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Horizon Forbidden West |OT| Western, but without the cowboys

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deliquate

deliquate

Teyvat Traveler
Member
Feb 25, 2021
2,309
jumped back in for a bit--after credits rolled a few days ago--to look for some of the last side quests & maybe check out gear upgrades.

I googled for a dreadwing site, found it, killed the dreadwing ~5 times and got about half the parts I need. Killed a bunch of a west coast monster & got none of the parts I need. Killed a couple of frostmaws but couldn't avoid the webbing. Ok, well... at least I got half the dreadwing parts I need.

Went back to the stand of the sentinels drone, because it's the last one I need. Tried again to jump onto the drone. The fall is far enough that if you don't get your glider out in time it will kill you. Lost the legendary stalker part I picked up on my way to the drone, which I needed.

Ok well that was fun.
 
MechaMarmaset

MechaMarmaset

Member
Nov 20, 2017
3,793
That hunting grounds with the Tremortusk is bullshit. Oh you have to tear off his tusks only in a shocked state but we'll make it so the shocked animation always clips the fucking tusks through the ground so you can't shoot them.
 

Deleted member 36578

Dec 21, 2017
26,561
MechaMarmaset said:
That hunting grounds with the Tremortusk is bullshit. Oh you have to tear off his tusks only in a shocked state but we'll make it so the shocked animation always clips the fucking tusks through the ground so you can't shoot them.
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I just did that hunting ground and did not have that problem at all. Maybe shock it as it's walking towards you?
 
Crayon

Crayon

Member
Oct 26, 2017
15,580
Performance mode after the patch just looks a tiny bit better, to me. At least, I think. We'll see when someone side-by-sides them.
 
mcruz79

mcruz79

Member
Apr 28, 2020
3,116
After almost 120 hours, I saw this morning the credits rolling.

I almost feel sad now that the journey is over.

So many things to say about this game.

I think this is a work of art from Guerrilla.
I will make a bigger post to try to post all my impressions later.

For now, I think that's now my favorite open world game I've ever played ( still didn't play Elden Ring and Cyberpunk) even if I think that's probably not the better realized open world game, that I still think is probably Red Dead Redemption 2.

But the setting, the scifi Genre, the combat and overall gameplay makes me feel that I prefer Forbidden West over RDR2.

I agree that the last third of the story feels a little rushed but damn, all main missions were just so good in this game.
I just wanted more. it's a huge upgrade over Zero Down in this regard.

The final mission my jaw was just all time on the floor for how stunning this mission was.

I loved the story, the characters and everything but things feel a little rushed some big characters had little screen time in my opinion.

Its not a perfect game, and it has some flaws, but I am truly in love to what Guerrilla achieved here.

Easely One of the best games I've played.

Today I will probably start Elden Ring, even if I still feel I am very attached to the world of Horizon.
 
melikefishnchips

melikefishnchips

Member
Oct 27, 2017
1,683
SanderGT said:
😁😁 me too. Are you playing on hard too?

I might try taking on a Thunderjaw solo 💘
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I'm playing on normal but it took a lot of grinding to get my loadout.

I got the sun scourge bow which has great elementals on it, frost in particular.

Then i maxed out the pulvarizing spike thrower which has explosive spikes, impact spikes and advanced explosive spikes

So my go-to combo is to freeze enemies and then use the spikes to do big impact damaged amplified by frost.

It gets better tho, I have the maxed out powershot valor surge which when activated amps the damage of your weapon with 5 free powershots AND it refills the ammo for the ammo you're using.

When i use my valor surge with the advanced explosive spikes, things die very very quickly and i never really have to worry about wasting resources on crafting ammo for it which uses some rare components.

The rest of my loadout is just used to cover the rest of my elemental damage.
 
mcruz79

mcruz79

Member
Apr 28, 2020
3,116
I just can't get over how satisfying, awesome and amazing some animations, hit reactions and particle effects are in some fights against some machines.
Slitherfang specially is just insane.
 
MidnightMania

MidnightMania

Member
Oct 31, 2017
622
Rolled credits finally. Enjoyed the game, but I the upgrade system for armor and weapons sucked. I wish there was a way to spend more shards just to get the parts I need rather than have to hunt to get parts where it may or may not drop after the encounter. Seriously there was so many items I didn't even use/sell in this game.
 
