ur spear glint" Literally learned this from a melee pit walkthrough...
I agree with most that was said. But being able to fight on the sunwing would break the game. You could just swoop down, dive bomb a tremortusk with a couple shots, and fly outta it's view before that thing knew what hit it
If you're looking to loot animals for better stuff more often, just turn on custom difficulty and use easy loot. This is the first game I've seen in a long time that didn't have difficulty achievements/trophies, so you can still play with monsters of the difficulty you're comfortable with, while making it so much easier to get crafting supplies.
I kind of agree with all of these, but my biggest thing I'd like in Horizon 3 is about 2-3 more main story type quests. HFW felt pretty thin for the main story. It didn't help how few of the side quests connected back to the main plot at all either.
Here are my 7 improvements that I wanna see on the 3rd (confirmed, we're getting a trilogy) installment of the game 7.- nerf tracking attacks: there are some attacks that enemies will perform that are long animated and that for some reason they can track you, even if you've managed to dodge most of the projectile/ram against you, somehow they manage to curve it enough to hit you on the last frames of the attack, and on the hardest difficulty this kind of attacks are typically oneshots regardless on health nor equipment 6.- reduce the difficulty gatekeep on upgrading: I completely agree that on purple weapons/armor onwards the upgrades goes from 0 to 100 on upgrade TWO. Like WTF? I cannot understand this sudden ask for specific parts for a LV 2 upgrade from bosses, making it borderline hell to make it from upgrade 1 to upgrade 2 on the midgame, and unless you cheese the boss or go with a fuckton of resources you'll definitely die. 5.- reduce Aloy's "magnetic hands": look, i get it that you want to make it look that Aloy barely makes the jump to increase tension on the player, but this has two problems. a) this works like 40% of the time thanks to the "improved parkour system" that will attempt to calculate a valid point where Aloy can grab a ledge and make the "magnetic hands", only to fail to recognize a ledge on a jump and fail miserably and on shame for missing a simple jump b) the other 40% where the system actually works there is the scenario where this feature activates on combat while dodging, and when Aloy grabs a ledge, she will stick to it like she has superglue on her hands, making you an easier target for the enemy and leaving you with 3 options, try to mash square to drop off the ledges, climb up the wall or jump on a line, which either way leaves you praying that you can dodge the next attack and not get hit because Aloy won't leave the wall 4.- fix the "improved parkour system": as stated prviously TL;DR... This system is jank as fuck, making Aloy not recognize ledges or not recognize that she can jump from point a to point b when she can do 5 meter jump just before this one or fail to grab the ledge that was clearly on range while Aloy falls to her demise. This system is inconsistent enough to rely on the next movement that Aloy will do 3.- fix Aloy's "magnetic feet": again, thanks to the "improved parkour system" Aloy will try to correct her model to better position herself on the enviroment, only to make Aloy's camera to shake more than an Irish after his 15th pint, and god forgives you that on aim mode you accidentally step on a rock because the camera will shake wildly like it was on a paint mixer machine for a few seconds 2.- eliminate the perimeter where Aloy's projectiles dissapears: If you don't know what I'm talking about, you clearly haven't tried to snipe an enemy from 100 meters+, just to the projectile never hit regardless if the projectile could've hit the enemy, but instead it dissapears into nothing and you'll lose ammo for your attempt 1.- change the FUCKING DESPAWN MECHANIC: I get it that it's to make spawn more fluid and not have 500 animals on the floor, but this mechanic will sometimes make that animal you were hunting for the material dissapear in front of your eyes before you can loot it, making hunting sometimes extremely infuriating and exesively painful as you'll need to wait for more animals... only to rinse and repeat this scenario. Honestly, they should fire the guy who made this mechanic and not make that your loot won't dissapear when the animal is dead
You need to send this to the team and game directors🫡🙌🏽as far as I know they appreciate the love and feedback from the community,especially when they aren’t experts yet of the type of game they develop now
I always thought that Horizon should have taken a more customizable approach to weaponry. For example a Hunter bow with a long range modification that gave you access to sharp shooter ammo. In game you should see the switch happen to the weapon indicating that your using the long range weapon. Or maybe a short bow that could double as a trip caster? I saw so many missed opportunities as well. Sunwing Canisters could have easily been a mod for armor to give you limited overshield. Getting more could have just increased its effectiveness. Stealth generators? How about give you limited stealth?? Like how was this not discussed? The upgrading seems tedious because it took the creativity away from the player and simple said “get this stuff”. A better way could have had you upgrading the base stats with certain easy to obtain parts but adding special OPTIONAL effects if you took out certain bots. Ex. A shellsnapper bolt makes your armor more sturdy and prevents stun locks. Lastly the game clearly has some different weaponry aesthetics and I know some of use would have LOVED to keep Utaru looking weapons in the line up sadly that wasn’t the case. The next game should allow you to choose your own weapon aesthetic but as an added bonus each tribe weapon should have a base focus. Clearly Utaru was stealth focus so base stat should be higher. Tenakth? Elemental. Oseram? Melee. Carja? Long Range. Nora? All around. Point? Things like legendary weapons and armor are not needed if YOU are making the legendary items. Sure getting special weapons is cool but most of them lost favor once you got the better version. Still mad my spike thrower from early in the game is rendered useless after doing the quest to get it. It should have just been the BASE weapon to start to mod with.
@@logistaur seriously. I wore three sets of armor, ending with the Oseram Artificer. Never found any other armor worth wearing. And the Arena armor wasn’t worth the effort.
customizable armor pieces to allow more modular builds, we can dye them to have more versions I thank that would be brilliant and some weapon pieces as rewards too. shout out to the THE CASUAL I love your work.
New Game+ is where Sunwing from the get go is amazing to have. Really, you start to appreciate Sunwing so much more if you have to repeat the game on NG+. Crazy how much time it saves lol.
Would prefer a weapon crafting system where I could select the bow type, bow style and and attributes. For special or legendary effects the current part system would work as you would have to hunt legendary parts to craft your ideal weapons. Same with the spear would be nice to add elemental damage as opposed to that resonator thing that I never really used.
The thing that set me up the most in HFW was "wrong combo descriptions" in the melee pits. If, lets say, combo A is L2-R2 and combo B is R2-R2-L2 then you THINK you'd press L2-R2 and then R2-R2-L2 but in fact you have to ommit one R2 to make it work (but the game does not tell you that) ... just because if one combo starts with the key the previous combo ended, you have to omit the first key of the following combo. Its weird mechanics, its untold und that REALLY pissed me of ...
Yeah the melee combos are....something, i think the game generally sometimes has a problem explaining concept in it, it didnt really explain well what 'handling' did in ZD and i gad no idea for the longest time that you could let alone how to catch a shredder gauntlet..
@@sunarctusMelee is just teally weird against machines, the main enemy type(though a few problems of it felt better with the hold R1 skill allowing cancelling) And considering the scale of enemies in the series, melee really can't realistically do anything that makes it other games against big enemies(a Far Zenith melee weapon maybe is a solution, so that could be interesting)
Absolutely! This pissed me off so much that after a time, I just refused to bother with ALL of the fighting pits & 'pre-made combat skills' and did my own thing entirely! I literally IGNORED ALL OF IT, and never went back. I was always more of a ranged/Bow fighter anyway, so never really missed it. This was what stopped me 100% & Platinum the entire game. Even on the original ZD, my ghost level afer upgrading to NG+ was in excess of 300, and many months of playtime. And even after finally figuring out what the issue was, and all of my many months of time in H:FW..I still completely ignore all the pits. The single fight with the spear upgrade just isn't worth it to me. Neither is the in-game boardgame 'Strike' option..Fine if others like it, but it didn't do much for me. I'd have preferred they put the effort into other areas of customization & character development entirely.
Definitely agree with all of these. One I would add is, I'd like to see less head-on fights forced upon us. I found that during some of the story missions I'd get throw head first into a super tough fight against a Tideripper or a Dreadwing, and I had NO CHOICE but to fight this thing head on. There was no other way to tackle the situation. So if (like me) you'd put all your upgrades up until that point into a stealth/dino rider build, you're basically screwed, because now you have to go toe-to-toe against a metal skyscraper, while on foot, when your character is just not built for that and doesn't have the right weapons to deal with it. Definitely caused some extreme frustration, I can tell you! The first game seemed better at allowing you more flexibility as to how to approach tough fights, letting you assess the battlefield first, formulate a plan, set up traps, fight from the shadows, find the right spot to launch your attack from etc. In FW it would frequently just lock you in an arena and say "NOW FIGHT!" I also want to be able to ride more machines. Sure, they let us fly now (and it's cool AF), but they only let us fly on Sunwings, the smallest bird in the game. Why can't we fly a huge Stormbird or a Dreadwing? And why can't I ride a Thunderjaw yet? I want to roll up on a bandit camp riding a giant metal T-Rex and storm through it firing off missiles and shit goddamnit!
I would love to see 3D models of the machines, specially when it comes to hunting machine parts, it can be about hard to see and other colours to mark things, when it's weak to fire, the part can glow red instead of purple ^^
Yess 3d models would be so good for finding parts but also as a fan to just look at the model (without it attacking lmao) and as an artist so we can get good references to make stuff of them
With at least some of the collectathon and questlines, you can see what the end reward is (sometimes, and sometimes it's a little obtuse where to find it), so I knew about the Wings of the Ten weapon and sought it out. And as for trading stuff in for machine parts, that can be handy, as sometimes it can be rather tedious grinding the same large machine fight over and over, and over, and...over, hoping you get the drop you need when you can just trade in a collectable you got taking a break from combat for +1 of that part you need. Because some of the legendary gear requires so many high level drops that aren't even garunteed sometimes that it's a right bloody chore to upgrade everything. I genuinely reached a point where all I had left was the final mission and I went "F this grinding, I'm sure my gear is good enough". And now I have to reason to upgrade my gear after beating the game, as what am I going to use it on? The arena? To get more legendary gear that I clearly don't need anymore just to start the upgrade grind all over again for completion sake? Especially when there are fights in the arena with set gear anyway? And as for why so many weapons require so many tremortusk tusks, I can only assume that's because you can get 4 per fight if you're diligent, so they expect you to get 3-4 each fight meaning to have to methodically take down at least two tremortusks per upgrade. Which is still annoying, especially since two of those tusks are smaller than the others. I will agree that the sunwing only stuff after that story mission, late in the game as it is, all felt kinda like an afterthought of "oh yeah, now that players can fly, players are going to expect things they can only do with this new ability. Maybe we should sprinkle a couple little things here and there". And my god were the mechanical flowers an absolute WTF in this game. "Sweet! I can finally clear them! Let's see what...oh...it's just a generic loot crate and maybe some greenshine like I've found everywhere else in the game." And I got the impression from how they were described that there were merchants you traded in greenshine to for new stuff, but apparently it's only for shards and upgrades and seriously, when are you ever truly hurting for shards past the early portions of the game?
