Horizon Zero Dawn - open world action-RPG from Guerilla Games - now on PC

[Zlaja]

And regarding Horizon Zero Down: this game's story started intriguing but it all ended up being pretty lame and retarded.

Spoiler

The entire premise of the setting is GLITCHES. The first glitch ended up destroying all life on the planet and the second glitch messed with the backup plan to bring life back on the planet. This would have only been clever as some sort of meta commentary on games being released with tons of bugs these days. But that's hardly the case here.

 

[Roguey]

Still going through this. Looks like Gonzalez is completely aware that Aloy is an awful character (I checked and he wrote this particular sequence), so one wonders why he insisted on writing her that way.

Additionally

Too bad the quest this is attached to is written so poorly. Guy with an ugly beard tells me to go clear out his family's mansion of the robots that invaded, done. Find this gal in a closet, and then a beeping machine in a shed that drew the robots here in the first place which the woman says was likely placed by her brother so he could inherit the place. Suddenly bro shows up, admits to his diabolical deed, and then activates a new transmitter to draw more robots to kill the two of us, and of course the robots immediately go after him since he's holding the transmitter. Absolutely none of his actions in that final part make sense Why would he come back to the mansion before receiving confirmation it was safe, why would he admit to his crime, why would he think more robots would kill me after I already beat the other robots proving they're no threat to me, why would he hold the damn thing in his hand while it's on instead of just chucking it and running away?

 

[Zed Duke of Banville]

That quest is still more comprehensible than the presence of the Horizon Zero Dawn thread in the RPG forum.

 

[cvv]

That quest is still more comprehensible than the presence of the Horizon Zero Dawn thread in the RPG forum.

Well in Horizon there's combat, quests, NPC interactions, character development, itemization and even builds, sort of. It's an RPG.

We have things like Mount&Blade, Disco Elysium, King's Bounty or AssCreed here too. Fact is RPG turned out to be the most popular genre, obviously, so everything is RPG now.

 

[Vlajdermen]

Symphony of the Night is widely praised as the best Castlevania game ever. It is always at the top list of best Castlevania games. Nice try though.

Sotn ruined the Castlevania franchise with it's bullshit additions that served no real fucking purpose like leveling, tons of crap collecting and metroid bullshit backtracking. Sure, it had great art and music but gameplay was crap. Most of those who think it's the best Castlevania never even played the older games.

Eh, I don't mind a series changing genres if it's still fun. Not all the post-SotN vanias are good, but Aria of Sorrow is my second favourite game in the series after Bloodlines. SCIV was the one that really butchered the series.

 

[Vlajdermen]

That quest is still more comprehensible than the presence of the Horizon Zero Dawn thread in the RPG forum.

Well in Horizon there's combat, quests, NPC interactions, character development, itemization and even builds, sort of. It's an RPG.

They're not builds if you can get good at everything by the end. It's more of an upgrade tree. The only reason people think HZD is an rpg is because the marketing said so.

 

[cvv]

That quest is still more comprehensible than the presence of the Horizon Zero Dawn thread in the RPG forum.

Well in Horizon there's combat, quests, NPC interactions, character development, itemization and even builds, sort of. It's an RPG.

They're not builds if you can get good at everything by the end. It's more of an upgrade tree. The only reason people think HZD is an rpg is because the marketing said so.

You can get good at everything in Dark Souls too but there absolutely are builds in Dark Souls.

HZD is RPG because it has all the features an open-world third person RPG typically does, albeit simplified and low-fat.

 

[Vlajdermen]

That quest is still more comprehensible than the presence of the Horizon Zero Dawn thread in the RPG forum.

Well in Horizon there's combat, quests, NPC interactions, character development, itemization and even builds, sort of. It's an RPG.

They're not builds if you can get good at everything by the end. It's more of an upgrade tree. The only reason people think HZD is an rpg is because the marketing said so.

You can get good at everything in Dark Souls too but there absolutely are builds in Dark Souls.

HZD is RPG because it has all the features an open-world third person RPG typically does, albeit simplified and low-fat.

You mean on your millionth NG+? That's true in theory, but you have to make decisions up to that point. In HZD you can get each upgrade (an equivalent to maxing out every stat) on your first playthrough

 

[cvv]

You mean on your millionth NG+?

If you 100% the game you'll barely crawl over the level cap and you can get all da skillz, sure.

But even then you can opt to use mostly sniper arrows and targeting weak points, or you can use the tripcaster all the time or you can freeze and lob sticky grenades or you can tie monsters down or you can spec for controlling them and use against each other or you can spec for mostly silent run. I used mostly the freezing/sticky build and I never even touched the tripcaster or ropecaster but I saw people using those two all the time.

 

[Vlajdermen]

But even then you can opt to use mostly sniper arrows and targeting weak points, or you can use the tripcaster all the time or you can freeze and lob sticky grenades or you can tie monsters down or you can spec for controlling them and use against each other or you can spec for mostly silent run. I used mostly the freezing/sticky build and I never even touched the tripcaster or ropecaster but I saw people using those two all the time.

