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Horizon Zero Dawn Spoiler-free Impressions (for real this time)

Neoweee

Member
I just woke up. Time to play more.

This game so far is really a mix of borrowed "feel" and mechanics from other games, but polished them pretty well I'd say. At 20% or 6 hours in, to kind of summarize my feelings, I would best describe it like this (I'm making mechanics comparisons, take it with a grain of salt as I'm just one person but I think I'm being pretty fair here):

The hunting and foraging feels like a mix between the elements in TLOU and the Tomb Raider Reboots. The natural open world populated with wildlife, NPCs with problems, and towns naturally integrated into the map feel kind of like RDR. Also, whoever asked earlier, you can ride a "horse"
(you can take control of beasts on the map and ride them)

The platforming/exploration mechanics (how the character feels as they clamber around the rocky environment) feels like a mix between The Witcher 3 and Shadow of Mordor with a touch of Uncharted (there's some ledge plarforming that surprised me that is obviously ND-inspired).

The bow combat kinda feels like a polished mix between Tomb Raider reboots and TLOU. The hand to hand combat is not too deep but it's satisfying and polished, with the spear that feels kind of like using the tuning fork from inFamous 2, but you have "heavy" and "light" attacks with R1 and R2.

The crafting systems remind me of the Tomb Raider reboots. The ability upgrades remind me of many games that have those features, like Tomb Raider reboots, inFamous, Kingdom Hearts, etc (but it's not as flashy or varied as the last two).

The fights against tougher machines are thrilling and feel a lot like when you battle tough enemies in inFamous 2. Lots of dodging and sliding out of enemy fire, then zooming in to fire shots at weak spots. You feel like two powerful entities battling. This is my favorite part of the game.

There's merchant-style trading like any open world RPG that lets you get new items and weapons and upgrades.

The story could shit the bed later but right now it is opening up to be way more interesting and "oh shit" than I personally expected. I haven't seen an open world action RPG story and lore engross me in unexpected ways at a magnitude like this since Assassin's Creed 1.

The open world RPG style feels condensed and tightly driven around the narrative. Kinda like The Witcher 3 but with even more "fat" trimmed to keep the game's narrative in the spotlight. There's other stuff to do. I had fun just toying around in the open world last night. But the urgency is there to play the main story.

I'll try to refrain from more impressions until I'm much further into the game, like later this afternoon. I'll be able to say if the game maintains its consistency

What difficulty are you on?

Is Very Hard as feasible as it is in most open-world games for a first run through? It felt almost mandatory in Inquisition or Witcher 3 or Fallout 4 to be interesting.
 
Thanks, The Lamp, for your impressions.

You're probably getting a lot of questions but how intense or significant do the enemy encounters feel? Are they lengthy? Do you feel like you have to 'prepare' to conquer certain animals?
 
The Lamp's impression post above has quite a bit of TR talk in it.

Edit - Actually, on the last page lol.

He just mentions TR as some aspects ala crafting being similar, doesn't mean the game is like TR at all. You can say that about almost any game. I don't classify one post as "All this Tomb Raider Talk".
 

dEvAnGeL

Member
The Lamp says "crafting similiar to TR"

Neogaf, it plays like TR, preordered cancelled

jesus-facepalm.png
 
He just mentions TR as some aspects ala crafting being similar, doesn't mean the game is like TR at all. You can say that about almost any game. I don't classify one post as "All this Tomb Raider Talk".
Oh, I thought you were trying to figure out who was talking about TR in general. Not that the entire game was like TR.
 
How is the loot in this game, are the items randomized, or is everything pre determined? How much variety is there in armor and weapons?
 

bombshell

Member
"At 20% or 6 hours"

6 hours and its already 20% done?

It's not confirmed yet if side quests count for the percentage or if it's main quests only.

If it's main quests only and going with a linear percentage (which it never really is) would equal a 30 hour main quest only game. Not bad.
 

The Lamp

Member
He just mentions TR as some aspects ala crafting being similar, doesn't mean the game is like TR at all. You can say that about almost any game. I don't classify one post as "All this Tomb Raider Talk".