My thoughts: 1. I actually liked the Rebel Camp plotline, but that's because I was looking for Sons of Prometheus payoff (which I...sort of got?). I didn't actually like Nil all that much. However, this video reminded me of something I liked about the first game - that Rebel Camps turned into player-friendly villages after you defeated them! I honestly couldn't tell you if that was happening with this game's Rebel Camps. And yea, too many generic Rebel Outposts. I get what they were trying to do, provide an achiever completionist task, but the fact that their name was so similar to Rebel Camps made it seem like they should have the same onus. Wonder if a war mini-game got cut or something. 2.I thought that the dogtag quest also gave you a best-in-game weapon type? I don't remember now, but the concept of each collection quest resulting in a Legendary, and that's how you get them, seems fair - so long as it's advertised ahead of time (i.e. "If you bring me all the dogtags I'll give you the best boltcaster in the land."). As for story quests - honestly, I was doing them for their own storylines and to see what else they might unlock, so I wasn't even paying attention to the rewards. 3.I bet that the ability to shoot from a flying mount was specced out initially as a reach goal and then cut. Other than that...yeah, I agree with everything here. 4.The example of Tremortusk...tusks is actually a bad one, since each Tremortusk comes equipped with 4 of those bad boys. However, once you've defeated one Apex Thunderjaw (or maybe 2), all the game is doing is making you grind. You proved you can kill them - let me trade in some of the hundreds of greenshine I'm carrying, *please*. But...all that being said, it's sort of our fault too. From a balance perspective, unless you're playing on the hardest setting you don't need the top upgrades, honestly. It's just the completionist in us driving us to do it. We feel like we have to because other games made us, but it's not really necessary here. 5.Your criticism of vines/firegleam walls/sunken cavern is dead on, however. I'm pretty sure that being able to scan lore through walls is a bug, though, as there were places in the world where you could not do so. If each vine/firegleam wall/sunken cavern had a bit of lore and some level design around the placed lore, I would have loved them so much more. 6.The problem with Aloy's voice as a hint system will be that Internet Guys will tell everyone that they're weak for using it, even if you really do want to just hear all of Aloy's lines. Plus, lines that are an optional hint system will receive less care and design, since they'll be experienced by fewer people. I agree that she was too quick to the punch on hints a lot, though. Hopefully they can just resolve the issue through better narrative and puzzle integration and design. 7.When you said you only used two, I was almost positive you were going to say Stealth Stalker and...Ranged Master, 'cause that's all I used. I thought the facepainting was a cool effect - I didn't really need the huge shock explosions. There are those of us out there who appreciate getting a bonus for doing the thing we already know how to do (shooting arrows, in my case) and weren't looking for other things.
Just finished the game, like an hour ago, and raced to watch this video. All I can say is YES! However I throw in a vote for no more randomly vanishing animals! It became downright infuriating to be hunting a certain animal, finding it, downing it, rushing over, only to have it VANISH BEFORE YOUR EYES. Mind you I was playing on PS4 but it was still crazy.
I really dont get why people complain about collectibles, grinding etc in open world games. Nobody ever said you had to do everything. You can make the experience more linear with less "busy work" by just not doing it and keeping to story missions. If you want to explore without map markers just turn them off in the map or dont climb the tall necks until you've uncovered the map.
I don't know what they did, but catching moonfish is now next to impossible. You are trailing them, waiting for the triangle prompt, and then the friggin thing disappears! WTF is up with that? And this happens like 90% of the time now. I forget what I'm trying to upgrade with the moonfish, but I've given up.
@@mookyyzed2216 I must have been lucky, because moonfish were relatively easy. It was the dang sea bass that was a pain. Always just out of reach no matter how strategically I boosted myself, then swimming by snapmaws so I couldn't get to them. So frustrating.
As someone who just finished this game and enjoyed it, I loved this video. You absolutely nailed the biggest issues I had with playing Horizon as well. I also wish ammo types were not tied to specific weapons. Why can one bow only shoot regular arrows and another bow of the same type shoot elemental ones.
TBH I really didn't like that some of the Points of Interest were locked behind gear you didn't get til a GOOD LONG ways in. Like I was SO mad every time i reached a question mark on the map and it was like haha you thought this was something good but it's a metal flower you can't do anything with until you've made it to almost as far west as it's possible to go. Then you have to back track all over the damn west clearing them out for disappointing rewards >:[
‘We want a stripped down game...’ Except when they do that everyone will just complain that there’s nothing to do in an open world game or it feels ‘empty’. I don’t disagree they could tweak stuff but I like that there’s tons to do. The valor surges - yes those two are cool (definitely) but the critical boost, power shots, ranged master and over shield were definitely great to use. Sure they could tweak them to have some unique animation that is visually pleasing but I don’t want them to completely change them tbh.
No it would not. It would make stealth slower and open players up to accidentally going prone mid-combat. More environmental kill methods and distraction objects would be nice though.
Hi Ellen! If you feel like it, it would be great to have a follow-up video about the seven most fun, most bestest etc things in HFW bc as much fun as the video was it did kind of dampen my (and others?) enthusiasm for it considerably bc I'm pretty sure all of the things you mentioned would feel soooooo tedious to me too but I still want to believe I would still like the game. :D
You will. Note that much of the criticism surrounds side activities, which is by definition stuff you don't have to do. Ignore firegleam, vines, and sunken caves, and don't feel compelled to fully upgrade everything unless you're having difficulty with something and you'll be fine.
These are mainly just quality of life issues and they don't really take away anything from the game (other than my hatred of farming Dreadwings). They are optional and don't really impact the game overly much, especially if you play on the easier difficulty settings. There are plenty of cool things in FW videos out there PS Acess has a couple and so does the Oxbox and OXtra channels.
@@kraziiXIII By the way, there's a static Dreadwing spawn on top of the hidden mountain plateau south of a drone module and a Slaughterspine (it requires some tricky jumping if you don't have access to flight yet, though).
@@roguishpaladin oh, I know. That's the one I went to all the time but the Stormbird always made the Dreadwing fly so I just used the one by the Zenith base. There is a newer one by the Hades Proving Lab though that's static.
One of the things I enjoyed from Zero Dawn that wasn’t in Forbidden West was the ability to have the Sun Hawk as an ally after completing all of their side quests. Having them help you in the last mission of the first game is a huge advantage and helps a lot but we don’t get that in the second game
My suggestion for the upgrade system: Upgrades for weapon and armor classes (w/a with the same use), not the single item. Then you don't have to upgrade a weapon/armor for nothing because you can get a better one.
One big difference seem to be how the old world data points were placed. There were some data points that were less interesting that similar ones from the previous game. Some places it was easy to tell the old/real world connections. Others, not so much.
Would be nice if some of the side quests and dialogue options actually made a difference in the main story. There's so much dialogue in the game but not really a lot changes if you complete certain side missions. Like when you get kotallo's metal arm and he just decides he's not going to wear it (so I guess they don't have to include his arm in alternate cutscenes).
Yeah the arm felt like a rip off to me too, I do 2 full sidemissions to get you an arm the least you could do is have it present in the 3/4 cutscenes that can happen after that in the main storyline.
I definitely agree, they need a button for puzzle help, but I also get it, Aloy is alone a lot and chatters to herself, I do that all the time, lol. And it was inconvenient that Elden Ring came out at the same time, I finished the main quest of Horizon but only 74% of the game. Maybe after Elden Ring I will go back and finish Horizon...someday. Sheesh, so many games
I was a let down how a small amount machines Aloy can ride, however I think this is because of how unbalanced a lot of the mounts are when it comes to battles with human enemies, wich is a shame cuz I would love to recreate the final battle in Meridian but this time riding a Stormbreaker and using it to destroy the enemies and a 1v1 Stormbreaker fight in the sky.
At first, I was angry the ability to fly came SO late in the game (the second to last mission), but then I realized they did that because of the Tall necks missions - it would be easier to cheat on that (makes me wonder how they are going to keep including the tall necks - which are always awesome - in the third game without taking the flying machine off the player). And yeah...I completely agree with the upgrades, Zero Dawn had a really good balance of rewarding your effort to upgrade your gear, whereas Forbidden West makes it a PAINFUL task. I wanted to fully upgrade my legendary weapons before the final mission, but when I saw it takes 5 or 6 pieces of a big machine, which it would take me hours to get them all, I simply gave up.
I highly disagree with the last section of the vid. Every Valor surge offers buffs to your desired playstyle. I absolutely love the Elemental Surge and applying statues to big machines. I usually freeze them, then Use a boltblaster and that is fun as hell. The Melee surge is also pretty good at getting more criticals with Boltblaster. Powershot is pretty good using sharpshot bows Like I switch between them pretty regularly but the elemental Surge is my favorite, seconded to the Partbreaker surge. But sure, more valor surges is never a bad thing
On the topic of Greenshine, I like the Greenshine in sunken caverns as it is a great excuse to engage with the swimming mechanics although there are better ways of doing that like a quest or relic ruin style puzzle. Also Greenshine Slabs are very fun to get as they're usually on tall places so it incentivises climbing everything, which is lovely as someone who goes out his way to climb all the things for fun and to see if I can sequence break quests (I've found a quest where you can skip most of it by just climbing a cliff that's supposed to impassable but isn't) and makes finding them more predictable than a random hole with some firegleam over it.
Companion quests felt static. Each companion at the base had at least one quest to help them out on a particular query, or something that feels personal to them, but their existence was completely tied to the mission once they arrived at the base. They didn't pop up on the world map to assist on other side-quests. They just stayed there on their bottocks watching youtube videos all day. I wish we had more quests with them. I wish their appearances in the story were more dynamic, past their initial encounters, like Talanah's. And god. More time with Erendt please. What did he do all game except stay put and play Machine Strike with Kotallo? He had the least amount of screen time of all the companions!
What about Erend listening to awful music every time you enter the base. So grating. With the advanced tech they have lorewise you should at least have the ability to choose the music from the game.
They could have had some random enounters with them Like in RDR2 Jaiver road up to me saying bill had been captured. So they could do little random emounter missions.
Id love to see them put ariel combat from the sunwing, or even add sailing ie building upon the quens involvement, and have some ship conbat against even larger aquatic robots. Maybe a kraken or a mosasouraus. I also love how much they want us to put into the upgrades too. One of the many ways they keep me wanting to play side activities and just roam and hunt
I really agree with the rebell camps and upgrade system for weapons/armor. I mean 7 tremortusk tusks for 1 weapon plus a bunch of other stuff? Does Aloy mess up the upgrade 6 times before getting it right or does she just need 1 special screw from each tusk? The rebell camps/ outposts got really boring, especially because of the amount of outposts. Also Nil was my favorite NPC in HZD. Not really a having a character directly associated with it, made the quest line feel unimportant/uninteresting. Something I want is a way to defend myself underwater. We got 3 different types of bows and all the other weapons, but there is nothing for underwater? Maybe some sort of crossbow or a harpoon, something like that. It feels wrong being a badass on land, but as soon as I'm underwater I have to hide from burrowers and snapmaws.
I can agree with most of this though in fairness, I barely did side content and didn't even know vista points were a thing. As far as the Valor Surges I didn't really get to try many of them as well . . . skill trees and actually knowing HOW to change them isn't exactly explained properly.
I didn't mind rebel camps although I killed everyone get high enough level and you can stand in the middle of a camp and head shot everyone (haven't tried hard mode yet enjoyments may vary)
There are 4 things I want in a horizon game. The ability to fight underwater Mounts can carry machine weapons like the ravager cannon More action oriented fights like the battle of Meridian, the attack on the kulrut and the last battle with the zeniths. The ability to call other machines than your mount to help you in combat (I mean imagine calling in an overridden Thunderjaw to help you in a fire fight.)
I also want to be able to use the attacks a mounted machine used before being overridden. Seriously, why can't we make a bristleback do that attack where it launches rocks or a flaming jump or charge. Why can't we make a clawstrider shoot elemental grenades while we're riding it. And WHY can't we charge on a charger!
