Horizon does a lot of things right. I enjoy the combat, the weapon variety, the story, the characters, the lore, the general sense of progression, the art, the world, etc. I've played 65 hours and am still frequently blown away by the quality of the character models+animation during dialogue/cutscenes. I think Ashly Burch's voice work here is an all-time great performance.
However, I think that decisions were made to make verticality and traversal diversity a big part of the game, but the cores of those systems feel undercooked and often frustrating. On some level, it's that there are these long and detailed animations that get in the way of the flow of the game (a la red dead redemption 2), though that is only one component. (Also, a caveat: I don't remember much of how HZD -felt-, I played only at launch and my memory sucks)
Climbing:
•I had to turn on the setting that permanently highlights handholds. Props to them for having it in there, I suppose. But ultimately the placement often feels arbitrary, any quest with climbing in it has to limit what Aloy can climb so that you don't immediately break a mission. Having to ping to see where you can climb is a problem, especially when it already feels like I have to ping too often based on how much berry & scrap collecting you need to do. There is a lot of 'Why can't I climb that wall?', and the answer is usually because the quest needs you to go in a specific set path.
•It feels like when I get to the top of a climb it's 50/50 whether Aloy will actually climb over the top of the ledge, often I have to move sideways to a different handhold just to go up the last inch-and-a-half
•There are several jumps that end with a long animation of Aloy swinging back and forth before she steadies herself, and it makes a kind of tedious activity feel even slower, rather than adding a sense of excitement or danger. It's occasionally fun when you jump to something and it breaks, but the long sideways swings that have no bearing on player skill interrupt a game that is at its best when it's kinetic and agile.
•Thank god for the occasional grapple points, but even that animation seems janky, and it still feels way too slow when Aloy actually does the climbing part at the end. The jump boost is nice but mainly because I get to skip some of the climbing animations.
Swimming:
•There are two ways of swimming faster, which is great because Aloy's default straight line swim speed is like she has cinderblocks tied to her feet (props to her for being able to swim at all with armor I guess). Even then, the faster swim feels too slow
•God help her if she has to turn at all underwater, I pretty much have to let jesus take the wheel any time I want to change direction. There is so much lag when you use the 'swim up or down' buttons in concert with aiming Aloy that it's excruciating
•A few sections combine two great tastes that taste great together: Underwater section and STEALTH. You can't fight underwater, and sometimes they deliberately throw a croc-robo in there with you and suggest you hide amongst some stealth kelp. This is about as fun as it sounds
•Most of the underwater sections are DARK AS SHIT. I even tend to play games at a slightly higher brightness and when you get into a big underwater cavern and need to find the passageway out it's like trying to solve an optical illusion in a dark closet.
•Lots of the swimming areas are way bigger than they need to be, especially with the swim speed and lack of much interesting going on underwater. There's one quest you get early that asks you to go to the other side of a river, and even the narrowest part of the river feels enormous. And then there's no fast travel point nearby, so you might have to do this swim multiple times for parts/mats/exploration/quests or whatever.
•Despite the breath meter running out of air several times in the early game, other than unpleasant sound effects, I had no idea what the actual effect was. Maybe it starts draining the health bar but if so they are super generous about that because I wasn't seeing any feedback on my screen like 7-8 seconds after the meter ran out
•Putting pickable plants in and under the water really just makes the whole process seem even more excruciatingly slow. If I am swimming across the wide river I have ZERO interest in going through the arduous process of changing Aloy's trajectory twice (down, then back up) to go through a slow animation of grabbing some riverbed plants that typically aren't very useful
Mounts:
•Any time a mount at full speed comes within about 10 feet of a tree or other object in the world, it comes to a dead stop
•Any time the mount needs to ascend a 2 foot step it does a very long, drawn out hop animation
•Both are major concerns because the world is densely packed with objects and rocks and paths of varying height, which would be great, if the mounts could handle that stuff
•This is just personal take but I got a raptor mount and it seemed to go about 50% the speed of the other mounts and that made me preeeeetty bummed
•Being on a bristleback, the boar's robot ass takes up like 50% of the screen
•On the positive side, I enjoyed the races (until I came to a dead stop by going near a pole), and 60 hours in realized that the mounts would auto follow the roads if you let go of the controller (that one might be on me)
Having played pretty much every major Assassins Creed and Uncharted game, those games typically do a much smoother job of letting you get around their world. Which is probably an unfair comparison because climbing is like, what those games are known for. But there is SO MUCH climbing and swimming in this game, you guys. So many quests in the world want you to do these things. I don't know how many quests I've done where Aloy has to do some climbing rite of passage that is sacred to the Tenakth. The views at the top are often awesome, but I just wish the journey to get there wasn't as frustrating. Sunken ruins should be cool! I should not be dreading any time Aloy turns a corner and encounters a flooded pathway.
Some traversal stuff is cool! Gliding is neat, and the slide feels good. It basically becomes Apex Legends when you slide down a big hill. Jumping backwards/walljumping are solid. It's such a wall of text but I feel like if they can iron some of these things out either for this game (maybe the ship has sailed) or next game, then you'd have something even more special than it already is. I get that it must be BACKBREAKING to make a game like this, and am overall super impressed with what they accomplished during a pandemic. It's just a shame that they made such a cool world, but make it such a pain to get to the top of that cliff to get a grand view of it.