That's more of a playstyle than a build, but fair enough. I always found the game more fun when you fight head-on, I like how the enemy is always stronger and faster than you, so you can't just rush in and wail on him. It reminded me of why I like Resi 4 and Classicvania. Hzd would have honestly been better off as a linear action game

 

[cvv]

That's more of a playstyle than a build, but fair enough.

Hzd would have honestly been better off as a linear action game

It's only a playstyle when you 100% the game. And you p. much have to do that to get all the skills, including completing all the shit in the DLC. Otherwise you have to pick and choose what to invest into.

And yes, HZD would've been much better off as a straight up action game but lately developers seem to be unable to make those. For example Sekiro was even explicitly announced to be a simple action game but it ended up as a weird RPG-lite hybrid with most additional mechanics feeling undercooked, redundant and irrelevant. Sad.

 

[Roguey]

And completed. The writing never got better. In fact, it got worse in the expansion since that one was 100% written by Ben McCuck; it was full of audio logs from narcissistic stem women, had the same "women are better than men" agenda in the plot. For what it's worth, the John Gonzalez-penned Sylens was my favorite character (I do like morally ambigious practical pragmatism) so he hasn't completely lost whatever talent he once had.

The game content otoh was fine. Frozen Wilds and the endgame really ramped up the difficulty, though I think things got a bit too crazy with the shooting section near the end. In summary: it's fun to shoot weapons off robots, stealth killing humans is adequate as long as you don't buy the cheat ability that trivializes it, writing is garbage, and there's very little role-playing.

Some final screens. I pinned a guy to a wall, and his leg decided to float up backwards:

Safely hiding away in the tall grass while an overriden fireclaw kills another fireclaw for me. Getting robots to fight other robots is also fun:

 

[Infinitron]

Released on GOG: https://af.gog.com/game/horizon_zero_dawn_complete_edition?as=1649904300

 

[Reader]

the John Gonzalez-penned Sylens

I wonder how they even allowed this character to be into the game..
Writing is indeed terrible and almost all about "showing those men"

 

[kangaxx]

the John Gonzalez-penned Sylens

I wonder how they even allowed this character to be into the game..
Writing is indeed terrible and almost all about "showing those men"

I thought it was an odd one when I played it on PS. As people have said the characters and dialogue are just plain bad, but I liked the setting and the overall idea of the plot. It just felt badly executed because I didn't like any of the characters.

Gameplay was fine, felt quite fluid. Very badly balanced though.

 

[Reader]

I liked the setting and the overall idea of the plot

Yeah, I guess the setting and combat are the reasons why some people completed the game. The worls is full of vistas and fights with Thunderjaw are always tense. Main topic also gets more interesting(though its believability is debatable) And i liked observation points guy's story. But then you stumble on another butch in disguise and..

 

[fantadomat]

Buahahahahahhahaha it got released on GoG lol.

https://af.gog.com/game/horizon_zero_dawn_complete_edition?as=1649904300

 

[Roguey]

I wonder how they even allowed this character to be into the game..

He can get away with it because he's a based black man.

 

[aweigh]

You can save profiles for each game with RTSS aswell if that's what you are talking about. And you don't even need to select the game's executable, it can automatically create a profile for the currently active game/application and it's as easy as holding ctrl and clicking "ADD" on the main screen of the program.

so many years using RTSS and never knew this hotkey :O

 

[ADL]

PC version is mostly fixed. There's some issues that will likely never be addressed due to lack of foresight of a PC release but if that rumored "don't forget about the PC version" mandate from Sony is true, that's a temporary problem for Sony's PC releases. Guess we'll see in Days Gone since I'm pretty sure that was planned for a PC release from the start.

Spoiler

Too late for Bloodborne though, that's going to be a messy one

 

[v1rus]

playing this.

its ok as far as braindead popamoles go. Stealth aspect would be good, if the only solution to them wasnt whistle + stealth kill.

Im playing on Ultra Hard, but thinking of switching down. Not because its too hard, but because it feels like the game wasnt meant to be played this way. Those merchant prices can just go fuck off.

 

[cvv]

it feels like the game wasnt meant to be played this way.

It's not on NG, Ultra Hard is for NG+. There's even a cheevo "Complete NG+ on Ultra Hard".

 

[v1rus]

it feels like the game wasnt meant to be played this way.

It's not on NG, Ultra Hard is for NG+. There's even a cheevo "Complete NG+ on Ultra Hard".

So, should I switch to Very Hard?

 

[Naraya]

it feels like the game wasnt meant to be played this way.

It's not on NG, Ultra Hard is for NG+. There's even a cheevo "Complete NG+ on Ultra Hard".

So, should I switch to Very Hard?

Will someone answer this man? He's holding his playthrough for god's sake.

 

[v1rus]

it feels like the game wasnt meant to be played this way.

It's not on NG, Ultra Hard is for NG+. There's even a cheevo "Complete NG+ on Ultra Hard".

So, should I switch to Very Hard?

Will someone answer this man? He's holding his playthrough for god's sake.

The answer is - play on Ultra Hard even when NG, switch to Very Hard ONLY when buying equipment.