Personally i have some ideas for changes i would like to see. Why not an extra override slot so we can have a combat machine like a clawstrider on call as well as a charger to get around or use for mounted combat? Add in a way to change an overridden machine's selected subroutine on the fly could make for some much more interesting camp/outpost attacks. Imagine leaving your clawstrider a ways off in defense subroutine so it sits still, you stealth infiltrate and deal with some of the guards on the wall, then you use a focus signal to call your clawstrider in already in offense subroutine so it engages the patrols you snuck by as a distraction so you can more freely move around. As an added bonus why not a new machine to fill the aerial support/combat slot since sunwings wont help? Using say shock blasts from wing mounted launchers and frost blasts to pin down and weaken your targets? And you can tag it to assist you or your overridden combat machine. This leads me to my next idea, changes to statuses. Let some statuses coexist on a machine instead of overwriting each other or let some statuses combine for a enhanced effect. Fire and corrosion? One mostly targets the internals of a machine while the other chips away at the outer plating. Or say adhesive; let it also clog up some machines ranged weaponry so we have a larger area to move in to engage (glares at tremortusks various cannons on the sides and back leaving only the front as an area to avoid cannon fire) or after loading them up with the adhesive, set it all ablaze as you have given more 'fuel' to the fire so it burns hotter and does more damage overall in a shorter time frame? Let purgewater boost the effects of shock and frost? Longer stuns and a longer, heavier freeze (say normal freeze only gives a 50% boost to impact damage and a purgewater/freeze combo can slow some bigger machines and increases the damage bonus to 80% or the double we see in forbidden west and say 50% bonus for explosive damage?) Plasma needs some heavy changes. In lower difficulties most machines are basically dead by the time you get a plasma blast primed for max damage, and higher difficulties it doesnt hit nearly hard enough to be worth the time spent setting it up. And the plasma blast takes far too long to detonate to begin with; let it auto detonate the moment it's damage build up hits maximum instead of waiting for it to time out? Or hit it with shock to instantly detonate the plasma by destabilizing it? Melee combat we have a spear, let us block, parry, and counter bandits and such as a way to fight. Currently we have plenty of aggression options for fighting though human enemies will rather frequently parry and counter you even if you constantly mix up what combo you use unless its spamming the blockbreaker attack. For weapon/armor upgrades/customization, why not let us choose the innate bonuses a weapon or armor has to better make them work for particular playstyles? Armors could use extra weave slots and split them between defense weaves and skill weaves. This would allow for fewer overall needed weapons and armors to be made overall and they can be better split up for quest rewards and lowering the overall requirements to upgrade an entire arsenal of weaponry thats just better off being left in your stash to not clutter your inventory. So many weapons end up with bonuses that go against each other rather than synergize well. Why have a bow with both stealth damage and melee follow up? Olny other thing i can think of is some better variety for wrapon techniques as most people pick one and ignore the rest. Bolt blasters that use sustained burst have to specifically build away from critical hits since that technique cant crit at all. Shredder gauntlets dont really want to use their techniques as it goes against the unique quality of catching and reusing the same shredder multiple times for making your ammo last a long time. Several weapons have overdraw built in but techniques cant overdraw unless its the triple notch or double notch purely because the technique loads extra arrows for you to fire normally.
@@kingairmech7162 if we build new upgrades based on the GAIA program functions, Minerva being the codebreaker/stealth could offer improved stealth vs machines with scanners of various types, or even that override whistle you mention, something that can release a hacking frequency temporarily overriding nearby machines to assist or at least go on a 'rampage' towards a target of your choice. The horn to call in patrolling allies is also interesting idea, different assistance based on the region you're in, and can possibly get assistance from any major NPCs you've befriended in said region (or Aloy's personal elite squad in Kotallo, Zoe, or Erend, if they 'happen to be in the area on their own job')
One more nitpick I can nearly feel you shout at Guerilla along with me and others is the combo system I LOVE all the new combos but they are SO fidely to actually achieve!
Shout-out to the Melee Pit in Thornmarsh where the directions were badly written and caused many a scream of "BUT I WAS DOING IT RIGHT! I PRESSED THE RIGHT BUTTONS!"
Aloy's narrative shouldn't be altered or changed for a 'hint button', there should be a option to reduce the self-talk. Like in Biomutant you can turn down/off the narrative voice. Edit: Free climbing should be a thing - Just like in Shadow of War!
Personally the thing i found most bothersome was the weapon elemental damage being individual weapon specific. Ie 1 hunter bow might have acid arrows and frost but another hunter bow having fire and chaos. In zero dawn all weapons had the same elemental damage types. Also elemental weaknesses felt underwhelming. (Eron screaming to hit stalkers with acid when ice or fire did way better damage and ice opened up brittle damage)
Yes and completely removing harvest arrows sucks. There are soooo many new bows and not one of them uses harvest arrows. And with all the damn harvesting you are required to do in this game they'd really help. And using those dumb ass tracking arrows to assign which machine you want your mount to attack? Just stupid decisions there.
Agreed, the lack of high tear long range arrows was really missed. The other thing was some components needing to not be removed yet were the easiest thing to remove (or the biggest part of said machine bear sacs here)
You make a lot of good points but I think it depends on what you look for in a game. Personally I like spending time in the world and exploring sunken caverns could be more challenging but are a great addition IMHO and I love to stealth through camps and outposts trying to take out everyone without being noticed they could be less cut and paste though. I spent most of my time completing the side quests before finishing the main quest line it really allowed me the opportunity to maximise the world experience.
I know this is late but a good quality of life change would be to change the source that the crafting table uses. Instead of using materials from Aloy’s immediate inventory (the stuff she has in her backpack), why not just use materials directly from her storage box? Having to go to the storage box to top up your supplies before going to the crafting table to craft ammo and traps (becomes more viable in harder difficulties) and having to go back to your storage box to top up again gets old real fast
I think for the upgrade system they change to tier system a bit. There are too many different tier of the same weapons, upgrades become too much of hassle for me. Instead they should ditch the multiple tier of the same weapon, and just give Aloy a basic version of each weapon with 4 upgrades. Everytime you upgrade the specific weapon, you get new skin for the specific weapon and also up the tier on the weapon. Once you fully upgrade the weapon, it should be become legendary verion of the weapon. Basically, I think Ghost of tsushima weapon upgrade should be the one Guerrilla taking a look for Horizon 3.
I felt the weapon system in the 1st game was perfect. They didn't need to change it to what we have now. I love the new ones though, except for the bolt blasters. Those are too clunky and are not optimal in the heat of a multi machine battle (takes waaaaaay too long to reload). You are correct when you say there are too many of the same weapon. 8 different hunter bows is overkill.
2 Things I want added: 1. Fishing!!! Fishing isn't at all fishing, it's just racing the despawn timer to get to the fish in time or you wouldn't find it. 2. It would be Awesome if we could have a co-op mode as well as the copilot. It was fun but there's only so much you can do as one person, let me play and Erend or Zo or Katollo or something like that!
Or even take command of one of those roaming three person patrols. An enemy outpost could be surrounded with four attackers. And a coordinated attack would even the odds. Maybe even loan out weapons to your new fireteam mates. But of course, you'd lose the weapon if the handler gets killed. But I could accept having to rebuy a weapon if it was in trade for the depth cooperative gameplay adds.
If I could add one thing to this list, it's those DAMNED FROSTCLAW/FIRECLAW SAC WEBBINGS. I get wanting us to strategically keep resources intact. But the biggest target on a gyrating machine?
I love everything the OX team touches. Do you have any idea how many videos I've watched about games that I have no interest or intention of playing, just to listen to their banter?
Focus more on the past and zero Dawn and the battle, that’s what I’m the most interested in. More codexes and audio transitions, more old world ruins to explore, more old zero Dawn and far zenith structures to explore and more datapoints to find out more about nemesis and please let us work together with vast silver
Totally agree with this entire list. HFW was just too much of everything. The upgrade grind was the worst. Everything feels nerfed to force you to grind to unlock basic functionality. Less is more, Guerilla. HZD was a better game. They sapped all the fun out and turned the game into a checklist of boring todos.
1.) Elden Ring-like open world design instead of the outdated Ubisoft open world design 2.) Aloy not being a constant chatter box 3.) Aloy not treating the audience like a bunch of idiots by directly spoiling puzzles vocally. 4.) A free climbing system ala the climbing systems in Shadow of the Colossus, Zelda:BOTW, Genshin Impact. Horizon's "you can only climb on these super specific colored areas" system is outdated game design.
I can understand where Ellen’s coming from I don’t agree with all of it but I can agree with it
ปีที่แล้ว +1
They could take inspiration from Ghost Recon Wildlands and Breakpoint regarding weapon and outfit upgrades. Would be cool to choose between different pieces all which have different buffs and nerfs to the weapon. We should only be able to modify the weapons, outfits and loadouts at a workbench so that we don't suddenly stop mid fight to switch to totally different build. Also every weapon should be able to fire every type of ammo made for that class of weapon, and we should be able to relatively quickly swap which ammos are available at the time. I would also limit how many weapons we can carry to perhaps 2 or 3 on top of the spear. Weapons could only be changed at the stash. Maybe the mount could store a weapon or two too. And maybe we could also switch the spear to a some kind of sword though I would likely still use the Spear.
A few critiques I had when my husband and I played: 1. The mounts are worse. We replayed 1 and went straight into 2, and there is a stark difference. They constantly get stuck; they don’t help in battles at all (or very sporadically); and a lot of times it was better to just hop off and run than try to get it to work. I think a jump button would help the getting stuck on twigs problem, and the assisting in battles needs tweaking. 2. NPCs are annoying as hell in battle. Exceptions are your actual companions, who do help fight. But random side quest characters do nothing to help in the battle, which again, they seemed to be more useful in the original. Like I remember Talanah getting the final blow in when we fought Redmaw. But this time…she just throws arrows or arrow parts at you. 3. Aloy can be a kind of inconsistent character. In side quests she’s usually like “sure, I can divert my time and energy to help you deliver these flowers across the entire map, no problem!” But then in the main quest she’s like “sorry, don’t have time to help you with your tribe that’s falling apart, Hekarro. Can’t wander off the beaten path for even a second to help.”She’ll waste time helping random people with minuscule problems but then be so offended and exasperated when a friend asks for her help.
The mounts are TERRIBLE, yet they added races to this game 😭 If my mount stops in the middle of the road due to a single pebble, I'm not sure what the incentive is to want to race.
My favourite example of the "helpful" hints was in Alva's sidequest. There's a locked door in an office building, and the passcode is the month and year the company was founded. Alva immediately tells you the company was founded in October 2023, so the six-digit passcode is obviously 102023. Then, as you go to enter the passcode, Aloy repeats "October 2023" and Alva promptly follows up with "October is the tenth month of the year!" Seriously, did they not have *any* faith in the player at all? Of course, when I'm *actually* stuck on a puzzle because I can't find whatever interactable bit in the scenery I need, all I get is helpful hints such as "I should use my Focus"...
I feel THE EXACT same way you do for the greenshine and barrier stuff (oh, by the way i found a barrier in the stand of sentinals that gave me NOTHING BUT A RAVAGER TO DEAL WITH)
One thing I really want to see is improved control and direction of overridden machines, including controlling multiple machines at once and more specified behaviour from single machines. This can be explained in-game by Beta acting as a back-up hacker, allowing for finer control. For example, directing packs to attack particular targets, using one to demolish a particular type of obstacle, acting as decoys to draw enemies away, hunting other machines or searching the world to gather a particular type of resource etc etc. This could be balanced in various ways by swapping different overrides, or having more advanced controls being a new type of weapon. For example different types of override modules can be added to Aloys spear providing different degrees of change to base behaviour when you override in field (i.e. a "docility" module that makes machines completely harmless to everyone but useless to help in combat, or a "berserk" module that makes the machine much stronger and attack everything around it but its a danger to you too). New weapons can be the more specialised machine controllers with special lures, remote hacking modules, and finer degrees of control (like a remote directing machines to attack a particular target). These can then all be upgraded as the game goes on, or countered by the machines themselves with new upgrades making machine overriding a much more varied experaince (i.e. firewalls that disable hacking if you dont take out the anti-overide module first etc).
One of my suggestions: A radial menu for consumables. That d-pad setup is HORRENDOUS. So clunky, even with the customization ability. They could keep the d-pad, but maybe relegate it only to your favorite consumables, not *all of them*.
@D. Lindsay Even with the ability to customize (which I mentioned), it's still clunky, especially in combat. A radial system would be much more efficient.