J-Wood

J-Wood

Member
Oct 25, 2017
6,157
MidnightMania said:
Rolled credits finally. Enjoyed the game, but I the upgrade system for armor and weapons sucked. I wish there was a way to spend more shards just to get the parts I need rather than have to hunt to get parts where it may or may not drop after the encounter. Seriously there was so many items I didn't even use/sell in this game.
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This doesn't help you at all but i just found it and maybe it'll help others. If you go into options and turn "easy loot" on, it makes it so items will always drop on enemy kill and you don't have to tear the specific piece off. You still have to hunt, but removes the "item is destroyed if enemy is killed" stuff
 
RoKKeR

RoKKeR

Member
Oct 25, 2017
16,175
.
MidnightMania said:
Rolled credits finally. Enjoyed the game, but I the upgrade system for armor and weapons sucked. I wish there was a way to spend more shards just to get the parts I need rather than have to hunt to get parts where it may or may not drop after the encounter. Seriously there was so many items I didn't even use/sell in this game.
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Definitely has gear/item/upgrade overload.
 
Dreezy

Dreezy

Member
Oct 27, 2017
905
Ooo Blast Tripwire really helps with controlling the Tideripper fight... wonder if it'll do the same w/ Shellsnapper.
 
MidnightMania

MidnightMania

Member
Oct 31, 2017
622
J-Wood said:
This doesn't help you at all but i just found it and maybe it'll help others. If you go into options and turn "easy loot" on, it makes it so items will always drop on enemy kill and you don't have to tear the specific piece off. You still have to hunt, but removes the "item is destroyed if enemy is killed" stuff
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Yep I actually discovered this about half way through the game. It eased my frustration with this game greatly.
 
deliquate

deliquate

Teyvat Traveler
Member
Feb 25, 2021
2,309
J-Wood said:
This doesn't help you at all but i just found it and maybe it'll help others. If you go into options and turn "easy loot" on, it makes it so items will always drop on enemy kill and you don't have to tear the specific piece off. You still have to hunt, but removes the "item is destroyed if enemy is killed" stuff
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Pretty sure this is not true. I've had easy loot on all game & if I destroy a part, it stays destroyed. (Like the webbings, which are really hard to leave intact.)
 
J-Wood

J-Wood

Member
Oct 25, 2017
6,157
deliquate said:
Pretty sure this is not true. I've had easy loot on all game & if I destroy a part, it stays destroyed. (Like the webbings, which are really hard to leave intact.)
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Right, I think if you hit the part with explosive still, it can be destroyed. But if you just take a machine down, there are a lot of parts that will say "destroyed when enemy killed" meaning if you don't tear it off it'll be destroyed no matter what.

Easy loot fixes that specifically I believe
 

StrykerIsland

Member
Oct 25, 2017
2,288
Easy loot doesn't prevent parts from being destroyed. It just makes it so you don't have to tear them off prior to killing the machine.

But if you destroy it in the process, it's gone.
 
BabyShams

BabyShams

Member
Nov 7, 2017
1,902
Finally finished it at 62 hours, hit level 50 and still had so many sidequests and main story, I just decided to finish the story. I was worried early on, thought it was going someplace stupid that I didn't want it to then it full on jumped the shark.

I really enjoyed playing it but I come away feeling really negative. The traversal options are so bad for so long. Climbing feels sluggish and you get stuck constantly with clear paths, swimming is god awful and not being to turn her flashlight on at will is horrible. Mounts constantly come to a dead stop for seemingly no reason.

Enemies felt so much tankier I ended up turning down enemy health. Combat felt more like a chore, I wasn't setting up and picking enemies apart I was just running and dodging for my life. Feels like they ramped up enemy aggression 10x and did nothing to pace out enemy attacks so you just get stun locked.

Too many ammo types, I don't need a regular, advanced, special ammo for every type impact/fire/ice etc. They are so spaced out across weapons and the upgrades are a slog, you need to many machine parts and all the high end stuff uses the same late game enemy parts.

The game feels like a regression in almost every way except for the open world quest design, character animations and dialogue in cutscenes and obviously graphically.
 
sandyph

sandyph

Member
Oct 31, 2017
1,090
Poldino said:
Not digging much the fact that the story doesn't acqually bring you to visit all part of the map equally, I'm basically at the very last mission and still have a good chunk of the map covered in fog. Didn't even get to ride a Clawstrider yet, pretty strange they didn't put in the story something like the State of Play mission (where a Clawstrider mount is presented to you as part of the mission)

There's so much stuff they left out of the main story and just made it all part of side quests or side activities. While it's a good thing for exploration and player rewarding for taking their time with the game, if you just do the story you actually get the feeling of...missing huge parts of the game?
I think the game would've benefited from a couple more main story missions, second part of the story felt quite rushed, spent so little time in
San Francisco and all the West Coast part of the map
, I was expecting much more time spent there giving how the pre-release marketing mostly revolved around that biome

