Horizon Forbidden West is one of the most highly anticipated games for the PlayStation community. It is an open-world role playing game set in the future where buildings are rusted and fallen into rubbles.
You will be playing the game as Aloy, a young women that has great archery skills and appears to be the savior to many from the previous game. During your adventures you will clear out many bandit out post, open treasure chest, upgrade your armor or get new weapons to assist your journey.
Gameplay
Horizon Forbidden West have many interesting side-quest along the way that made me forget about moving forward with the main quest. You just can’t help being side-tracked. There is so much to do in this game. From mini chess like game, trading parts, hunting parts for upgrades, every little thing keeps you engrossed in this game.
With the Playstation 5 hardware upgrade from the Playstation 4, Horizon Forbidden West is a treat for the eyes. Every frame and detail is made to look so good that I would say that it is the best-looking console game so far.
On your controller, the haptic feedback of each splash each rustling of the grass feel just nice and not to overwhelming. With the adaptive triggers, you can feel the tension and difference when pulling the bow.
The story picks up months after the events of Zero Dawn, where the AI program HADES that Aloy “destroy” seemed to be still alive somewhere which is corrupting the world. Aloy sets off again following clues to retrieve GAIA, another AI program that is aimed to reset the world for survival of all mankind.
But it’s hard not to feel a twinge of disillusionment amid the splendor, much like the diminishing thrills you get when vacationing in the same place for a return trip. Horizon Zero Dawn was a revelation. Horizon Forbidden West is a refinement.
For those whom have not played the first game, Horizon Zero Dawn would have trouble understanding some information from the cut scenes as you would not be familiar with what they are discussing about. Will this affect your gameplay? I would say quite a bit as I had to google up what happened to understand the background story more. Do try to play Horizon Zero Dawn before you step into Forbidden West’s world.
You can choose to speed run the main story or to slowly play the side quest as you progress. I do feel that the game does try to make us balance our play time one the main story and side quest. At some point I was too engrossed in doing side quest and grinding upgrades for my gears and the game held me back by needing to progress the main story before being able to do the side quest.
Conclusion
Is the game worth it despite many commenting that it is not as good as the first game? Well in our opinion, Horizon Forbidden Dawn is worth every penny spent. The graphics, the playable hours you get, the plot it all very worth while. As many games with sequels face pressure from the overwhelming response and high expectations from the first game, I would say that Horizon Forbidden Dawn did well in managing what they could give to their players.
Can you play without playing the first game? Yes you can. As much as there are many references to what happened in the first game, you can still vaguely understand the background and what is going on from the conversations with NPCs. I will still strongly recommend those whom have not played Horizon Zero Dawn to play the first game before starting Horizon Forbidden West for a better experience.
PlayStation Store: Buy Here
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