I like upgrading my weapons and armor, and I love how the various weapons flesh out the world as they focus on which faction built them and for what purpose. But yeah it's not without problems as it bogs down the inventory when I typically only use one or two of each. I think I'd rather keep the design concept used with Aloy's spear and just have Aloy start off the game with 2 or 3 unique weapons that can be modified and upgraded through the game while finding unique weapons to upgrade as the game progresses. Focus here being on unique. I love the world building, but I don't need 5 different Hunter Bows. Maybe include a weapon XP system that upgrades similarly to how Aloy gains skills, or find an additional use for all that elemental material clogging up my inventory and use it to add bonus damage to my core weapons as well as ammo/trap crafting. As for the little verbal hints Aloy gives. I don't dislike that aspect of the game but it could do with some restraint. Usually those kind of hints come after a few minutes of a player not progressing in an area instead of a few seconds.
Ellen, I want to personally thank you for introducing me to the wonder and majesty that is the AMAZING game Kingdoms of Amalur. Without your perpetual gushing about the awesomeness of this game I would never have known this game exists. Seriously, if I won the lottery I would buy the rights to KoA and make a worthy sequel.
I'd love something like a crossover between Horizon and the civilization builder "Dawn of Man". Managing a tribe, farming the machines, fighting off rebels, etc. - the world of Horizon would be so nice to play around with from a top-down perspective.
Much like Star Wars, there's scope for games in a lot of genres. FPS game set during the Faro Plague. Civ 6/management game set before Aloy's time, when the various clans were constantly warring with each other. Robot racing. A pretty damn amazing D&D table-top spin-off. There's a lot of potential for expansions in the Horizon action-RPG game style in different countries, now we know from the Quen that the Eleuthia facilities in different regions worked too. We could explore the post-apocalyptic ruins of mainland Europe, China, India, Egypt, all sorts of places, with all kinds of differing levels of societal advance, weaponry, and storylines.
Honestly the one thing i really want from the next Horizon game is to be able to parry human attacks instead of just having to dodge them. Like Aloy is good enough by now to have figured out she can parry some guy trying to wack her with a weapon
Especially as Guerrilla had the cheek to give us a shield...only for us to use it as a glider :P
@@Whirl435 that was so dumb lol
Why couldn't we use it both as a shield and a glider 😑
Then one of their devs had the audacity to criticise elden ring lmao
Yes, especially since the enemies would use their weapon to block you. It's just dumb that Aloy can't.
My issue with melee combat is we need more information about how staggering human enemies works. It feels random as hell as to whether your hits will stagger the enemy or if they'll suddenly break out of it and knock you back for 1/3 of your HP...
The Batman Arkham games have set the standard for melee combat in videogames that the system defined by Rocksteady has become near ubiquitous in every single AAA title that emphasizes melee combat (Middle Earth Series/Spiderman PS4/Ghost of Tsushima). Horizon is still very much a ranged-combat/bow focused game that I don't think Guerrilla Games will ever go as in-depth into their melee system as any of those.... but by now that formula is so, as I said, ubiquitous that it shouldn't be that hard to at least partially implement into Horizon's melee system.
For Aloy talking less, I feel like a simple setting alone for how much or how often she provides hints through dialogue would be more immersive than a hint button.
Agreed. the phrase "Don't insult my intelligence" comes to mind.
So, similar to what they did for Bowser Jr. in Bowser's Fury?
After about 30 minutes in the game I went digging through the settings looking for just such a setting/slider. I mean there HAD to be one, right? Nope. :(
I completely love the game - except for Aloy giving me no time at all to work out puzzles on my own.
Aloy talking helps me solve some puzzles
There’s a simple way of combating that just listen to some music on an iPhone through headphones to drone out her dialogue simple
About the Black boxes, I still found them worth finding individually because of the bits of (sometimes terrifying) audio that you could hear. Such as the one about the maintenance crew restoring autopilot to a jet, which is then hijacked by the Faro swarm and flown straight into the ground as you listen to the occupants’s screams before being cut off.
But yeah, improve the overall rewards for getting all of these, Guerrilla.
Same. The recordings were the reward.
JFC. Haven't played either game and have only followed alongside them and I'm _still_ impressed by the writing.
@@abydosianchulac2 they are definitely worth playing.
I mean they add to the world/universe of the games i guess
@@unbiasedcobra6672 Sorry, a bite sized bit of meaningless lore isn’t good enough for me. Yes, blah blah blah the war against the Faro Plague was bad. Tell me something interesting.
My favorite line of Aloy is when she grabs a drone and says "YOU'RE MINE!". Absolute love the performance and I smile every time :D
In the same regard, I really like when she picks up a Heavy Weapon and says "Mine!"
aloy's gremlin energy is really one of the best parts, wish we saw more of it lmao @@nelsonbrites2278
This is my new favorite game, but the upgrade components needed for legendary gear was ridiculous. I wanted to upgrade the ones I got before the final battle because it felt right, but I couldn't farm enough without running out of ammo resources you need to farm high level gear. So I finally gave up and finished and platinumed the game without max gear. It was so good still! But I wanted to be extra and I couldn't.
They took too much from Breath of the Wild there. Ridiculous numbers for upgrading armor.
Same
Exactly!!! My weapon of choice is always the longshot bows and I was constantly buying machine muscle from vendors !!! Ridiculous
Honestly the legendary armors were too much of a hassle to upgrade. Also the weapons were so difficult to upgrade with (imo) minimal payoff. By the end of the game I had most of the legendary weapons but only really used 1 or 2 regularly. The ammo cost was too much (I mean the vio sludge could be upwards of 3 per craft but you could only hold a max of 15!) and the are so slow to use most of my slots were taken by draw and reload speed weaves! Also there were percentages on those weaves bit no way to see any difference beyond use, unlike with say the tear damage where you could track how much the weaves change!
Anyway sorry for the rant... 😅
Thats what the CREATE JOB is for. Knowing what items to hunt for. Now with hunting apex parts, you simply have to go to shelter and progress time to night time as apex machines only appear at night. I spent a total of 16hrs and 33 mins for all the components and parts of every single armor and weapon from common to legendary for upgrading. I didnt even complain. Thats the purpose of the game, to challenge yourself. Lmao
I really hated the fact that the mounts would only go full speed 10% of the time.
Are you on PS4 or PS5
@@dr.science_0177 ps4
@@diggity1039 yes the reason they are slow is because the PS4 needs time to render the environment
@@dr.science_0177 That sucks, it didn't happen with Zero Dawn.
@@diggity1039 that's because it was made over half a decade ago. HFW is catered to the PS5 and downgraded to the PS4
A block button for melee, better stealth, definitely streamling weapons and crafting.
The whole using the obviously op shield only as a glider thing was ridiculous.
@@MichaelMurphy-sk8ed I believe the reason she uses it as a glider is because it's damaged so it wouldn't stop attacks.
Also Guerilla learned from the first game how OP giving the player an energy shield is, made it disabled in the second, yet it is now a valor surge so if you really need a crutch when dodge roll I-frames exist you can use the surge version in a pinch.
Honestly wish melee was more like Zero Dawn and really a last resort and stealth kill attack thing. I much prefer Alloy using her cool bows and tools over hitting dudes with a spear
@@nilus2k Especially as the melee combos basically all amount to pausing occasionally during your R1 spam to do a slightly fancier animation.
Also unless she's doing a stealth/critical attack she doesn't use it as a spear to stab and thrust at things. She uses it as a stick to swing at people
A parry/riposte mechanic would have been the best addition to melee combat, in my opinion. Much better than the clunky and confusing combos, and an alternative to dodging every attack.
They need to bring back the shield weaver and lure call.
They also need to give the sunwing back her weapons
actually fighting on the back of a Sunwing could be amazing. Difficult, most aerial combat in games is trash, but worth it.
Sunwing is fun one. As it doesn't have weapons when you override it, yet it can fight (quite capably so) when you agro Sunwings. It's annoying to fight too as it uses Plasma blasts... -.-
I think with variant skill on armor now is fine. Shield weaver is too OP and obsolete all other armors.
But i guess we can have one more slot for activate the skill from skill tree, one for attack, and other for armor/invinsible
@@inhuahua1it’s a single player game
Having one piece of equipment that is overpowered after completing a big challenge is very rewarding for this type of game and it doesn’t hurt anything at all.
Gives you the feeling of “ you own this world “
and you feel badass.
I would love to see them put the long dodge roll back in the game next time. I'm not sure why they removed it for this one. Instead, they made you stumble after performing two rolls, effectively shaming you for trying to dodge. Kinda weird.
That explains why I can't dodge like used and kept getting hit despite me pressing the square button longer
@@dr.science_0177 Yep, you only get a short dodge, and it will cue a stumble animation if you do too many in a row. You could try running and sliding to avoid some attacks, but fair warning that I've found Aloy sometimes crouches instead of sliding which has led to some unfortunate deaths 😢
@@chronicallychic I can understand the limited rolls so we can't just spam them to avoid attacks but removing long rolls is stupid
That's why you need to buy the blue and purple tier attires too, and upgrade them until you can unlock the mods that grant you things like an extra roll before stumbling (Which is bs), to use them in the legendary tier ones. I don't know if those mods stack. Others do I believe.
@@zensoredparagonbytes3985 true but it's still annoying to have it even be needed. It does help, though but I can't help but feel it was to make things tougher for speed running since rolling was faster than running XD
I think I would just settle for Aloy getting up off her butt when she gets knocked down. She’s a seasoned hunter who’s taken on Corruptors and Deathbringer’s and Hades by herself. She should know how to roll with the punches or, in this instance, Thunderjaw cannons.
This! She can dodge roll, but if you get hit, she picks herself off the ground as slowly as me getting up after my 5th alarm in the morning.
Have you been hit by a 10 ton tail swipe and gotten up in 5 seconds, git gud at dodging
Yeah, she should get up quicker when she’s at decent health. Although I do think it would make sense for her to struggle to get up when her health is lower (trade-off for critical health boosts).
@@Hanakin-Sidewalker or those damn shock attacks that scroungers use you have to go through the animation of being stunned and falling to the ground then the animation for getting up I've died idk how many times spamming the roll button but having to wait for the animations. It's very annoying especially against a lot of machines at once where one basically stun locks you and the other agro attacks
@@s1m4r if we had her armour and her health amount, we'd get up faster she would in the game
The main one I want is the ability to bring companions along kinda like in Fallout 4 and have them add to the dialogue/cutscene or adds to the gameplay. The companion sidequests were good but it just seems off Aloy going on these adventures while her gang all just loiters at base.
oooo yes, I really wanted more companion missions! I loved the ones I went on, gave Aloy a better reason to talk, and was nice characterisation. I especially loved making paths for people and them being impressed, was super cute! (see, this was not an exhaustive list haha!) - E
Whereas I want the option to ask NPCs to not help; I was trying to stealth First Forge, and Erend would yell that he "couldn't get to me, there" and he'd "wait there."
Then, thirty seconds later would run across line-of-sight of the bandits/rebels/Sons of Prometheus, and towards me, as I crouched stealthily in implausibly long cave-grass. Drawing fire. Thanks, Erend.
I had not beaten the new game yet but are there any romance options. I kinda love how Alloy has no time for that shit even though she is surround by so many very kissable boys and girls. But I also kinda secretly wanna kiss all my in game friends too
@@nilus2k There's none. Well, there was one in the game's prologue who asked Aloy out on a date and you can choose how to response but as far as I know, nothing came of it. Not even a date since you can never meet that guy anymore.
I'm fine with having no romance options (sorry Jane) because unless they do it really well, it will just feel so forced and hamfisted.
Oh my god, I just finished my own re-playthrough of Zero Dawn and started watching others play Forbidden West (no PS5 :/).
All these people you met! Petra, Talanah, Erend, Itamen and Avad! Everyone who helped you in Meridian in the end of ZD. Yeah, they're all there in the beginning of Forbidden West, but THEN WHAT? Give them a bit more agency, do better companions.
