3.5/5 ★ – TheWolvesDen's review of Horizon: Zero Dawn Complete Edition.

The best part of Horizon is the feel of weapons. The ranged combat is beautiful with great layers. In particular the tearing components. The fact that splitting apart machines into pieces even without damage changes the nature of the fight is compelling. The fact that different arrows really can evolve your play style is great. I am less enthused by the traps this game gives you. While moment to moment useful it often feels like for half the missions setting traps doesn’t work as often, but that could be placed on my planning, but in general I think for missions the traps aren’t as effective. But they are effective in the open world. In particular the fact the machines are animal adjacent means you are hunting wild life with that perspective. In other games the focus being a 6th sense feels like an afterthought. But here for being able to see enemy weakpoint/ study their week points etc, it feels natural. My biggest critique with Horizon is gamefeel, and I know thats weird to say after glowingly bigging up the combat and tools . However in movement it is clear this game wants to make you feel like you are doing cool things but not that you are doing cool things. Lets take for example, the Tallnecks. They are a cool twist on towers , the fact they move and that you have to make a plan in your environment to figure out how to get on them in order to use them to open the map? Its great in line with the theme of the machines are to be tackled. Howewever when you climb them, the enemy machines stop attacking and getting up is just a scripted jump pattern. It looks cool (like the rappelling down too) but you are a bystander. That event reflects in what is a great idea for playing around with the world design: couldrons. It looks like a puzzle, trying to evoke that in terms of navigation but its just a hallway where you are being funneled to a boss fight in a unique setting. It breaks the monotony and gives you tools to override new enemies but in general it highlights that this game can try to make you passive in the actual moment gamplay. As for story? I genuinely dont know where I stand. I have spent many a FaceTime conversation talking about it with one of my friends over the last few months and I can’t decide. You can frame Aloy in a couple of ways , as a true tinkerer, a curious person, not personable and a little brash. Those things make for a solid character but the way people treat her is odd. It is one thing for one person to hit on Aloy, its one thing for 2 but when it gets more than that for a person who is still learning to be around people it’s weird. In particular the dialogue wheel they give her is a bit weird in terms of framing her character. It feels like for a game about story, that the wheel for her interrupts the experience. However you can say that any interaction between her and Sylens is great both as just their abrasion causes entertaining friction. Sylens is a great foil to the story theme about knowledge. The story really goes in on the end about the importance of knowledge but that on it’s own it is not enough. I feel that theme runs solid. Do I care about anyone not named Sylens? No. Do I think the world is memorable? Eh. Traversal in this world is an afterthought. Its fine to look at but the journey and what you see isn’t gonna be something I hold onto. This is a game with great bow combat and ranged tools, but just solid everything else. It makes me want to peep the sequel but I am not sure if I can really think this game supersedes it’s fellow Sony 1st party open world game, Ghost of Tsushima.