Just started Horizon Zero Dawn and i am not feeling it yet. Any tips are welcome
- Thread starter Theorry
- Start date
Honestly it's a good game but not really one of the all time greats. You get some new abilities but I'd say it's one of those games that makes it pretty clear what it's all about early on. If you're not enjoying it now I'd venture to say that you probably won't later. There isn't some major paradigm shift halfway through or anything like that.
If you're where I think you are, it's the turning point of the story. About 60% in. I actually dropped the game for over a year right before the quarry mission with the corruptors, lol. After I pushed through the first several missions tied to Meridian, I was hooked again.
If I recall, there are at least five really cool areas tied to the main quest that you haven't seen yet. The first, and least cool, is up north. A tall building. You can't miss it because a mission takes you there.
From there the backstory quickly takes shape. The audio and text logs scattered through the missions add a lot, and even if you ignore them the plot gets much more interesting.
Engage with all the systems.
I bounced off the game hard on my first playthrough. I ended up being under levelled and got really frustrated. I knocked the game down to story difficulty just so I could get my money's worth.
Then something weird happened. I really enjoyed the story and the world that had been created. Once I finished the game, I felt bad about playing it on such an easy difficulty.
So I started a new playthrough on hard and really paid attention to all the systems, enemy types and side quests.
I ended up getting the core game platinum and really enjoying the whole experience. It was a very strange turn around.
I bounced off the game hard on my first playthrough. I ended up being under levelled and got really frustrated. I knocked the game down to story difficulty just so I could get my money's worth.
Then something weird happened. I really enjoyed the story and the world that had been created. Once I finished the game, I felt bad about playing it on such an easy difficulty.
So I started a new playthrough on hard and really paid attention to all the systems, enemy types and side quests.
I ended up getting the core game platinum and really enjoying the whole experience. It was a very strange turn around.
Alright then. I'll see if I can push through again. It's hard to get back into the combat after not playing a while... forgot about all the trip wire/arrow types. It's just a game that I really want to like, because it's just so damn beautiful and the concept is so fascinating but somehow the story just drags.
Yeah, I couldn't care less about the tribal stuff honestly. I'm all about the futuristic elements and the sad haunted remnants of a world brought to ruin. There's a lot more of that in the last third of the story. And The Frozen Wilds' campaign too.
At a certain point, when the game was dragging, I switched to combat to Easy, put some high level damage mods on my Hunter's Lodge blast sling, and simply nuked everything in my path. The other sling's ice bombs combined with those blast bombs tear through almost everything, including Thunderjaws. And the sharpshooter bow's precision arrows with triple shot deal with everything else.
The combat is one of HZD's highlights though, so I wouldn't recommend that approach for the entire last stretch of the game.
If you're going brave, level up your melee quickly so your strong attack knocks over/staggers bigger bots. I didn't use stealth much after I did that. Bow/sling and strong attack all you need. Though did find the stealth while running perk was really useful.
Horizon has great world design and a story that's way, way better than it initially seems. But it's not a terribly fun game to play, mechanically speaking - or at least I didn't enjoy playing it. I finished it, but that was because I wanted to know more about the world and what happened.
this is one of the few games i played beginning to end, putting in a good 60+ hours. what really kept me coming back was discovering the story of what horizon zero dawn was really about, learning about its characters, spelunking into old ruins and delving deep into the deeply un-human cauldrons.
one of my favourite things was slinking through moonlight jungle, pale light poking through the canopy, listening to the murmur of wildlife and the forest, feeling uncomfortable as i hid in undergrowth because i knew i was being stalked by something but i couldn't work out what it was (it was a stalker, they're absolutely the worst).
imo try to mainline the main story so you can go and explore the world. it's a beautiful place.
one of my favourite things was slinking through moonlight jungle, pale light poking through the canopy, listening to the murmur of wildlife and the forest, feeling uncomfortable as i hid in undergrowth because i knew i was being stalked by something but i couldn't work out what it was (it was a stalker, they're absolutely the worst).
imo try to mainline the main story so you can go and explore the world. it's a beautiful place.
Was literally about to make a LTTP for this and Witcher 3. Played through this early this year and just started Witcher. Horizon while it got better it never really clicked fully for me after feeling pretty much the same as OP. Concentrating on the main story did keep me engaged enough and resulted in some great moments from the narrative. But the side quests, harvesting, and crafting wasn't fully my cup of tea. Now that I'm playing Witcher 3, while it feels at least initially superior to Horizon a lot of the same mechanics are at play so I'm hoping to stay on board though as the story is engaging. These two games are my first real forays into western rpgs so I may just not be used to this style of game yet.
