Every once and a while I’ll get around to playing one of those critically aclaimed games that’s come out in the past 10 years. I have an amazing propensity to avoid spoilers and/or forget spoilers by the time I get around to playing or watching something. Horizon Zero Dawn was everywhere when it came out. At the time I had a PS4 but didn’t actually pick it up until the Complete Edition came out and it was on sale. I think may have been the last thing I ever bought at a Gamestop and it was definately the last physical game I ever bought.

I think I played through the prologue of the game up until the Proving. I distincly remember baby Aloy’s disproportionate head and the seeds of an interesting story and world about to be told. But this was also around the time I was moving away from consoles and over to PC. My interest in playing a game on my TV was waining and I left Aloy in the middle of the Proving not knowing the story was just getting started. Fast forward to now and I’ve just finished up the main story in about 35 hours on PC.

This is a weird one for me. Typically, I list out things I liked about a game and things I didn’t enjoy as much but with Horizon: Zero Dawn much of what I liked about the game is also what I didn’t . I’m conflicted because I want to say this game was amazing but there are somethings that are holding it back.

Things I Liked:

The World

The World of Horizon: Zero Dawn might just be one of the most unique and immersive open worlds I’ve come across. I liked the mix of giant robot machines contrasted with primitive human society. Everything from the architecture, to the clothing, down to the dialog options line up so well to the world they’re a apart of. I especially enjoyed the clothing with it’s beautiful mix of textiles woven with machine parts.

The side quests really explored what everyday life is like for peoople in the world of HZD. Sure, it’s got they’ve got the typical open world quest structure (help people with trivial tasks, save people from monsters, solve a mystery or two) but they excel at telling convinving stories from the people who inabit the land

And then there’s the lore! I don’t typically take the time to read all the pieces of writing that fill up some sort of notebook or codex in RPGs but I enjoyed finding the texts and audio files from the Old World that, bit by bit, explain what happened to get us to this point. I even liked finding the scrolls and other pieces of information that explain the more current events and cultures. I was always on the hunt for a new entry

The Story

The story didn’t grab me right from the get go. Like I said, I have played the beginning before and fizzled out right in the middle of the Proving. But this time around, once I got past that point, I was hooked. I wanted to dive into the mystery of how the world came to be filled with giant machines, why human civilization had been essentially reset, and why Aloy resembled Elisabet Sobeck, a scientist from thousands of years ago. Every subsequent story quest provided a little more info but always left things on a cliff hanger. I was compelled to see the next quest almost right up until the end of the game but we’ll get to that later.

The Combat

Our main character, Aloy, essentially becomes a super hero as the main story progresses but she is still just one woman. The combat in Horizon: Zero Dawn reflects this quite well. No matter what level Aloy is, she’s always just squishy enough that she won’t be taking on multiple machines head on. This forces you to play a bit more tactically and use the tools at your disposal. By tools I mean sneaking around taking pot shots at machines with your bow until they’re dead or luring them into some bushes and stabbing them with your spear.

I particularly enjoyed that machines will lose interest in you fairly quickly if you’re hiding in bushes. It makes sense right? They’re machines, they walk on set paths unless something disturbs them, like a flaming arrow or three to the face, then once the threat appears to be gone they go back to doing what their programmed to do.

It’s pretty easy to abuse. I spent a lot of time figuring out how to get into places where big machines couldn’t or how best to use the environment to hide from them. But that was part of the fun for me and has the added benefit or explaining why Aloy is able to take down whole swaths of dinosaur sized robots by herself.

Things That Could Have Been Better:

The World

A common complaint about open world games is that the world feels empty. This isn’t one of those games, the world is actually quite full of machines and wildlife but it lacks people. For as lived in as HZD’s cities and towns feel the world itself is mostly devoid of people.

I get that it’s dangerous out there but Aloy can’t be the only one out there. There should be other hunters looking to gather materials, maybe a caravan or two traveling the roads. The only people you’ll run into are bandits in their camps. And you obviously need to kill all of them because they are bandits and that’s what you do.

Other than that, people only show up during quests and it makes for a lonely world indeed.

The Story

As compelling as I found the mystery of how this world and the machines came to be I can’t say the same for the parallel story about the Carja and the fate of the world in the present. It’s kind of boring, the cultures that have emerged aren’t all that interesting, nor are the conflicts between them.

Once I learned what the Zero Dawn project was, why there are robot animals everywhere, and who Aloy is it was kind of a slog to finish the story. I knew where it was going and how it would end 5 hours before I faced the final boss.

Overriding Machines

There’s this whole mechanic where you can override machines and use them as mounts or have them fight for you. It was cool at fist the mounts seemed to get lost a lot when I wasn’t on them . It’s just enough of an inconvinience to get another one that after the first few got lost I just walked everywhere.

Overriding machines to fight for you seemed like a cool idea. That is until you realize you can’t override corrupted machines which are 90% of the machines in the main story quest. Sadly, I didn’t get much use out of this either.

Conclusion

Overall, I enjoyed Horizon Zero Dawn. While the story went on a little longer than I wanted it to it had an awesome story to tell. By the end of the game I was a bit burnt out on the combat so I’ll probably wait a while before I try the Frozen Wilds DLC but I do want to revisit it soon.