Anyway, 60 hours in and still have tons of stuff to do, scale and scope of the game are truly incredible, can't stress enough the amazing work they did with side content and activities
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there's a bunch of side quest in those area though, like the one involving Alva and the side quest to unlock the legendary spike thrower
 
DanGo

DanGo

Member
Oct 25, 2017
6,850
Is there a trick to getting the Stormbird's storm cannon? It consistently explodes for me and I can't figure it out. I think I got a couple from rewards, but can't seem to get any to detach and so my upgrading is at a real standstill. I haven't noticed any issues with other detachable components.
 
hydruxo

hydruxo

▲ Legend ▲
Member
Oct 25, 2017
21,074
Platinumed the game yesterday and I loved my time with it, but I do have just a few things that kind of annoyed me though. First one is the upgrade system. I think it's excessively grindy in a way that makes you not even want to really engage with it.

Once you have mostly purple and/or orange gear you're not going to need to fully upgrade them (or even really upgrade them at all) to beat the game or anything like that, but because they lock coil/weave slots and other perk bonuses behind upgrades you're not going to get gear that has fully unlocked slots and perks until you invest into multiple upgrades. If you have a favorite weapon you like using a lot and you want to get the most out of it by upgrading, then you're going to have to really go out of your way to hunt down those specific parts for upgrades. It can take you a good chunk of time just to get a few upgrades for a single weapon, much less to max it out which takes even longer. Now imagine doing that for your whole weapon wheel that you use. Then your favorite outfits. Shit is just too much IMO. I like a good grind in video games when it's reasonable, but the upgrade system in this game can be toned down significantly and it would be just fine if they did. I shouldn't need to hunt down more than a dozen machines for a single piece of gear.

Also think they need to add a transmog system for outfits. There are a handful of rare outfits that I love the way they look but the stats are terrible because they're lower rarity. I'm using a legendary Nora outfit that you get from the arena because it has insanely good stats for ranged combat, but I don't really like how it looks at all. If I could transmog that outfit to look like something else then it'd be perfect.
 
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BoxManLocke

BoxManLocke

Member
Oct 25, 2017
4,177
France
I'm one mission away from the end I think.

I originally wasn't going to bother with collectibles and what's left of the side quests, but the flying mount actually makes late game exploration a lot more fun by allowing you to bypass a ton of platforming for stuff like survey drones/black boxes and points of interests that are very high up/on the edges of the map.

Also exploring the skyscrapers around San Francisco is insanely fun.
 
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regenhuber

regenhuber

Member
Nov 4, 2017
5,508
mcruz79 said:
After almost 120 hours, I saw this morning the credits rolling.

I almost feel sad now that the journey is over.

So many things to say about this game.

I think this is a work of art from Guerrilla.
I will make a bigger post to try to post all my impressions later.

For now, I think that's now my favorite open world game I've ever played ( still didn't play Elden Ring and Cyberpunk) even if I think that's probably not the better realized open world game, that I still think is probably Red Dead Redemption 2.

But the setting, the scifi Genre, the combat and overall gameplay makes me feel that I prefer Forbidden West over RDR2.

I agree that the last third of the story feels a little rushed but damn, all main missions were just so good in this game.
I just wanted more. it's a huge upgrade over Zero Down in this regard.

The final mission my jaw was just all time on the floor for how stunning this mission was.

I loved the story, the characters and everything but things feel a little rushed some big characters had little screen time in my opinion.

Its not a perfect game, and it has some flaws, but I am truly in love to what Guerrilla achieved here.

Easely One of the best games I've played.

Today I will probably start Elden Ring, even if I still feel I am very attached to the world of Horizon.
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well put.
I said it in here earlier that HFW is my favorite "traditional AAA open world game" (BOTW, Elden Ring and Rockstar games are their own thing imo).
Got the plat yesterday and there wasn't a single minute in my 50hrs where I was like "ugh, now I have to do this X times".

The biggest compliment I can give GG is how customizable the experience is.
If you play on the hardest difficulty, don't become OP and have all help turned off, it is just as hard as a Souls game imo
If you set it to easy (did that yesterday to mop up trophies) you can have a chill time.
You can legit recommend this game to everybody.

hydruxo said:
Platinumed the game yesterday and I loved my time with it, but I do have just a few things that kind of annoyed me though. First one is the upgrade system. I think it's excessively grindy in a way that makes you not even want to really engage with it.

