I'm gonna finish this up this weekend. Maybe I'll write a long review if I'm not to burnt on it. If not these are probably my final thoughts on it outside the main plot stuff.
It definitely feels ...less memorable & less fun than the first game to me. It's not even rose-tinted nostaglia because I literally played Zero Dawn -> Frozen Wilds -> Horizon 2 back to back over the last 1.5 months and 140-ish hours.
I feel like years from now I'll still think nostalgically about Zero Dawn and Frozen Wilds and some of the moments from those, the first time I saw the view of the volcano in FW from the mountain hill where the sphere was in Frozen Wilds, the hunting trial of taking down the Thunderjaw with two Ravagers, the Concrete Beach Party sidequest and the Banuk in general in Frozen Wilds. The first time I stepped into the giant city that was Meridian. The vistas from some of the Banuk ornaments. The first time I roped down a Stormbird. The foggy days of sneaking trough an area with only blue enemy lights peering through the fog.
Zero Dawn & Frozen Wilds was one of the most memorable and best open-world games I've ever played. I even made a thread to that effect after beating Zero Dawn!
Forbidden West...it's pretty. Has some good quests. Some cool new features/dinos. But I just don't think I'm gonna take much out of this. I've kind of stopped caring about anything after the Daunt/Utaru/Tenakth sections. Not sure if it's just burn out because it's such a massive game or if the game just feels less tight in the last 1/3rd. Horizon 1 felt like a smaller but more cohesive world, you met fewer people but you got to know them better and I found the sidequest characters memorable. Here it's a large world, more spread out and I don't remember any of the sidequest Utaru/Tenakth people. The main story feels different with your cast instead of meeting people like Avad and doing stuff for them.
The first game had fewer activity types and they weren't as good/in-depth, but it had like 6 enemy bases total the whole game. Forbidden West feels like an Assassin's Creed game with a rebel base every corner. Outside the relic ruins the collectibles aren't particularly better. I actually think the Cauldrons might be worse here. I loved how varied they were in the first game. That one cauldron around the dead tallneck filled with human enemies was great and gorgeous art design.
And I've said it a million times to the point I'm sure everyone in this thread is sick of it, but I really don't enjoy the combat that much in this one. The combat and its balance just feel off whereas Zero Dawn/Frozen Wilds felt just right. I almost never got frustrated playing those games on normal, but in this game almost every night I play I feel bad about my skills at some point because of a frustrating combat event. I just find Forbidden West kind of an unfun game whereas the originals had the most fun ranged combat I've ever had in a game.
Finally this game became a fucking grind. Introducing weapon & gear levels was an extremely poor design decision imo. Just by adding all these new weapons/gear variety the game would've had more depth and progression would've been paced ok if they simply all just cost shards like the first game and they had built-in skills & ammo types like they do. Throwing in this, and I'm just gonna say it, complete time-waster shit design of upgrade levels to unlock skills on gear and even ammo types, does nothing but unbalances the game because now you have to balance enemies around not only what gear is available to buy, but what upgrade level of the gear people may be at. If you're not upgrading the gear easy difficulty in H2 feels like normal difficulty in Frozen Wilds which was already challenging. Just because the enemy HP and resistance to status effect buildup. But then if you upgrade the gear it becomes more like normal in the original. The upgrade system is just a shitty system and the game combat & balance would've been much better without it.
