How do you know you are playing a good video game? For me, it was the fact I put nearly one hundred hours into Horizon Forbidden West without even realizing it. I thought I was on about sixty max, so the extra hours meant I was just enjoying the game. It doesn’t all hit the mark, but it's still a fantastic game.
Forbidden West takes place a few months after the events of Zero Dawn and has you once again take on the role of the Nora Warrior and Clone of a thousand year old scientist, Aloy. It opens with Aloy trying to save the planet all by herself, believing it is her burden alone and not wanting to risk anyone else in the fight against the machines. Obviously this doesn’t last long, and soon you are sent out into the titular Forbidden West to try and find the games initial big bad, Sylens, the smarmy archaeologist and researcher from Zero Dawn. He is planning something big, and Aloy is out to stop him.
At this point, the game becomes…an Horizon game. If you played the first one and loved it, there is much to enjoy in its sequel. The story is great though this is mainly due to a lot of excellent side quests rather than the actual main story, the combat is as good as it ever was with some fantastic new machines to slowly rip apart with an assortment of weapons and the RPG aspects have been expanded along with the map and some new gameplay options.
All these things add up to a fantastic sequel to an already fantastic game. Unfortunately it is bogged down again by some graphic issues and real frustrations with climbing, which in a game where you spend a good amount of time climbing cliffs and buildings searching for loot and collectibles, gets tiring very quickly. We will cover the bad points later. For now, let's look at what's changed.
Some of the changes are quality of life changes that are really good, sensible additions to the game, such as the ability to change the time of day at any of the numerous shelters dotted around the map. The climbing has been expanded too over Zero Dawn, so it's much easier to do, but that comes with its own problems, again, to be covered later. Your focus, when scanning machines, has been changed so that tapping left or right on the D-Pad will allow you to see the various breakable parts and weak points and hitting R2 allows you to highlight it. It makes it way easier to highlight parts during the heat of battle, and lets you learn what each weak point is so you eventually can do it by eye without the scanning.
The best change, though, and one more games need to implement, is the stash. Horizon games are a collectible-a-thon, in terms of missions to do, weapons to gain and most importantly, resources to gather. Those resources could be machine parts, medicinal berries, animal parts for your pouches or a hundred other things. Normally you can only carry a set amount and once your pouch for a particular thing is full you cannot carry anymore until you use some or all of it up. Now, if you pick up more it is automatically sent to your stash which has an unlimited capacity and you can refill from that from any town or shelter with the handy ‘refill all resources’ button.
It’s a brilliant addition and while some people might enjoy the need to keep collecting the same part over and over again, most will be happy that it just happens for you. Another change from the previous game is that you can now change the time of day at any shelter, meaning that the machines that come out at night can now be accessed much more easily, making the expanded grind that bit more manageable, and the grind is significantly increased.
Gameplay changes come thick and fast. The skill tree system has now expanded from four to six and now includes a new addition: Valor Surges. There are two per skill tree, and range from upgrading the power and range of your traps, to making it easier to rip parts from machines. They are a great addition though to be honest there are far too many. One per tree would have been more than enough, especially since there are three upgrades per surge.
When you remember to use them they expand Aloy’s abilities quite a lot, especially in tougher fights, but again, remembering they are there can be tough. I didn’t start using them properly until many hours in just because I kept forgetting it was a possibility. The combat options are pretty expansive, though to be honest it's more than likely you will just start shooting arrows until stuff starts flying off machines.
Melee combat has been expanded too, now including more combos that are unlocked via skill tree and a kinda cool new addition, the resonator blast. Your spear builds up a charge as you attack, once it turns blue, hitting the power attack button will smack down your opponent and leave a blue mark on it. Firing an arrow into that mark will set off a massive blast for huge damage, and is one of the most satisfying things in the game. Especially when you pull off the combo that allows you to jump back off enemies and slow down time.
Aloy has two major out of combat additions: The ability to swim and the pullcaster. Swimming is a cool addition that really adds to the size of the map and gives some new side quests to mess around with. It stops you from being able to fight, but the number of enemies in the water is minimal so it's not too bad. The pullcaster allows you to move things around and open new areas for climbing and exploration. It’s another cool addition, though can’t be used everywhere. That's where the Shield Wing comes in.
The Shield Wing is all very Breath of the Wild, and yes, that does mean it allows you to glide down from things. When I tell you jumping off a mountain and slowly gliding down, just panning the camera around really does bring home how amazing this game looks. It is breathtaking, especially at night and is truly one of the best things in the game. Just the simple joy of taking in the view. While there is a photo mode, there is something special about seeing it as Aloy would.
