Well, just finished. Got the Complete Edition in the PS4 Summer Sale for 30€.
But I don't really get why a majority of gamers/press say this is such an original and excellent game.
First of all where I come from and what I expected:
I saw trailers and tests last year. A lot of people actually got a PS4 for that exact game so I thought it must be quite good. I am a classic PC gamer, mouse and keyboard are my friend - gamepad: not so much. So my skills in that regard are, let's say, fair. I choose "Easy" difficulty to have a chance at aiming with a bow.
My expectations for an excellent game: HZD had to battle with Witcher 3. To my believe Geralt's last adventure is the gold standard in open world RPGs right now - in regards to dramatic story telling, gameplay, immersion and so much more.
The positive stuff first, the negative explained in more detail.....
The Really Great Things:
+ Horizon Zero Dawn looks fantastic!
The flora (especially in the rain forrest areas) feels vivid, the character models are in-depth detailed and no copycats (unlike The Witcher). The machines/monster design is great. Some very talented animators did their work there. They really made the PS4 shine again once more.
+ The Intro
The whole opening until the trials (the night before the trials) has a nice pace and let's you hope for an epic story.
+ The setting is kind of unique
I was sceptical if machine-dino-animals wouldn't feel totally dumb in a caveman world but they actually don't. They weirdly fit into the wild worlds as if god herself planted them there. That itself is a great achievement in game design: take two things which normally wouldn't mix (like oil and water) and merge them to a tasty emulsion.
+ The main character is different to standard game characters
Finally a female person that is not a total cliché. There aren't many out there. (And don't say Lara Croft is a tough 21st century woman - she started out as a atomic-tits-barbie doll. So much so she became her own cliché and they had to do a reboot to save the franchise from total pettiness.)
+ the combat is fun
Though I am not really a person to judge that, because I am very very new to gamepad controls. (Still a mystery to me how anyone could be good with that in a first person shooter).
+ dialogue vocal acting was great
The audio vocal track was the very thing, what made me connect to the characters
The Disappointing Things:
- The open world feels confined
I think the main problem is that I didn't lose that narrow feeling of being in a "tunnel". You always see/feel the mountains around you and never get that "open world" feeling (like I got in the witcher 3). I think the problem here is the dramaturgical exposition at the beginning during the quests that work as a tutorial. It all feels more like a mass effect level than an actual giant landscape.
If you compare it to The Witcher 3 (and the beginning at White Orchard) that game takes your hand without spoiling your curiosity. You have Vizimir/the Griffin and the Nilfgardian General at two different spots in that small open world. Not really much but still, it gives you the feeling that there is so much to explore. Although to be honest there isn't that much: some errands, some treasures and generic side quests. Still the Witcher gives you the feeling, that this little world you are in is vast and full of new adventures - and you can't wait to run into them. HZD rarely accomplished that.
- The world feels "beautifully hollow"
After admiring the graphics there is nothing to do except hunting and collecting. You don't talk actively with NPCs but they pop up on the map when they have dialogue - which in every case either progresses the main story line or leads to a generic collect/bring/rescure/investigate side quest. That's it.
The beautifully crafted town of Meridian feels like a movie set because it does not interact with you or itself. If you compare it to Novigrad in The Witcher 3 you will get what I mean. That city feels busy and you have to actively find the people that are relevant for you. Or you just stumble upon things. It is the tiny details and the balance between "overwhelming" and "we take you by the hand" which makes the difference here.
- The map (the actual in-game map) spoils the open world
Again compared to the Witcher 3 the player's map in HZD literally shows you that you are running in a giant tunnel. Why not keep the end of the world simply hidden so you have to find it yourself? Also all the markers that pop up once you climbed a tallneck don't encourage you to pull out your explorer boots either. You already know what to expect - more of the same.
- The game mechanics aren't the best
It is not the mark of an excellent game if your side quest characters conveniently appear after you have freed his/her beloved wife/husband/sister/brother/[add random person here] on the other side of the map right by your side.
Or that you always meet up with people at the place where things happen. Why not walk with them to that spot and slip some interesting dialogue in while strolling? At least give the opportunity to fast-travel together, do the thing right away.
Also the whole idea of giving every information to the player actually harmed the game. For example: why would I want to know a %-value of how far my progress is? Is that like in a racing game to tell me how many laps still to go to finish that exhausting trip?
This kills suspense, any "omg-epic-saga-experince". In The Witcher 3, when you take the boat to that island of mists, I thought: "okay, that's got to be it, it was great and now this got to be the end". But then the game had additional 20 hours of epic story telling for me. If I had a number in the menu that would have told me:"71,5% finished" I would never had been that positively surprised.
- I didn't bond with the characters
All the interesting relationships that could have been told simply get dismissed by death or story rush. Why not spent another hour to start to bond (as a player) to my father figure Rost? Compare it again to Vizimir in The Witcher 3, who (spoilers!) dies during a very dramatic plot point mid-game. Why is it so emotional? Because you started the game with him, hunted the griffin, came back to Kaer Morhen, joked around with him, fought with him till the end. Horizon Zero Dawn often just simply seems to tell you: "Look now, this is a major plot person and he/she is important to you or someone else so please feel compassion, rationality or anger!" I ended up giving a flying frog about anybody.
Just imagine you could really grow up with Rost, feel what it is like to be banished, you really get to know your opponents in the trials so their death really strikes you, you really get to know the sun king and his forbidden affections to the sister of Erend...... All those great chances of showing profound human relationships - thrown away.
- The Overall Plot - It is good but not great
If you have followed themes of sci-fi story telling for the last years that basic type of theme has been done a lot (the first that came to my mind was skynet/terminator and that one black mirror episode where the autonomous killer robots hunt people in an distopian-future England).
So I had hope for some new twists in that whole "we-are-the-inventors-of-our-own-end" and "military-corporations-are-evil" narrative.
Don't get me wrong, I totally think that military corporations are evil but to give grades for a game like "excellent" and 10/10 there has to be something new to that standard plot enemy figure. Make me think for (or even about) myself. Surpise me with a twist (or two). Connect that "omg-all-I-thought-the-world-was-is-wrong", which Aloy must have felt when she realized how the world looked like before, to my own life experince.
Instead you could expect from the start that the guy talking to you via your focus had a hidden agenda, that this arena you see and climb down from is the place where you will fight after you got captured by the bad guys, that humans built the machines and they turned against their former masters, that you have no mother because you were grown from scratch in vitro. There was no great mystery, no real arc of suspense. In the end the overall plot of HZD, if not predictable, still was expectable.
Conclusion
All in all it is a good game. It was worth the 30€. Would I still be happy if I had paid the full price - probably not. The combat was fun, the world looked great and there was an "ok" plot.
But that does not make an excellent 10/10 game. HZD never lived up to it's great potential. It almost felt like some suits came by the studio and said: "We need to make it more casual and sleek!" Seems like that strategy worked the numbers to their liking - again. But the whole world and the main character is screaming: "We are different!" In the end they weren't so much.