Once you have mostly purple and/or orange gear you're not going to need to fully upgrade them (or even really upgrade them at all) to beat the game or anything like that, but because they lock coil/weave slots and other perk bonuses behind upgrades you're not going to get gear that has fully unlocked slots and perks until you invest into multiple upgrades. If you have a favorite weapon you like using a lot and you want to get the most out of it by upgrading, then you're going to have to really go out of your way to hunt down those specific parts for upgrades. It can take you a good chunk of time just to get a few upgrades for a single weapon, much less to max it out which takes even longer. Now imagine doing that for your whole weapon wheel that you use. Then your favorite outfits. Shit is just too much IMO. I like a good grind in video games when it's reasonable, but the upgrade system in this game can be toned down significantly and it would be just fine if they did. I shouldn't need to hunt down more than a dozen machines for a single piece of gear.

Also think they need to add a transmog system for outfits. There are a handful of rare outfits that I love the way they look but the stats are terrible because they're lower rarity. I'm using a legendary Nora outfit that you get from the arena because it has insanely good stats for ranged combat, but I don't really like how it looks at all. If I could transmog that outfit to look like something else then it'd be perfect.
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Yeah the upgrading is a little bit clumsy and weapons become obsolete quickly, so it isn't even that rewarding. I stopped bothering once I got the Purple stuff.
Would be way more fun if you had 1 sharpshot bow, 1 blastling etc that you can upgrade all the way up to the endgame and customize to your liking.
Instead you get drowned in weapons and have to constantly swith them out to meet the enemies weaknesses.

The pouch upgrades are also a nuissance imo
I was 1 Jay feather short of upgrading my quiver for 90% of the game and didn't really want to make a huge detour.
You have to fast travel somewhere, find the birds and then it's all RNG based what you end up getting.
With the salmons I had to repeat that process 3-4 times.
IMO the merchants you meet later on should just sell that stuff to you.

But (similar to the clunky climbing) these are minor issues in an overall spectacular package.
 
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haveheart

haveheart

Member
Oct 25, 2017
2,084
regenhuber said:
well put.
I said it in here earlier that HFW is my favorite "traditional AAA open world game" (BOTW, Elden Ring and Rockstar games are their own thing imo).
Got the plat yesterday and there wasn't a single minute in my 50hrs where I was like "ugh, now I have to do this X times".

The biggest compliment I can give GG is how customizable the experience is.
If you play on the hardest difficulty, don't become OP and have all help turned off, it is just as hard as a Souls game imo
If you set it to easy (did that yesterday to mop up trophies) you can have a chill time.
You can legit recommend this game to everybody.



Yeah the upgrading is a little bit clumsy and weapons become obsolete quickly, so it isn't even that rewarding. I stopped bothering once I got the Purple stuff.
Would be way more fun if you had 1 sharpshot bow, 1 blastling etc that you can upgrade all the way up to the endgame and customize to your liking.
Instead you get drowned in weapons and have to constantly swith them out to meet the enemies weaknesses.

The pouch upgrades are also a nuissance imo
I was 1 Jay feather short of upgrading my quiver for 90% of the game and didn't really want to make a huge detour.
You have to fast travel somewhere, find the birds and then it's all RNG based what you end up getting.
With the salmons I had to repeat that process 3-4 times.
IMO the merchants you meet later on should just sell that stuff to you.

But (similar to the clunky climbing) these are minor issues in an overall spectacular package.
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I think they do though. IIRC some merchants sell wildly rare upgrade parts, sometimes even for green shine stuff. I'm quite sure merchants' inventories aren't universal across the map, so it's well worth checking out the wares of every merchant you come across.
 
regenhuber

regenhuber

Member
Nov 4, 2017
5,508
haveheart said:
I think they do though. IIRC some merchants sell wildly rare upgrade parts, sometimes even for shards. I'm quite sure merchants' inventories aren't universal across the map, so it's well worth checking out the wares of every merchant you come across.
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I was able to buy some upgrade components but they all want different animal components like "pristine tooth" etc.
Stuff that is just as hard to come by.
Could also be a "me problem" idk
 
krae_man

krae_man

Master of Balan Wonderworld
Member
Oct 25, 2017
9,931
Mods this time felt worthless. In Zero Dawn I would regularly jump in there excited to see what I got.

This time, I would fill slots when I leveled up or changed gear and never touch it again. They feel like a waste.
 
henhowc

henhowc

Member
Oct 26, 2017
34,363
Los Angeles, CA
Yeah I wish there was more interesting loot. After awhile I just stopped caring as it was mostly just stuff to sell. The only thing I care is outfits and that's more for aesthetics than their actual stats.
 

pappacone

Member
Jan 10, 2020
3,474
krae_man said:
Mods this time felt worthless. In Zero Dawn I would regularly jump in there excited to see what I got.