Also Romance options would be interesting, not just Avad but also Varl... or Petra. Actually Aloy is surrounded by good partners, but I think they wouldn't give players choice in the matter. That simply isn't what the game is about, there never has been any choice in narrative in ZD and FW. Not like your decisions carry over into the next game, as far as I can tell. Itamen and Talanah always show up at the spire in FW, regardless of if you did their side quests in ZD. So it's fun to think about and flirt, but I don't think they're making it a full RPG. It's more likely Aloy just gets a canon romance partner and that's it.
As an alternative to "simpler" upgrading, maybe having branched weapon trees where you add new abilities INSTEAD of a direct upgrade?
imho, there's one thing this series doesn't need it's more skill trees - E
I'd like the weapons to be more customizable. Maybe like an attachment where you can choose what ammo you want on them? I like having different weapons with different ammo types on my weapon wheel so I don't have to go into the menu to change, but it took me near the end of the game to be able to do that while still having decent weaponry.
Or, like souls games, the more you progress, you unlock the resources to buy at a vendor so you don't have to farm the rng.
@@outsidextra I meant weapon customization. Like take the bow and make it add fire damage sort of branching upgrades and not anything you spend skill points on.
Yeah I found that confusing as well. A lot of times games get criticized for when their upgrades only increase stat numbers and don't offer meaningful gameplay changes. But I guess that shows the subjectivity of it all
@@akmal94ibrahim yes, having to RNG farm everything sucks
Oh, how I've missed Ellen shoehorning in an Kindoms of Amular reference into a non-Kingdoms of Amular video. That gets the video a like all on its own even though, I agree with all the points she made regarding Horizon Forbidden West.
I'd really like for them to finish her playthrough. I'm pretty sure they started with the original, but a remaster came out after they started.
To be fair, the Sunwing was more of a test for the game as it was very highly requested for the player to be able to fly in the first game. Players saw the Stormbird and other such flying machines and wanted one they could fly. Guerrilla Games decided to give the players that but needed to also make sure that the basic function wouldn't be too much for the game and make it crash. That's why the missing attack abilities. Also, the "lack of interesting flying levels" is because you only get the Sunwing at the end of the game. This all falls back to the Sunwing being a test feature for the series. People don't seem to understand that the whole of the Horizon series is a new territory for Geurrilla Games as they've never done a game like this. They want to make a massive beautiful masterpiece but need to make sure each element works as well as they need it to.
I only want 2 things:
1. To have an actual robot animal companion not a mount and actual run along side get attached to animal companion (wanted this since the first game).
2. More Kotallo (as well as the other companions but Kotallo really stole the show for me).
Now there's mounts Guerilla is obligated to one-up themselves by allowing us to ride a Stormbird or Thunderjaw as a mount.
Even if it's just in certain missions, it's the one thing everyone thought when they saw the mounts.
@@PlebNC After a certain scene near the end, that might actually be plausible for 3 without seeming like it came out of nowhere
If Aloy is going to be the next Rey Skywalker, she needs her own BB-8.
And why did they not have your sunwing fight at your side when you are fighting? Your non flying mounts fight, why not the sunwing?
kotallo was great after he mellowed down and called Aloy commander after the Kulrut
Also, more customization on dyeing you armor. You only get presets for the most part and it would be nice to have more options to make your armor look more unique. When you go to different dyers they pretty much offer the same as the other dyers.
Loved the game but between text-based datapoints and upgrades that required killing one machine multiple times, it really did feel bogged down by unrewarding busywork
Also greenshine! Bring back Blueglow!
I agree with everything you say... except for the fact that I like listening to Aloy talking to herself.
Also, I remain super salty about the changes to Sticky bombs, both making them use a much rarer resource and also making them a stamina special. Two different nerfs that made me all but abandon one of my favorite weapons from the last game.
I love this format. It reminds me of the Show of the Weekend where Ellen absolutely savaged that Tomb Raider game! More salty Ellen please!
All right, everyone! We know what we have to do. A huge petition to have more greenshine shards for Ellen in the next game. All the greenshine shards. *All. Of. Them.*
All the machine parts: Greenshine
Crafting components: Greenshine
Quest rewards: Greenshine
Weapons: Bows with Greenshine tied to them.
Armour: Greenshine drip.
Greenshine: Watcher Circulator.
A greenshine map would come in hand, like the blueglim map on the frozen wilds
What does it do. I just beat the game and have all this green shine and don’t know what to do with it
@@Nonlifting_breezy I've only found it is an upgrade material but Aloy insists that a merchant might want it. I've yet to find anyone who trades for it.
@@Nonlifting_breezy weapons and outfit upgrades. Aloy says they can be sold but they cannot be. Which is an odd oversight
22:55 That Horizon 2 was released so close to Elden Ring wasn't really Guerrilla Games' fault, Elden Ring was supposed to come out in January but got delayed. And I feel like Horizon couldn't be delayed further as it would have pushed it into the next fiscal year.
If Elden Ring had been released in January, Horizon would have sold even less because everyone would have just compared how generic Horizon is compared to Elden Ring.
@@Ceece20 you're entitled to your opinion, even if it wrong.
@@Blaine_St_Cloud lol I mean keep dreaming that Horizon isn’t anything more than a footnote on generic open world games while Elden Ring is an expansion on the game media itself.
But keep having fun with the game is you enjoy by-the-books generic open world games. I’m sure the focus groups that helped craft Horizon 2 enjoy the validation.
@@Ceece20 an expansion on game media itself....wow.
You seem like a very bitter person. Hope things get better.
@@Blaine_St_CloudI love horizon but I’m gonna have to agree with cee on this
Elden ring is on another level.
I don’t even play that game but I admit it’s incredible.
I still love horizon tho
I used Radial Blast so often, to the point that I really felt kneecapped when it was taken away in the arena
Radial blast became my fave valor surge pretty quickly.
Improving the melee combat, it felt like they made it more complicated than zero dawn without giving any real motivation to use it since ranged is better and melee combat usually ends up as button mashing
Yes, give us block and parry, something you ought to be able to do with a spear.
The melee pits drove me to frustration. I don't play fighting games for a reason, I'm a button masher!
Yeah. The charge pulse ability was kind of stupid.
I think people would use combos more if the game told you outright "to do a cool move and feel badass press the attack button when u see ur spear glint" Literally learned this from a melee pit walkthrough...
@@timelessnugget I completely ignored the skills in the melee related to that.
I agree with most that was said. But being able to fight on the sunwing would break the game. You could just swoop down, dive bomb a tremortusk with a couple shots, and fly outta it's view before that thing knew what hit it
All they need to do give every machine a way to fight enemies in the air. Projectiles and all.
Maybe they could have more ranged attacks then.
If you're looking to loot animals for better stuff more often, just turn on custom difficulty and use easy loot. This is the first game I've seen in a long time that didn't have difficulty achievements/trophies, so you can still play with monsters of the difficulty you're comfortable with, while making it so much easier to get crafting supplies.
I really loved the constructive criticism in this video. I'd love to see more like this about other games. Also, KoA is great!
"We had the best time with Aloy."
Would you say it was 'a joy'?
I kind of agree with all of these, but my biggest thing I'd like in Horizon 3 is about 2-3 more main story type quests. HFW felt pretty thin for the main story. It didn't help how few of the side quests connected back to the main plot at all either.
Here are my 7 improvements that I wanna see on the 3rd (confirmed, we're getting a trilogy) installment of the game
7.- nerf tracking attacks: there are some attacks that enemies will perform that are long animated and that for some reason they can track you, even if you've managed to dodge most of the projectile/ram against you, somehow they manage to curve it enough to hit you on the last frames of the attack, and on the hardest difficulty this kind of attacks are typically oneshots regardless on health nor equipment
6.- reduce the difficulty gatekeep on upgrading: I completely agree that on purple weapons/armor onwards the upgrades goes from 0 to 100 on upgrade TWO. Like WTF? I cannot understand this sudden ask for specific parts for a LV 2 upgrade from bosses, making it borderline hell to make it from upgrade 1 to upgrade 2 on the midgame, and unless you cheese the boss or go with a fuckton of resources you'll definitely die.
5.- reduce Aloy's "magnetic hands": look, i get it that you want to make it look that Aloy barely makes the jump to increase tension on the player, but this has two problems.
a) this works like 40% of the time thanks to the "improved parkour system" that will attempt to calculate a valid point where Aloy can grab a ledge and make the "magnetic hands", only to fail to recognize a ledge on a jump and fail miserably and on shame for missing a simple jump
b) the other 40% where the system actually works there is the scenario where this feature activates on combat while dodging, and when Aloy grabs a ledge, she will stick to it like she has superglue on her hands, making you an easier target for the enemy and leaving you with 3 options, try to mash square to drop off the ledges, climb up the wall or jump on a line, which either way leaves you praying that you can dodge the next attack and not get hit because Aloy won't leave the wall
4.- fix the "improved parkour system": as stated prviously TL;DR... This system is jank as fuck, making Aloy not recognize ledges or not recognize that she can jump from point a to point b when she can do 5 meter jump just before this one or fail to grab the ledge that was clearly on range while Aloy falls to her demise. This system is inconsistent enough to rely on the next movement that Aloy will do
3.- fix Aloy's "magnetic feet": again, thanks to the "improved parkour system" Aloy will try to correct her model to better position herself on the enviroment, only to make Aloy's camera to shake more than an Irish after his 15th pint, and god forgives you that on aim mode you accidentally step on a rock because the camera will shake wildly like it was on a paint mixer machine for a few seconds
2.- eliminate the perimeter where Aloy's projectiles dissapears: If you don't know what I'm talking about, you clearly haven't tried to snipe an enemy from 100 meters+, just to the projectile never hit regardless if the projectile could've hit the enemy, but instead it dissapears into nothing and you'll lose ammo for your attempt
1.- change the FUCKING DESPAWN MECHANIC: I get it that it's to make spawn more fluid and not have 500 animals on the floor, but this mechanic will sometimes make that animal you were hunting for the material dissapear in front of your eyes before you can loot it, making hunting sometimes extremely infuriating and exesively painful as you'll need to wait for more animals... only to rinse and repeat this scenario. Honestly, they should fire the guy who made this mechanic and not make that your loot won't dissapear when the animal is dead
You need to send this to the team and game directors🫡🙌🏽as far as I know they appreciate the love and feedback from the community,especially when they aren’t experts yet of the type of game they develop now
I always thought that Horizon should have taken a more customizable approach to weaponry.
For example a Hunter bow with a long range modification that gave you access to sharp shooter ammo. In game you should see the switch happen to the weapon indicating that your using the long range weapon.
Or maybe a short bow that could double as a trip caster?
I saw so many missed opportunities as well. Sunwing Canisters could have easily been a mod for armor to give you limited overshield. Getting more could have just increased its effectiveness.
Stealth generators? How about give you limited stealth?? Like how was this not discussed?
The upgrading seems tedious because it took the creativity away from the player and simple said “get this stuff”. A better way could have had you upgrading the base stats with certain easy to obtain parts but adding special OPTIONAL effects if you took out certain bots. Ex. A shellsnapper bolt makes your armor more sturdy and prevents stun locks.
Lastly the game clearly has some different weaponry aesthetics and I know some of use would have LOVED to keep Utaru looking weapons in the line up sadly that wasn’t the case. The next game should allow you to choose your own weapon aesthetic but as an added bonus each tribe weapon should have a base focus. Clearly Utaru was stealth focus so base stat should be higher. Tenakth? Elemental. Oseram? Melee. Carja? Long Range. Nora? All around.
Point? Things like legendary weapons and armor are not needed if YOU are making the legendary items. Sure getting special weapons is cool but most of them lost favor once you got the better version.
