Horizon Forbidden West

 PlayStation 5
User Score
7.9

Generally favorable reviews- based on 10308 Ratings

User score distribution:
  1. Positive: 7,816 out of 10308
  2. Mixed: 729 out of 10308
  3. Negative: 1,763 out of 10308
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  1. HyperDBA
    Jul 12, 2023
    5
    This review contains spoilers, click expand to view. Just finished the game yesterday on PS5 on normal difficulty. Many positives but a specific overwhelming negative.

    The Amazing: Visuals and Audio are among the best ever for any game created. There is literally a way to enjoy the game where it's just Aloy flying on her Sun Wing and enjoying the beauty of the rendered environment across different times of the day while listening to beautiful and touching soundtracks. For example 'In the Flood' main theme song should be in the running for some award of best video gaming song

    The Good: Fighting and Weapons. Such a big arsenal of weapons to choose from that allow many diverse fighting styles and weapon combos. I like the plasma mechanic a lot although it take a while to get used to. Some weapons like spears can feel a bit overpowered and some kinds of superflous like the short bow or the wierd elemental rope shooter but overall weapons are fun. Machines are also very intricate in all their animations, textures, and behaviors. A joy to engage with. Humans are o.k enemies but hardly a challenge.

    The Bad: Main gripe with weapons is the very tedious, boring upgrade requirements. I got all legendary weapons maxed out and one of the few times I needed to dial down the difficult is to gather resources for their upgrades. Its like each upgrade level requires killing and precision striping of parts from 5-6 big machines and it quickly became a massive chore instead of a fun activity. Strike was attempted as a Gwent (from Witcher series) like side activity but is just a bad conceptual game. Hard to remember all the machine and land requirements so I completely skipped it. Likewise, Vista point and Ancient Ruin quests we quite boring and their development resources better spent else where. Their rewards were also very pedestrian so are not in any way needed to get stronger in the game.

    The unforgivingly catastrophically terrible: Writing.. Its such a drop-off from the rest of the game to the degree that I think they hired top-world talent for the environment and graphics and got some interns to do the writing. In all my years of playing games, I have never seen such a gap in quality between gameplay and story. Even compared to the original game which was much more intriguing and suspenseful. I will give a few examples.

    SPOILERS BELOW:

    The whole premise of HFW falls flat on its face in the last 5 minutes when its uncovered that the Zeniths are not after trying to extinguish life on earth after all and just wanted to stop there, rest and, and get a GAIA copy while running away from nemisis. So that makes zero sense, a group of advanced alien humans, who conquered death, can't fix the simple problem of software backup (cause yes GAIA is just a super advanced ChatGPT not some digital deity, and was backed up before) Couldn't they have just cooperated with Aloy to get a copy ? Makes no sense and completely empties the meaning of the main story.

    Aloy sending her friends over to suicide missions over and over again. Most glaring is Varl. She just tells him to 'protect Alva' when Zeniths arrive in the couldren mission. Like how is he supposed to do that ? She knows how advanced they are and he only has a primitive spear and predictably lasts for a grand total of 10 seconds before getting run through by Eric and then no remorse whatsoever from Aloy as if this was always the plan ?

    The complete bungling of Tilda's character. As complex as they come as a former lover of Elisabet's, art enthusiast, and a 'good' Zenith. She is just converted to a town idiot in her last scene where thinks she could just kidnap Aloy. Earlier she had reviewed Aloy's focus and must know she is capable of bringing down Apex Thunderjaws as a stretching exercise. And how ? by jumping into a gundam like specter suit ? Which ended up being one of the easiest and most pathetic end boss battles ever devised.

    Feels like the narrative team just run out of ideas, changed personnel in the middle of development, or had some character death, plot 'twists', and cheesy scene quota they needed to fill and proceeded to do that without any sort of basic story QA.

    Any sci-fi or fantasy work requires a certain level of suspension of belief but HFW requires an activation of stupidity to overcome the poor story structure. To say the writing is amateur hour would be an insult to amateurs many of which could have done a dramatically better job. For a normal third person shoot-em up game, this would not matter, but the HZ franchise is not Serious Sam, its an advanced Sci-Fi movie being played as a game. Aloy and the rest of the Guerrilla technical team deserve much much better than what their narrative team is delivering at the moment and hopefully they get that for HZ3 or I will happily skip to preserve how I remember this great world and character.    … Expand
  2. liamalt
    Aug 29, 2023
    5
    This review contains spoilers, click expand to view. This game is strange to me. The developers chose to make a game centred around the forbidden lands and how we must work together to save the world, yet these forbidden lands are less hostile than the Nora are to Aloy. The storyline chooses to follow aliens wanting a new home rather then following the set up from the previous game of a world ending threat waking up the machines which originally destroyed this planet and were only stopped by intentionally destroying humanity. This combined with a story centred around the most generic characters I've seen in gaming alongside an unchanging world which is supposed to be dying, just left me underwhelmed. The game is mechanically fine and looks gorgeous, but just follows tropes and pre done lore rather than give me a reason to play this instead of Elden ring, Horizon Zero Dawn, or any one of the other games which have released in the last few years.… Expand
  3. WalQ
    Sep 1, 2023
    7
    Beautiful game, interesting gameplay. As far as the story goes, I liked more the one from the first Horizon, where we are just discovering the whole secret of macha dinosaurs.
  4. Rexter345
    Sep 1, 2023
    5
    This review contains spoilers, click expand to view. Historia muito chata e combate lento e pouco estimulante, texturas boradas e com graficos de ps4.… Expand
  5. Madmac05
    Sep 2, 2023
    5
    Most of the reviews are from PS haters that never even played the game. It is amazing!!
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Awards & Rankings

7
#7 Best PlayStation 5 Game of 2022
2
#2 Most Discussed PlayStation 5 Game of 2022

Critic Reviews

All reviews »
Metascore
88

Generally favorable reviews - based on 127 Critic Reviews

Critic score distribution:
  1. Positive: 119 out of 127
  2. Mixed: 8 out of 127
  3. Negative: 0 out of 127
  1. LEVEL (Czech Republic)
    Jan 30, 2024
    100
    Horizon has enchanted me again. After a slow start, a graphically beautiful, sophisticated sequel comes, polished in every aspect, and underscored by a great soundtrack on top of that. The sequel was simply a success. Everything that worked before works even slightly better now. [Issue#317]
  2. T3
    Aug 11, 2022
    80
    Horizon Forbidden West is Guerrilla's best game to date, taking Aloy to new heights with a blockbuster release that meets the high standards set by PlayStation in recent years. While it's totally worth fans jumping in on day one, it's perhaps better to wait a few weeks until all the bugs are ironed out.
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  3. MeuPlayStation
    May 11, 2022
    96
    Horizon Forbidden West is exactly what everyone thought it would be: an amazing game. It has an open world with plenty of things to do and places to explore, fights against some really well-developed machines and stunning visuals. The feeling is that the second game of the series improves on what was already great, and it feels rewarding and fun to play. It is another single-player masterpiece from Sony.
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