This time, I would fill slots when I leveled up or changed gear and never touch it again. They feel like a waste.
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I don't know about other builds, but the ones related to concentration, stamina and stealth damage are very strong
 
janusff

janusff

The Fallen
Oct 25, 2017
18,460
Austin, TX
I'm still hella early in the game. Just climbed my first tallneck. Is this the whole map, that's showing in the map tab, that's greyed out? Seems like it's about the same size as the first game? Or am I off with that estimate?
 

Deleted member 13101

Banned
Oct 27, 2017
17,973
The map is much longer in the X dimension but on average a little shorter in the Y dimension. In terms of area it is about the same as HZD, but this time the area is used much more efficiently, and you have added uses of verticality and underwater depths that were not in the first game. So it feels more wide-ranging because they have so much put into it this time, and have also cleverly bounded and occluded separate climate and geographic zones. There are many more areas that are set up specifically for sidequests than in HZD, so someone only mainlining the story isn't going to uncover the range of expanse in the game.
 
iamandy

iamandy

Member
Nov 6, 2017
3,374
Brasil
I actually love the upgrade system. It gives me huge MH vibes having to kill a machine in specific ways to get the materials.
 
SolidSnakex

SolidSnakex

Member
Oct 25, 2017
25,021
janusff said:
I'm still hella early in the game. Just climbed my first tallneck. Is this the whole map, that's showing in the map tab, that's greyed out? Seems like it's about the same size as the first game? Or am I off with that estimate?
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I believe Guerrilla said it was around the same size as the original. They've just taken a similar space and packed it with far more content rather than making a much bigger world in terms of overall size.
 
mcruz79

mcruz79

Member
Apr 28, 2020
3,116
regenhuber said:
well put.
I said it in here earlier that HFW is my favorite "traditional AAA open world game" (BOTW, Elden Ring and Rockstar games are their own thing imo).
Got the plat yesterday and there wasn't a single minute in my 50hrs where I was like "ugh, now I have to do this X times".

The biggest compliment I can give GG is how customizable the experience is.
If you play on the hardest difficulty, don't become OP and have all help turned off, it is just as hard as a Souls game imo
If you set it to easy (did that yesterday to mop up trophies) you can have a chill time.
You can legit recommend this game to everybody.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

Yes, all the option the game give to you to make the experience better as possible to anyone is just insane!!
And even so, we had reviewers giving 6.5 to a game like this, saying the game was to easy and straightforward, that didn't need to use the tools available to finish the game, but the guy was playing the game on normal with all help available. Hahaha!!!
Thats professional game media nowadays.

Played the game on Very hard with all help turned off and all the HUD turned off and the experience was challenging and absolutely amazing to play.

Its a fantastic game!!!
 

QuigleyMcShine

Member
Jan 29, 2018
9,935
I'm getting the vibe that if I start the Gemini cauldron mission I'll want to keep following the main story through to the end, but there's so much side content left to do. Ugh but I also want to see where the story goes!

Also the Clawstrider should be like 15% faster at least.
 
Tyaren

Tyaren

Character Artist
Verified
Oct 25, 2017
25,720
janusff said:
I'm still hella early in the game. Just climbed my first tallneck. Is this the whole map, that's showing in the map tab, that's greyed out? Seems like it's about the same size as the first game? Or am I off with that estimate?
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They stated it is "a little bit bigger" than the old game map. I assume that also includes the Forbidden West expansion. So it is a fair bit bigger than when Zero Dawn released.
It does feel considerably bigger exploring it too. I'm 60 hours in, so I did lots of side exploring and questing, have completed the story and now I still come back to 30%-40% unexplored map.
 
The Third Heat

The Third Heat

Member
Oct 25, 2017
2,580
Man, took a break from Elden Ring (which I adore) to jump back into this last night, and had more of a blast than I expected to.

It's so easy to get caught up in "The Discourse" about open-world games and completely forget that there really is no one way to make a good video game. I feel as though the two games are both great at pushing their players forward in different ways: curiosity for ER and narrative for HFW.

I dunno. I probably shouldn't even bring up Elden Ring in this thread, but when I put this game down to jump into it, I was very scared I wouldn't want to come back; but I'm happy I did because it is kinda nice to play something that doesn't have me constantly on edge and has a compelling narrative for me to dig into. Excited to play through them both, probably interchangeably.
 
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