The roster of machines to fight has been greatly expanded, with many taking the form of dinosaurs rather than regular creatures. Another area Horizon really shines, the designs of the machines are something to behold. Remember that first reveal of Zero Dawn? When the Thunderjaw trundles into view and you went ‘WOW’? That is like every new encounter. Add to this the addition of ‘apex’ variants, that are black armored and way more powerful and the combat can be some seriously fun challenge.
The story is good too, not as good as the first one, but still good. Aloy’s journey through the Forbidden West is cool with the main story, but it's the side quest where things really shine. These aren’t, for the most part, just a way to get you to go collecting things in the wilds. Some of them are unique story elements, and include some of the best representation in any game I have encountered in some time, let alone a massive AAA RPG such as this. It’s brilliant to see, it really is, but that representation is entirely relegated to the skippable side missions and that is where it sucks. A little more confidence that such things could be part of the main story would have had way more impact. It’s a real shame and spoils what should have been one of the highlights of the tale.
That tale takes you through various biomes, standard stuff like snow and desert, and has you interact with various new tribes that occupy the Forbidden West. These range from the Tenakth, who worship ‘the Ten’, to the Utaru who are the farmers of the land. The main human enemies hail from these and other tribes from the first game, and form a part of a rebel band who can override machines and aim to take over everything, not just the forbidden west.
I won’t go into further detail on the story, so I don’t spoil anything, but it takes some twists and turns and sets up a third game. All these changes are great but the game isn’t without its problems. The climbing is simply dire, no two ways about it. I was able to find multiple spots where I could cheese my way up a mountain by simply spamming jump because there were no climbing areas nearby. The climbing areas are indicated by yellow lines on rock faces when pinging your focus, though I highly recommend going into the settings and turning on the setting that allows you to see them at all times, it just makes it easier.
This problem is compounded by the fact that you can look at the rock face you are climbing, see what should clearly be a grabbable/climbable section and be completely unable to use it simply because it wasn’t marked as such. It’s really frustrating and for a game that relies so much on climbing for exploration, isn’t really forgivable. I would say that making it ‘go anywhere’ but gated by an upgradable stamina meter would solve it, but that can be annoying as well and probably isn’t quite as easy to implement in a game this good looking and this massive as it was in Breath of the Wild.
There are some issues in combat as well, especially against human enemies as it can be really hard to filter between multiple foes. Spamming attack helps, but doesn’t always mean you are hitting the biggest threat, and you constantly have to juggle the camera to make Aloy attack who you want. It’s a smaller issue than the climbing, but still provides frustration, especially in some of the side missions which teach you how to use unlocked combos.
Switching between ammo types for attacking weak points on machines at first glance is easy, but the heat of battle changes things and it can become confusing as to which type you actually have selected, and this goes the same for weapons as well. The weapon wheel is brought up easy enough, but the game doesn’t pause, just slows, so you can still be attacked while you are picking. Quick decisions can mean you overcompensate on the stick and instead of choosing frost ammo pick , say, electric ammo which the machine is strong against. Like I say, annoying, but it's something you get used to and I honestly don’t believe is really a better solution.
There are some graphical issues as well, not many but enough to notice. The main one being Aloy’s hair, which is some of the most annoying things I have ever seen. Serious, they can take the same assets, add it to a model of Medusa and be done, it would take five minutes and the hair would move like you would expect. On Aloy, it just doesn’t stop moving and its insane, it can really mess with your mind and gets very annoying very quickly.
Add to this the fact that the hair and a lot of the main models clip through the environment and each other at times and you can see why it gets distracting. These are the only main graphical issues, other than a bit of expected texture pop in, so its a case of taking these small niggles for all the other beauty.
The final thing I want to talk about is the accessibility options. While you get a lot of standard things to help players, you can also set some interesting things, like the health of enemies. The easiest of these is ‘story’ and means two or three well placed shots, even on the apex machines, takes them down quickly. Combine this with the ‘easy loot’ setting and the grind for upgrade resources or those collect x number of these missions becomes a breeze. I highly recommend turning at least ‘easy loot’ on, as well as the setting for always on climbing holds, as it doesn’t affect the difficulty but does lessen the impact of the RPG grind.
Horizon Forbidden West is a fantastic sequel to the splendid first game, and while it doesn’t have the same impact, and the main thrust of exploration is the shockingly bad climbing, as I said at the start of this review you can tell you when you played a great game when you don’t even realize you have put nearly a hundred hours into it. If that doesn’t tell you everything you need to know about exploring the Forbidden West, I don’t know what will.