P.S. The firegleam animation takes about twice as long as it should. Either make it shorter or give me a sick, Mandy-esque chainsaw rev every time it happens.
However, I think that decisions were made to make verticality and traversal diversity a big part of the game, but the cores of those systems feel undercooked and often frustrating. On some level, it's that there are these long and detailed animations that get in the way of the flow of the game (a la red dead redemption 2), though that is only one component. (Also, a caveat: I don't remember much of how HZD -felt-, I played only at launch and my memory sucks)
Climbing:
•I had to turn on the setting that permanently highlights handholds. Props to them for having it in there, I suppose. But ultimately the placement often feels arbitrary, any quest with climbing in it has to limit what Aloy can climb so that you don't immediately break a mission. Having to ping to see where you can climb is a problem, especially when it already feels like I have to ping too often based on how much berry & scrap collecting you need to do. There is a lot of 'Why can't I climb that wall?', and the answer is usually because the quest needs you to go in a specific set path.
•It feels like when I get to the top of a climb it's 50/50 whether Aloy will actually climb over the top of the ledge, often I have to move sideways to a different handhold just to go up the last inch-and-a-half
•There are several jumps that end with a long animation of Aloy swinging back and forth before she steadies herself, and it makes a kind of tedious activity feel even slower, rather than adding a sense of excitement or danger. It's occasionally fun when you jump to something and it breaks, but the long sideways swings that have no bearing on player skill interrupt a game that is at its best when it's kinetic and agile.
•Thank god for the occasional grapple points, but even that animation seems janky, and it still feels way too slow when Aloy actually does the climbing part at the end. The jump boost is nice but mainly because I get to skip some of the climbing animations.
Swimming:
•There are two ways of swimming faster, which is great because Aloy's default straight line swim speed is like she has cinderblocks tied to her feet (props to her for being able to swim at all with armor I guess). Even then, the faster swim feels too slow
•God help her if she has to turn at all underwater, I pretty much have to let jesus take the wheel any time I want to change direction. There is so much lag when you use the 'swim up or down' buttons in concert with aiming Aloy that it's excruciating
•A few sections combine two great tastes that taste great together: Underwater section and STEALTH. You can't fight underwater, and sometimes they deliberately throw a croc-robo in there with you and suggest you hide amongst some stealth kelp. This is about as fun as it sounds
•Most of the underwater sections are DARK AS SHIT. I even tend to play games at a slightly higher brightness and when you get into a big underwater cavern and need to find the passageway out it's like trying to solve an optical illusion in a dark closet.
•Lots of the swimming areas are way bigger than they need to be, especially with the swim speed and lack of much interesting going on underwater. There's one quest you get early that asks you to go to the other side of a river, and even the narrowest part of the river feels enormous. And then there's no fast travel point nearby, so you might have to do this swim multiple times for parts/mats/exploration/quests or whatever.
•Despite the breath meter running out of air several times in the early game, other than unpleasant sound effects, I had no idea what the actual effect was. Maybe it starts draining the health bar but if so they are super generous about that because I wasn't seeing any feedback on my screen like 7-8 seconds after the meter ran out
•Putting pickable plants in and under the water really just makes the whole process seem even more excruciatingly slow. If I am swimming across the wide river I have ZERO interest in going through the arduous process of changing Aloy's trajectory twice (down, then back up) to go through a slow animation of grabbing some riverbed plants that typically aren't very useful
Mounts:
•Any time a mount at full speed comes within about 10 feet of a tree or other object in the world, it comes to a dead stop
•Any time the mount needs to ascend a 2 foot step it does a very long, drawn out hop animation
•Both are major concerns because the world is densely packed with objects and rocks and paths of varying height, which would be great, if the mounts could handle that stuff
•This is just personal take but I got a raptor mount and it seemed to go about 50% the speed of the other mounts and that made me preeeeetty bummed
•Being on a bristleback, the boar's robot ass takes up like 50% of the screen
•On the positive side, I enjoyed the races (until I came to a dead stop by going near a pole), and 60 hours in realized that the mounts would auto follow the roads if you let go of the controller (that one might be on me)
Having played pretty much every major Assassins Creed and Uncharted game, those games typically do a much smoother job of letting you get around their world. Which is probably an unfair comparison because climbing is like, what those games are known for. But there is SO MUCH climbing and swimming in this game, you guys. So many quests in the world want you to do these things. I don't know how many quests I've done where Aloy has to do some climbing rite of passage that is sacred to the Tenakth. The views at the top are often awesome, but I just wish the journey to get there wasn't as frustrating. Sunken ruins should be cool! I should not be dreading any time Aloy turns a corner and encounters a flooded pathway.
Some traversal stuff is cool! Gliding is neat, and the slide feels good. It basically becomes Apex Legends when you slide down a big hill. Jumping backwards/walljumping are solid. It's such a wall of text but I feel like if they can iron some of these things out either for this game (maybe the ship has sailed) or next game, then you'd have something even more special than it already is. I get that it must be BACKBREAKING to make a game like this, and am overall super impressed with what they accomplished during a pandemic. It's just a shame that they made such a cool world, but make it such a pain to get to the top of that cliff to get a grand view of it.
P.S. The firegleam animation takes about twice as long as it should. Either make it shorter or give me a sick, Mandy-esque chainsaw rev every time it happens.
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