Still mad my spike thrower from early in the game is rendered useless after doing the quest to get it. It should have just been the BASE weapon to start to mod with.
They made way too many unused/useless weapons and armor lol
I miss the tearblaster.
I agree and honestly they could do away with Warrior Bows, Shredder Gauntlets, and Boltcasters and I doubt any of us would miss them.
@@logistaur seriously. I wore three sets of armor, ending with the Oseram Artificer. Never found any other armor worth wearing. And the Arena armor wasn’t worth the effort.
customizable armor pieces to allow more modular builds, we can dye them to have more versions I thank that would be brilliant and some weapon pieces as rewards too. shout out to the THE CASUAL I love your work.
New Game+ is where Sunwing from the get go is amazing to have. Really, you start to appreciate Sunwing so much more if you have to repeat the game on NG+.
Crazy how much time it saves lol.
You do!! Im about to start a ng+ game thats gonna make things so nice!!
The next Horizon game surely has to be Horizon Nemesis, right? Maybe Horizon Final Frontier? Oh, Horizon the Wrath of Kahn!
Horizon Forza Vice City
I believe the next horizon is "horizon: call of the mountain" though this may be an off shoot as it's a vr game
It clearly needs to start with "Re". Revelations. Revolutions. Some crap like that. I think it's the law.
Horizon: Clouded Over.
@@raggedcritical Horizon: Re:Zero.
Oh, wait…
Would prefer a weapon crafting system where I could select the bow type, bow style and and attributes. For special or legendary effects the current part system would work as you would have to hunt legendary parts to craft your ideal weapons. Same with the spear would be nice to add elemental damage as opposed to that resonator thing that I never really used.
Ellen talking about things she loves is brilliant
Like Kingdoms of Amalur
The thing that set me up the most in HFW was "wrong combo descriptions" in the melee pits. If, lets say, combo A is L2-R2 and combo B is R2-R2-L2 then you THINK you'd press L2-R2 and then R2-R2-L2 but in fact you have to ommit one R2 to make it work (but the game does not tell you that) ... just because if one combo starts with the key the previous combo ended, you have to omit the first key of the following combo. Its weird mechanics, its untold und that REALLY pissed me of ...
Can't even tell you how unpleasant I was to be around while trying to decipher those terrible instructions. The person who wrote them should be fired.
I second this. Such a nightmare.
Yeah the melee combos are....something, i think the game generally sometimes has a problem explaining concept in it, it didnt really explain well what 'handling' did in ZD and i gad no idea for the longest time that you could let alone how to catch a shredder gauntlet..
@@sunarctusMelee is just teally weird against machines, the main enemy type(though a few problems of it felt better with the hold R1 skill allowing cancelling)
And considering the scale of enemies in the series, melee really can't realistically do anything that makes it other games against big enemies(a Far Zenith melee weapon maybe is a solution, so that could be interesting)
Absolutely! This pissed me off so much that after a time, I just refused to bother with ALL of the fighting pits & 'pre-made combat skills' and did my own thing entirely!
I literally IGNORED ALL OF IT, and never went back. I was always more of a ranged/Bow fighter anyway, so never really missed it.
This was what stopped me 100% & Platinum the entire game.
Even on the original ZD, my ghost level afer upgrading to NG+ was in excess of 300, and many months of playtime.
And even after finally figuring out what the issue was, and all of my many months of time in H:FW..I still completely ignore all the pits. The single fight with the spear upgrade just isn't worth it to me.
Neither is the in-game boardgame 'Strike' option..Fine if others like it, but it didn't do much for me.
I'd have preferred they put the effort into other areas of customization & character development entirely.
Bring back showing the datapoints on the compass! It's too easy to miss them compaired to Zero Dawn.
Isn't there an option to turn them back on?
Definitely agree with all of these. One I would add is, I'd like to see less head-on fights forced upon us. I found that during some of the story missions I'd get throw head first into a super tough fight against a Tideripper or a Dreadwing, and I had NO CHOICE but to fight this thing head on. There was no other way to tackle the situation.
So if (like me) you'd put all your upgrades up until that point into a stealth/dino rider build, you're basically screwed, because now you have to go toe-to-toe against a metal skyscraper, while on foot, when your character is just not built for that and doesn't have the right weapons to deal with it.
Definitely caused some extreme frustration, I can tell you! The first game seemed better at allowing you more flexibility as to how to approach tough fights, letting you assess the battlefield first, formulate a plan, set up traps, fight from the shadows, find the right spot to launch your attack from etc.
In FW it would frequently just lock you in an arena and say "NOW FIGHT!"
I also want to be able to ride more machines. Sure, they let us fly now (and it's cool AF), but they only let us fly on Sunwings, the smallest bird in the game. Why can't we fly a huge Stormbird or a Dreadwing? And why can't I ride a Thunderjaw yet? I want to roll up on a bandit camp riding a giant metal T-Rex and storm through it firing off missiles and shit goddamnit!
I missed being able to travel back to Meridian (not just the spire) and Nora sacred lands to chat with the people about everything that happened!
I would love to see 3D models of the machines, specially when it comes to hunting machine parts, it can be about hard to see and other colours to mark things, when it's weak to fire, the part can glow red instead of purple ^^
Doesn't help for colour blind people though. Unless put it behind a setting.
Yess 3d models would be so good for finding parts but also as a fan to just look at the model (without it attacking lmao) and as an artist so we can get good references to make stuff of them
With at least some of the collectathon and questlines, you can see what the end reward is (sometimes, and sometimes it's a little obtuse where to find it), so I knew about the Wings of the Ten weapon and sought it out. And as for trading stuff in for machine parts, that can be handy, as sometimes it can be rather tedious grinding the same large machine fight over and over, and over, and...over, hoping you get the drop you need when you can just trade in a collectable you got taking a break from combat for +1 of that part you need. Because some of the legendary gear requires so many high level drops that aren't even garunteed sometimes that it's a right bloody chore to upgrade everything. I genuinely reached a point where all I had left was the final mission and I went "F this grinding, I'm sure my gear is good enough". And now I have to reason to upgrade my gear after beating the game, as what am I going to use it on? The arena? To get more legendary gear that I clearly don't need anymore just to start the upgrade grind all over again for completion sake? Especially when there are fights in the arena with set gear anyway? And as for why so many weapons require so many tremortusk tusks, I can only assume that's because you can get 4 per fight if you're diligent, so they expect you to get 3-4 each fight meaning to have to methodically take down at least two tremortusks per upgrade. Which is still annoying, especially since two of those tusks are smaller than the others.
I will agree that the sunwing only stuff after that story mission, late in the game as it is, all felt kinda like an afterthought of "oh yeah, now that players can fly, players are going to expect things they can only do with this new ability. Maybe we should sprinkle a couple little things here and there".
And my god were the mechanical flowers an absolute WTF in this game. "Sweet! I can finally clear them! Let's see what...oh...it's just a generic loot crate and maybe some greenshine like I've found everywhere else in the game." And I got the impression from how they were described that there were merchants you traded in greenshine to for new stuff, but apparently it's only for shards and upgrades and seriously, when are you ever truly hurting for shards past the early portions of the game?
My thoughts:
1. I actually liked the Rebel Camp plotline, but that's because I was looking for Sons of Prometheus payoff (which I...sort of got?). I didn't actually like Nil all that much. However, this video reminded me of something I liked about the first game - that Rebel Camps turned into player-friendly villages after you defeated them! I honestly couldn't tell you if that was happening with this game's Rebel Camps. And yea, too many generic Rebel Outposts. I get what they were trying to do, provide an achiever completionist task, but the fact that their name was so similar to Rebel Camps made it seem like they should have the same onus. Wonder if a war mini-game got cut or something.
2.I thought that the dogtag quest also gave you a best-in-game weapon type? I don't remember now, but the concept of each collection quest resulting in a Legendary, and that's how you get them, seems fair - so long as it's advertised ahead of time (i.e. "If you bring me all the dogtags I'll give you the best boltcaster in the land."). As for story quests - honestly, I was doing them for their own storylines and to see what else they might unlock, so I wasn't even paying attention to the rewards.
3.I bet that the ability to shoot from a flying mount was specced out initially as a reach goal and then cut. Other than that...yeah, I agree with everything here.
4.The example of Tremortusk...tusks is actually a bad one, since each Tremortusk comes equipped with 4 of those bad boys. However, once you've defeated one Apex Thunderjaw (or maybe 2), all the game is doing is making you grind. You proved you can kill them - let me trade in some of the hundreds of greenshine I'm carrying, *please*. But...all that being said, it's sort of our fault too. From a balance perspective, unless you're playing on the hardest setting you don't need the top upgrades, honestly. It's just the completionist in us driving us to do it. We feel like we have to because other games made us, but it's not really necessary here.
5.Your criticism of vines/firegleam walls/sunken cavern is dead on, however. I'm pretty sure that being able to scan lore through walls is a bug, though, as there were places in the world where you could not do so. If each vine/firegleam wall/sunken cavern had a bit of lore and some level design around the placed lore, I would have loved them so much more.
6.The problem with Aloy's voice as a hint system will be that Internet Guys will tell everyone that they're weak for using it, even if you really do want to just hear all of Aloy's lines. Plus, lines that are an optional hint system will receive less care and design, since they'll be experienced by fewer people. I agree that she was too quick to the punch on hints a lot, though. Hopefully they can just resolve the issue through better narrative and puzzle integration and design.
7.When you said you only used two, I was almost positive you were going to say Stealth Stalker and...Ranged Master, 'cause that's all I used. I thought the facepainting was a cool effect - I didn't really need the huge shock explosions. There are those of us out there who appreciate getting a bonus for doing the thing we already know how to do (shooting arrows, in my case) and weren't looking for other things.
Just finished the game, like an hour ago, and raced to watch this video. All I can say is YES! However I throw in a vote for no more randomly vanishing animals! It became downright infuriating to be hunting a certain animal, finding it, downing it, rushing over, only to have it VANISH BEFORE YOUR EYES. Mind you I was playing on PS4 but it was still crazy.
I really dont get why people complain about collectibles, grinding etc in open world games. Nobody ever said you had to do everything. You can make the experience more linear with less "busy work" by just not doing it and keeping to story missions. If you want to explore without map markers just turn them off in the map or dont climb the tall necks until you've uncovered the map.
Fighting a clawstrider: It moves like a ballerina, hits like a truck.
Riding a clawstrider: It moves like a truck, hits like a ballerina.
Also, provide Aloy with a spear/harpoon/crossbow. I didnt mind the stealth of underwater, but catching sea bass was no fun. No fun at all
Omg yes! At least let us use the spear under water! Why have underwater enemies if all you can do is hide??
Catch a moonfish.
Game: I'm going to ignore that.
I don't know what they did, but catching moonfish is now next to impossible. You are trailing them, waiting for the triangle prompt, and then the friggin thing disappears! WTF is up with that? And this happens like 90% of the time now. I forget what I'm trying to upgrade with the moonfish, but I've given up.
@@mookyyzed2216 I must have been lucky, because moonfish were relatively easy. It was the dang sea bass that was a pain. Always just out of reach no matter how strategically I boosted myself, then swimming by snapmaws so I couldn't get to them. So frustrating.
As someone who just finished this game and enjoyed it, I loved this video. You absolutely nailed the biggest issues I had with playing Horizon as well. I also wish ammo types were not tied to specific weapons. Why can one bow only shoot regular arrows and another bow of the same type shoot elemental ones.
TBH I really didn't like that some of the Points of Interest were locked behind gear you didn't get til a GOOD LONG ways in. Like I was SO mad every time i reached a question mark on the map and it was like haha you thought this was something good but it's a metal flower you can't do anything with until you've made it to almost as far west as it's possible to go. Then you have to back track all over the damn west clearing them out for disappointing rewards >:[
‘We want a stripped down game...’
