That’s Horizon done
Took <18 hours according to the save file. Got to level 30. Beat it on easy which might explain the shorter playtime.
There’s stuff to like. The setting, visuals, and music are all very nice. Story’s concept is nice too.
An issue that sounds weird is that the visuals might be too good? (Bare with me)
In gameplay I struggled to see what you can interact with. With a realistic color pallet a lot of things blended in with the background. For a game with a strong stealth focus and slow bow aiming, that’s not great. Had to crank up sharpness making the game look a bit worse
It’s something I’ve never had an issue with, even with SD games on Wii, PS2, Gamecube, etc. Even Uncharted manages to avoid this issue despite looking great.
Mixed with the weird bow hit boxes, I struggled to enjoy the bow combat for quite awhile. It ruined stealth...and fighting 50 enemies at onces isn’t very fun
Another thing about it “looking too good” is the uncanny valley the game goes into with the not fully animated cutscenes. The faces lip sync but they look like robots. I don’t feel the Witcher had this problem with major characters.
Sadly, the worst part of the game has to be...well, Aloy herself. She’s one of the worst protagonists in recent times. There are a ton of boring protagonists, flawed or dislikable, but Aloy is actively unlikable and I don’t think it’s on purpose like Trevor from GTAV or Joel
She’s an asshole, overconfident in her abilities, and she talks to herself a lot. Everyone in the game loves her, GG seemingly expects you to as well. But having characters love her doesn’t mean the player will. There’re more spoiler reasons that I won’t go into.
It’s not terrible, of course. It’s technically sound and free from tedium if you turn down the difficulty. Just feels like an older game with a bad protagonist. Probably the worst PS4 game I played last year only saved by Knack 2...though I didn’t play much and Nier and P5 were?