Review #621: Horizon Zero Dawn - Complete Edition

 Also known as Robot Hunter.

 Now this came completely out of the left field! Known for their gritty and bleak Killzone games, Guerilla Games wanted to do something different: An adventure game that blurred the lines with the RPG genre, and on their first ever endeavor of this kind... they aced it with flying colors. Horizon Zero Dawn is an excellent piece of software that shows that taking risks can pay off exceedingly well.

 The game takes place on a post-apocalyptic world, men and women live in tribes, armed with nothing but spears and arrows, fighting against machines that roam the lands. You take control of Aloy, the motherless, raised as an outcast by an outcast, who sets out to prove her worth and discover who her mother was. But it's not as simple as that, as the secret behind her birth takes her through ruins of the ancient world. Our modern world. Finding out what happened to the world that made it devolve into a savage land, and why the machines are out for blood is a very interesting adventure. The story is well told, although to get the most of it you'll have to go through those annoying, but by today's standards unavoidable, audio and data logs. The entire game took me over 40 hours to complete, but I was a very busy bee, collecting every collectible peppered throughout the lands, fulfilling every side-quest I came upon and, of course, finishing the on-disc expansion, the Frozen Wilds, which is very, very worth your while.

 As Aloy you're free to pretty much do everything at your pace. After the 5 or so first hours of the game you'll be given free access to every zone in the game. Want to find every collectible before doing the main story? Go ahead. I was level 29 before I got over the second, and last, 'big' barrier in the game world. Although I took a detour into the Frozen Wilds expansion. Word to the wise, if the Frozen Wilds are too tough don't be afraid to lower the difficulty setting, the DLC expansion is tougher than anything you'll find on the main game... but it also features the strongest weapons in the game and one of the most useful outfits, one that heals you as time passes. If you choose to do the DLC first, which why wouldn't you since it's set before the game's ending, you'll end up overlevelled and overpowered for the rest of the campaign... not that that's saying much, levelling up only increases your HP by 10 and the skill trees are more utilities than anything else. Weapon power rarely goes up by much, so even the strongest weapons won't do much for you if you go into a tussle poorly prepared.

 Combat is fairly fun, mostly focused on Aloy's bows and other means of long-range weaponry, like trip-wires or sling-shots. You'll notice that weapons, in shops, barely change their attack power, but the reason you'll want to invest in other weapons is due to elemental ammo. Not every bow can fire the same arrows, and elemental damage is one of the ways you can deal with robot enemies. The other is hitting their weakspots, which you can find out by using Aloy's piece of ancient technology, the Focus, which highlights where your arrows will hit the hardest. Elemental damage comes in three forms: Fire, which deals damage over time, electricity, which stuns enemies and ice, which slows them down and makes every hit do critical damage, lastly there's Tear, which does minimal damage but shaves off armor pieces and weaponry from enemies, which can turn them into a bit of a crutch. Combat is way more fun than it deserves to be, and it feels nice noticing how you learn from every machine so that you can turn them into scrap faster. Aloy also comes with a spear, weak and strong attacks, meant for the smaller robots, but I had a ton of fun trying to sneak in a few hits with it, I've always been a bit of a melee fan after all!

 A large part of the game is crafting, everything and anything from plants lying in the wilds to scrap left by fallen enemies is up for grabs. You have to keep in mind that inventory space is limited, so you just can't carry everything and anything you want, and tons of things have all sorts of purposes, from crafting upgrades for your ammo pouches to crafting the very arrows you use to fight and even to barter with merchants and get snazzy outfits. There are a few skills on the skill tree that will help you with this, enlarging the amount of resources you can carry or even letting you dismantle stuff into metal scraps, the most basic form of currency in the game and also one of the two basic elements to craft arrows. Another type of pick up are modifications, items that can be ingrained into your outfits and bows to give them passive abilities, such as higher damage or better resistance to elements.

 I will admit that after I hit the level 60 cap the combat turned a bit aimless. I didn't require more materials if I wasn't wasting arrows on enemies, and I didn't need the experience points. As far as equipment was concerned, I had settled on a decent pair of bows(The ones from the DLC) and I didn't need anything else, so I would just fast-travel to every location and progress through the story. Mind you, this was around the 39 hour mark, every hour before that I was having a ton of fun fighting enemies just because, tackling huge beasts because they looked mean and I was thirsty for blo... oil. But hitting the level cap meant that fights outside sidequests or quests was meaningless. Even though you'd have completed all the skill trees by then, I think upping the maximum level to 99 would have helped with this. At level 60 you have enough HP to get into fights carelessly, so I doubt even more HP would've made any difference.

 There's a reason Horizon has often been placed among the PS4's finest, because it is a damn great game. It's a great mix styles, adventuring, RPGing and even a bit of Monster Huntering, and it all works so well. The pseudo-sci fi story was a real treat, and discovering the secrets this world held was pure joy. That's not to say it's perfect, as a few tiny improvements could've helped make it even better, like more weapons with a more marked difference in power or upping the level cap so that combat never loses its meaning. Regardless, Horizon is a fun time for anyone willing to give it a try. Oh, and kid Aloy is totes adorbs.
 8.5 out of 10