Except when they do that everyone will just complain that there’s nothing to do in an open world game or it feels ‘empty’. I don’t disagree they could tweak stuff but I like that there’s tons to do.
The valor surges - yes those two are cool (definitely) but the critical boost, power shots, ranged master and over shield were definitely great to use. Sure they could tweak them to have some unique animation that is visually pleasing but I don’t want them to completely change them tbh.
I want a prone ability in the next game. That would open up the stealth gameplay more.
No it would not. It would make stealth slower and open players up to accidentally going prone mid-combat.
More environmental kill methods and distraction objects would be nice though.
A Valor Surge where Aloy summons a swarm of small robots, a few medium sized robots, or a large robot to fight for her
Hi Ellen! If you feel like it, it would be great to have a follow-up video about the seven most fun, most bestest etc things in HFW bc as much fun as the video was it did kind of dampen my (and others?) enthusiasm for it considerably bc I'm pretty sure all of the things you mentioned would feel soooooo tedious to me too but I still want to believe I would still like the game. :D
You will. Note that much of the criticism surrounds side activities, which is by definition stuff you don't have to do. Ignore firegleam, vines, and sunken caves, and don't feel compelled to fully upgrade everything unless you're having difficulty with something and you'll be fine.
These are mainly just quality of life issues and they don't really take away anything from the game (other than my hatred of farming Dreadwings). They are optional and don't really impact the game overly much, especially if you play on the easier difficulty settings. There are plenty of cool things in FW videos out there PS Acess has a couple and so does the Oxbox and OXtra channels.
@@kraziiXIII By the way, there's a static Dreadwing spawn on top of the hidden mountain plateau south of a drone module and a Slaughterspine (it requires some tricky jumping if you don't have access to flight yet, though).
@@roguishpaladin oh, I know. That's the one I went to all the time but the Stormbird always made the Dreadwing fly so I just used the one by the Zenith base. There is a newer one by the Hades Proving Lab though that's static.
One of the things I enjoyed from Zero Dawn that wasn’t in Forbidden West was the ability to have the Sun Hawk as an ally after completing all of their side quests. Having them help you in the last mission of the first game is a huge advantage and helps a lot but we don’t get that in the second game
My suggestion for the upgrade system: Upgrades for weapon and armor classes (w/a with the same use), not the single item. Then you don't have to upgrade a weapon/armor for nothing because you can get a better one.
At the very least it seems that Guerilla understands that they went way too hard with the upgrades, since Burning Shores is much better. 13:27
One big difference seem to be how the old world data points were placed. There were some data points that were less interesting that similar ones from the previous game. Some places it was easy to tell the old/real world connections. Others, not so much.
Would be nice if some of the side quests and dialogue options actually made a difference in the main story. There's so much dialogue in the game but not really a lot changes if you complete certain side missions. Like when you get kotallo's metal arm and he just decides he's not going to wear it (so I guess they don't have to include his arm in alternate cutscenes).
Yeah the arm felt like a rip off to me too, I do 2 full sidemissions to get you an arm the least you could do is have it present in the 3/4 cutscenes that can happen after that in the main storyline.
I definitely agree, they need a button for puzzle help, but I also get it, Aloy is alone a lot and chatters to herself, I do that all the time, lol. And it was inconvenient that Elden Ring came out at the same time, I finished the main quest of Horizon but only 74% of the game. Maybe after Elden Ring I will go back and finish Horizon...someday. Sheesh, so many games
I was a let down how a small amount machines Aloy can ride, however I think this is because of how unbalanced a lot of the mounts are when it comes to battles with human enemies, wich is a shame cuz I would love to recreate the final battle in Meridian but this time riding a Stormbreaker and using it to destroy the enemies and a 1v1 Stormbreaker fight in the sky.
At first, I was angry the ability to fly came SO late in the game (the second to last mission), but then I realized they did that because of the Tall necks missions - it would be easier to cheat on that (makes me wonder how they are going to keep including the tall necks - which are always awesome - in the third game without taking the flying machine off the player).
And yeah...I completely agree with the upgrades, Zero Dawn had a really good balance of rewarding your effort to upgrade your gear, whereas Forbidden West makes it a PAINFUL task. I wanted to fully upgrade my legendary weapons before the final mission, but when I saw it takes 5 or 6 pieces of a big machine, which it would take me hours to get them all, I simply gave up.
I highly disagree with the last section of the vid. Every Valor surge offers buffs to your desired playstyle. I absolutely love the Elemental Surge and applying statues to big machines. I usually freeze them, then Use a boltblaster and that is fun as hell.
The Melee surge is also pretty good at getting more criticals with Boltblaster.
Powershot is pretty good using sharpshot bows
Like I switch between them pretty regularly but the elemental Surge is my favorite, seconded to the Partbreaker surge.
But sure, more valor surges is never a bad thing
On the topic of Greenshine, I like the Greenshine in sunken caverns as it is a great excuse to engage with the swimming mechanics although there are better ways of doing that like a quest or relic ruin style puzzle.
Also Greenshine Slabs are very fun to get as they're usually on tall places so it incentivises climbing everything, which is lovely as someone who goes out his way to climb all the things for fun and to see if I can sequence break quests (I've found a quest where you can skip most of it by just climbing a cliff that's supposed to impassable but isn't) and makes finding them more predictable than a random hole with some firegleam over it.
I would love to have a snowboard for sliding or something like that similar to the shields in Zelda
Companion quests felt static. Each companion at the base had at least one quest to help them out on a particular query, or something that feels personal to them, but their existence was completely tied to the mission once they arrived at the base. They didn't pop up on the world map to assist on other side-quests. They just stayed there on their bottocks watching youtube videos all day.
I wish we had more quests with them. I wish their appearances in the story were more dynamic, past their initial encounters, like Talanah's.
And god. More time with Erendt please. What did he do all game except stay put and play Machine Strike with Kotallo? He had the least amount of screen time of all the companions!
What about Erend listening to awful music every time you enter the base. So grating. With the advanced tech they have lorewise you should at least have the ability to choose the music from the game.
They could have had some random enounters with them Like in RDR2 Jaiver road up to me saying bill had been captured. So they could do little random emounter missions.
Id love to see them put ariel combat from the sunwing, or even add sailing ie building upon the quens involvement, and have some ship conbat against even larger aquatic robots. Maybe a kraken or a mosasouraus. I also love how much they want us to put into the upgrades too. One of the many ways they keep me wanting to play side activities and just roam and hunt
I really agree with the rebell camps and upgrade system for weapons/armor. I mean 7 tremortusk tusks for 1 weapon plus a bunch of other stuff? Does Aloy mess up the upgrade 6 times before getting it right or does she just need 1 special screw from each tusk?
The rebell camps/ outposts got really boring, especially because of the amount of outposts. Also Nil was my favorite NPC in HZD. Not really a having a character directly associated with it, made the quest line feel unimportant/uninteresting.
Something I want is a way to defend myself underwater. We got 3 different types of bows and all the other weapons, but there is nothing for underwater? Maybe some sort of crossbow or a harpoon, something like that. It feels wrong being a badass on land, but as soon as I'm underwater I have to hide from burrowers and snapmaws.
Agree, upgrade system is shit now and no under water combat sucks. At least give her a damn harpoon/ropecaster for underwater.
I can agree with most of this though in fairness, I barely did side content and didn't even know vista points were a thing. As far as the Valor Surges I didn't really get to try many of them as well . . . skill trees and actually knowing HOW to change them isn't exactly explained properly.
I didn't mind rebel camps although I killed everyone get high enough level and you can stand in the middle of a camp and head shot everyone (haven't tried hard mode yet enjoyments may vary)
There are 4 things I want in a horizon game.
The ability to fight underwater
Mounts can carry machine weapons like the ravager cannon
More action oriented fights like the battle of Meridian, the attack on the kulrut and the last battle with the zeniths.
The ability to call other machines than your mount to help you in combat (I mean imagine calling in an overridden Thunderjaw to help you in a fire fight.)
I also want to be able to use the attacks a mounted machine used before being overridden. Seriously, why can't we make a bristleback do that attack where it launches rocks or a flaming jump or charge. Why can't we make a clawstrider shoot elemental grenades while we're riding it. And WHY can't we charge on a charger!
I will say, I also enjoyed the infinite ammo valor surge.
But yeah, better ones with less screen corner coloring
Personally i have some ideas for changes i would like to see. Why not an extra override slot so we can have a combat machine like a clawstrider on call as well as a charger to get around or use for mounted combat? Add in a way to change an overridden machine's selected subroutine on the fly could make for some much more interesting camp/outpost attacks. Imagine leaving your clawstrider a ways off in defense subroutine so it sits still, you stealth infiltrate and deal with some of the guards on the wall, then you use a focus signal to call your clawstrider in already in offense subroutine so it engages the patrols you snuck by as a distraction so you can more freely move around. As an added bonus why not a new machine to fill the aerial support/combat slot since sunwings wont help? Using say shock blasts from wing mounted launchers and frost blasts to pin down and weaken your targets? And you can tag it to assist you or your overridden combat machine.
This leads me to my next idea, changes to statuses. Let some statuses coexist on a machine instead of overwriting each other or let some statuses combine for a enhanced effect. Fire and corrosion? One mostly targets the internals of a machine while the other chips away at the outer plating. Or say adhesive; let it also clog up some machines ranged weaponry so we have a larger area to move in to engage (glares at tremortusks various cannons on the sides and back leaving only the front as an area to avoid cannon fire) or after loading them up with the adhesive, set it all ablaze as you have given more 'fuel' to the fire so it burns hotter and does more damage overall in a shorter time frame? Let purgewater boost the effects of shock and frost? Longer stuns and a longer, heavier freeze (say normal freeze only gives a 50% boost to impact damage and a purgewater/freeze combo can slow some bigger machines and increases the damage bonus to 80% or the double we see in forbidden west and say 50% bonus for explosive damage?) Plasma needs some heavy changes. In lower difficulties most machines are basically dead by the time you get a plasma blast primed for max damage, and higher difficulties it doesnt hit nearly hard enough to be worth the time spent setting it up. And the plasma blast takes far too long to detonate to begin with; let it auto detonate the moment it's damage build up hits maximum instead of waiting for it to time out? Or hit it with shock to instantly detonate the plasma by destabilizing it?
Melee combat we have a spear, let us block, parry, and counter bandits and such as a way to fight. Currently we have plenty of aggression options for fighting though human enemies will rather frequently parry and counter you even if you constantly mix up what combo you use unless its spamming the blockbreaker attack.
For weapon/armor upgrades/customization, why not let us choose the innate bonuses a weapon or armor has to better make them work for particular playstyles? Armors could use extra weave slots and split them between defense weaves and skill weaves. This would allow for fewer overall needed weapons and armors to be made overall and they can be better split up for quest rewards and lowering the overall requirements to upgrade an entire arsenal of weaponry thats just better off being left in your stash to not clutter your inventory. So many weapons end up with bonuses that go against each other rather than synergize well. Why have a bow with both stealth damage and melee follow up?
Olny other thing i can think of is some better variety for wrapon techniques as most people pick one and ignore the rest. Bolt blasters that use sustained burst have to specifically build away from critical hits since that technique cant crit at all. Shredder gauntlets dont really want to use their techniques as it goes against the unique quality of catching and reusing the same shredder multiple times for making your ammo last a long time. Several weapons have overdraw built in but techniques cant overdraw unless its the triple notch or double notch purely because the technique loads extra arrows for you to fire normally.
I agree. But alternatively, how about an override whistle or horn to call in support from any friendly 3 warrior patrol that may be in the area.
@@kingairmech7162 if we build new upgrades based on the GAIA program functions, Minerva being the codebreaker/stealth could offer improved stealth vs machines with scanners of various types, or even that override whistle you mention, something that can release a hacking frequency temporarily overriding nearby machines to assist or at least go on a 'rampage' towards a target of your choice. The horn to call in patrolling allies is also interesting idea, different assistance based on the region you're in, and can possibly get assistance from any major NPCs you've befriended in said region (or Aloy's personal elite squad in Kotallo, Zoe, or Erend, if they 'happen to be in the area on their own job')
One more nitpick I can nearly feel you shout at Guerilla along with me and others is the combo system
I LOVE all the new combos but they are SO fidely to actually achieve!
oh my god yes, I put dozens and dozens of hours into this game and I still found myself flubbing the weapon combos even in the tutorial arenas 😂
Shout-out to the Melee Pit in Thornmarsh where the directions were badly written and caused many a scream of "BUT I WAS DOING IT RIGHT! I PRESSED THE RIGHT BUTTONS!"
@@Otakukunoichi OMG you aren't kidding! Thankfully I found someone on Reddit who explained it properly.
Aloy's narrative shouldn't be altered or changed for a 'hint button', there should be a option to reduce the self-talk. Like in Biomutant you can turn down/off the narrative voice. Edit: Free climbing should be a thing - Just like in Shadow of War!
Personally the thing i found most bothersome was the weapon elemental damage being individual weapon specific. Ie 1 hunter bow might have acid arrows and frost but another hunter bow having fire and chaos. In zero dawn all weapons had the same elemental damage types. Also elemental weaknesses felt underwhelming. (Eron screaming to hit stalkers with acid when ice or fire did way better damage and ice opened up brittle damage)
Yes and completely removing harvest arrows sucks. There are soooo many new bows and not one of them uses harvest arrows. And with all the damn harvesting you are required to do in this game they'd really help. And using those dumb ass tracking arrows to assign which machine you want your mount to attack? Just stupid decisions there.
Agreed, the lack of high tear long range arrows was really missed. The other thing was some components needing to not be removed yet were the easiest thing to remove (or the biggest part of said machine bear sacs here)
I love your reactions! Especially the reward for the tags!
You make a lot of good points but I think it depends on what you look for in a game. Personally I like spending time in the world and exploring sunken caverns could be more challenging but are a great addition IMHO and I love to stealth through camps and outposts trying to take out everyone without being noticed they could be less cut and paste though. I spent most of my time completing the side quests before finishing the main quest line it really allowed me the opportunity to maximise the world experience.
I know this is late but a good quality of life change would be to change the source that the crafting table uses. Instead of using materials from Aloy’s immediate inventory (the stuff she has in her backpack), why not just use materials directly from her storage box? Having to go to the storage box to top up your supplies before going to the crafting table to craft ammo and traps (becomes more viable in harder difficulties) and having to go back to your storage box to top up again gets old real fast
I think for the upgrade system they change to tier system a bit. There are too many different tier of the same weapons, upgrades become too much of hassle for me. Instead they should ditch the multiple tier of the same weapon, and just give Aloy a basic version of each weapon with 4 upgrades. Everytime you upgrade the specific weapon, you get new skin for the specific weapon and also up the tier on the weapon. Once you fully upgrade the weapon, it should be become legendary verion of the weapon. Basically, I think Ghost of tsushima weapon upgrade should be the one Guerrilla taking a look for Horizon 3.
I felt the weapon system in the 1st game was perfect. They didn't need to change it to what we have now. I love the new ones though, except for the bolt blasters. Those are too clunky and are not optimal in the heat of a multi machine battle (takes waaaaaay too long to reload). You are correct when you say there are too many of the same weapon. 8 different hunter bows is overkill.
2 Things I want added: 1. Fishing!!! Fishing isn't at all fishing, it's just racing the despawn timer to get to the fish in time or you wouldn't find it. 2. It would be Awesome if we could have a co-op mode as well as the copilot. It was fun but there's only so much you can do as one person, let me play and Erend or Zo or Katollo or something like that!
Or even take command of one of those roaming three person patrols. An enemy outpost could be surrounded with four attackers. And a coordinated attack would even the odds. Maybe even loan out weapons to your new fireteam mates. But of course, you'd lose the weapon if the handler gets killed. But I could accept having to rebuy a weapon if it was in trade for the depth cooperative gameplay adds.
Will be back for this, once I've finished the game myself :)
If I could add one thing to this list, it's those DAMNED FROSTCLAW/FIRECLAW SAC WEBBINGS. I get wanting us to strategically keep resources intact. But the biggest target on a gyrating machine?
I love everything the OX team touches. Do you have any idea how many videos I've watched about games that I have no interest or intention of playing, just to listen to their banter?
Focus more on the past and zero Dawn and the battle, that’s what I’m the most interested in. More codexes and audio transitions, more old world ruins to explore, more old zero Dawn and far zenith structures to explore and more datapoints to find out more about nemesis and please let us work together with vast silver
Well done Ellen, love the humor, still busy with the main story and taking my time
I do believe that the best solution to the talk problem is to be able to change how much and which types of hints aloy would give you.
Totally agree with this entire list. HFW was just too much of everything. The upgrade grind was the worst. Everything feels nerfed to force you to grind to unlock basic functionality. Less is more, Guerilla. HZD was a better game. They sapped all the fun out and turned the game into a checklist of boring todos.
1.) Elden Ring-like open world design instead of the outdated Ubisoft open world design
2.) Aloy not being a constant chatter box
3.) Aloy not treating the audience like a bunch of idiots by directly spoiling puzzles vocally.
4.) A free climbing system ala the climbing systems in Shadow of the Colossus, Zelda:BOTW, Genshin Impact. Horizon's "you can only climb on these super specific colored areas" system is outdated game design.
I can understand where Ellen’s coming from
I don’t agree with all of it but I can agree with it
They could take inspiration from Ghost Recon Wildlands and Breakpoint regarding weapon and outfit upgrades. Would be cool to choose between different pieces all which have different buffs and nerfs to the weapon. We should only be able to modify the weapons, outfits and loadouts at a workbench so that we don't suddenly stop mid fight to switch to totally different build. Also every weapon should be able to fire every type of ammo made for that class of weapon, and we should be able to relatively quickly swap which ammos are available at the time. I would also limit how many weapons we can carry to perhaps 2 or 3 on top of the spear. Weapons could only be changed at the stash. Maybe the mount could store a weapon or two too. And maybe we could also switch the spear to a some kind of sword though I would likely still use the Spear.
A few critiques I had when my husband and I played:
1. The mounts are worse. We replayed 1 and went straight into 2, and there is a stark difference. They constantly get stuck; they don’t help in battles at all (or very sporadically); and a lot of times it was better to just hop off and run than try to get it to work. I think a jump button would help the getting stuck on twigs problem, and the assisting in battles needs tweaking.
2. NPCs are annoying as hell in battle. Exceptions are your actual companions, who do help fight. But random side quest characters do nothing to help in the battle, which again, they seemed to be more useful in the original. Like I remember Talanah getting the final blow in when we fought Redmaw. But this time…she just throws arrows or arrow parts at you.
3. Aloy can be a kind of inconsistent character. In side quests she’s usually like “sure, I can divert my time and energy to help you deliver these flowers across the entire map, no problem!” But then in the main quest she’s like “sorry, don’t have time to help you with your tribe that’s falling apart, Hekarro. Can’t wander off the beaten path for even a second to help.”She’ll waste time helping random people with minuscule problems but then be so offended and exasperated when a friend asks for her help.
The mounts are TERRIBLE, yet they added races to this game 😭 If my mount stops in the middle of the road due to a single pebble, I'm not sure what the incentive is to want to race.
4:00 Apply chill water to the blazed area.
My favourite example of the "helpful" hints was in Alva's sidequest. There's a locked door in an office building, and the passcode is the month and year the company was founded. Alva immediately tells you the company was founded in October 2023, so the six-digit passcode is obviously 102023. Then, as you go to enter the passcode, Aloy repeats "October 2023" and Alva promptly follows up with "October is the tenth month of the year!" Seriously, did they not have *any* faith in the player at all?
Of course, when I'm *actually* stuck on a puzzle because I can't find whatever interactable bit in the scenery I need, all I get is helpful hints such as "I should use my Focus"...
I feel THE EXACT same way you do for the greenshine and barrier stuff (oh, by the way i found a barrier in the stand of sentinals that gave me NOTHING BUT A RAVAGER TO DEAL WITH)
Felt good to platinum this game,this makes both 100% done
One thing I really want to see is improved control and direction of overridden machines, including controlling multiple machines at once and more specified behaviour from single machines. This can be explained in-game by Beta acting as a back-up hacker, allowing for finer control. For example, directing packs to attack particular targets, using one to demolish a particular type of obstacle, acting as decoys to draw enemies away, hunting other machines or searching the world to gather a particular type of resource etc etc. This could be balanced in various ways by swapping different overrides, or having more advanced controls being a new type of weapon. For example different types of override modules can be added to Aloys spear providing different degrees of change to base behaviour when you override in field (i.e. a "docility" module that makes machines completely harmless to everyone but useless to help in combat, or a "berserk" module that makes the machine much stronger and attack everything around it but its a danger to you too). New weapons can be the more specialised machine controllers with special lures, remote hacking modules, and finer degrees of control (like a remote directing machines to attack a particular target). These can then all be upgraded as the game goes on, or countered by the machines themselves with new upgrades making machine overriding a much more varied experaince (i.e. firewalls that disable hacking if you dont take out the anti-overide module first etc).
One of my suggestions: A radial menu for consumables. That d-pad setup is HORRENDOUS. So clunky, even with the customization ability.
They could keep the d-pad, but maybe relegate it only to your favorite consumables, not *all of them*.
Oh god yes, cycling through like 50 different things is NOT GOOD, especially in combat!!
@D. Lindsay Even with the ability to customize (which I mentioned), it's still clunky, especially in combat. A radial system would be much more efficient.
I like upgrading my weapons and armor, and I love how the various weapons flesh out the world as they focus on which faction built them and for what purpose. But yeah it's not without problems as it bogs down the inventory when I typically only use one or two of each. I think I'd rather keep the design concept used with Aloy's spear and just have Aloy start off the game with 2 or 3 unique weapons that can be modified and upgraded through the game while finding unique weapons to upgrade as the game progresses.
Focus here being on unique.
I love the world building, but I don't need 5 different Hunter Bows.
Maybe include a weapon XP system that upgrades similarly to how Aloy gains skills, or find an additional use for all that elemental material clogging up my inventory and use it to add bonus damage to my core weapons as well as ammo/trap crafting.
As for the little verbal hints Aloy gives. I don't dislike that aspect of the game but it could do with some restraint. Usually those kind of hints come after a few minutes of a player not progressing in an area instead of a few seconds.
I loved forbidden west, but I also love salty Ellen talking about its shortcomings :')
Ellen, I want to personally thank you for introducing me to the wonder and majesty that is the AMAZING game Kingdoms of Amalur. Without your perpetual gushing about the awesomeness of this game I would never have known this game exists. Seriously, if I won the lottery I would buy the rights to KoA and make a worthy sequel.
I'd love something like a crossover between Horizon and the civilization builder "Dawn of Man".
Managing a tribe, farming the machines, fighting off rebels, etc. - the world of Horizon would be so nice to play around with from a top-down perspective.
Much like Star Wars, there's scope for games in a lot of genres.
FPS game set during the Faro Plague.
Civ 6/management game set before Aloy's time, when the various clans were constantly warring with each other.
Robot racing.
A pretty damn amazing D&D table-top spin-off.
There's a lot of potential for expansions in the Horizon action-RPG game style in different countries, now we know from the Quen that the Eleuthia facilities in different regions worked too.
We could explore the post-apocalyptic ruins of mainland Europe, China, India, Egypt, all sorts of places, with all kinds of differing levels of societal advance, weaponry, and storylines.
Truly missed Nil for the bandit camps 😞 I didn't feel like killing the rebels since there wasn't Nil