Right. Some mechanics feel inspired by Tomb Raider reboot's crafting and upgrades and bow combat, but I think I like it better here, maybe just because I like this game as a whole better. I want to upgrade Aloy to take down robodinosaurs. I want to craft and find health so Aloy doesn't get murdered fighting robodinosaurs. Lol.

I'm playing on Normal difficulty. It's been pretty..."normal" in difficulty so far. I'm not a badass at action games. I enjoyed Metak Gear Rising and Dark Souls and Bayonetta, but I'm not a savant at outrageous difficulties in action games (although I'm pretty good at Souls games).

This difficulty has been perfect for me. The smaller conflicts require thought but don't break pacing. You won't die if you're not stupid.

The larger conflicts I've been in required strategy and I've died a couple of times. I spent a good amount of time yesterday scavenging medical resources because I was badly wounded after an unexpected fight.

You need resources to craft ammo. Some enemies have elemental or certain weapon weaknesses, and without the ammo to craft for that, it's going to be much more difficult to take them down. So I've been caught in fights where I had to retreat or pray for mercy because I'm out of the ammo that would make it easier for me to take the beast down. But you can always win if you're clever enough :)

I imagine that normal difficulty will be good for many people. Luckily theres lots of difficulty settings.
 
Right. Some mechanics feel inspired by Tomb Raider reboot's crafting and upgrades and bow combat, but I think I like it better here, maybe just because I like this game as a whole better. I want to upgrade Aloy to take down robodinosaurs. I want to craft and find health so Aloy doesn't get murdered fighting robodinosaurs. Lol.

I'm playing on Normal difficulty. It's been pretty..."normal" in difficulty so far. I'm not a badass at action games. I enjoyed Metak Gear Rising and Dark Souls and Bayonetta, but I'm not a savant at outrageous difficulties in action games (although I'm pretty good at Souls games).

This difficulty has been perfect for me. The smaller conflicts require thought but don't break pacing. You won't die if you're not stupid.

The larger conflicts I've been in required strategy and I've died a couple of times. I spent a good amount of time yesterday scavenging medical resources because I was badly wounded after an unexpected fight.

You need resources to craft ammo. Some enemies have elemental or certain weapon weaknesses, and without the ammo to craft for that, it's going to be much more difficult to take them down. So I've been caught in fights where I had to retreat or pray for mercy because I'm out of the ammo that would make it easier for me to take the beast down.

I imagine that normal difficulty will be good for many people. Luckily theres lots of difficulty settings.

Thanks for taking the time to give us impressions man.
 
D

Deleted member 752119

Unconfirmed Member
Screw it. After watching some more videos of this, decided to stop waffling on my Switch preorder and finally canceled it and preordered Horizon.

I'll play this and ME:A, then decide whether to get Zelda on Wii U (100% will as long as its close to Switch in performance) or wait until I get a Switch this fall or sometime in 2018.
 
Screw it. After watching some more videos of this, decided to stop waffling on my Switch preorder and finally canceled it and preordered Horizon.

I'll play this and ME:A, then decide whether to get Zelda on Wii U (100% will as long as its close to Switch in performance) or wait until I get a Switch this fall or sometime in 2018.

Smart move :)
 
On TR, I said it's similar because it's the closest thing I can approximate what I played yesterday to. There is an open area, obviously horizon has bigger areas than TR. as you explore there are a bunch of floating not distracting icons saying you can gather this herb. You collect various resources to make healing items, build better gear, make different kinds of ammo. You hide in tall grass and can do stealth kills, lure enemies and you use a bow and arrow (and other weapons that are unlike anything in TR) that has a slow mo activation. Climbing is uncharted like, it's more automatic as you don't even have to press X to go from ledge to ledge.

But instead of humans and a few angry wild animals in horizon you fight robots that all have different attacks, patterns, and weaknesses. Also the quest structure is a lot more witcher than TR. also it's not as collect heavy, ROTR has like a million things to collect, like shoot 10 hidden birds and stuff like that; so far there is none of that in horizon.

So it has a TR feel to it but the combat is mostly it's own thing.
 
On TR, I said it's similar because it's the closest thing I can approximate what I played yesterday to. There is an open area, obviously horizon has bigger areas than TR. as you explore there are a bunch of floating not distracting icons saying you can gather this herb. You collect various resources to make healing items, build better gear, make different kinds of ammo. You hide in tall grass and can do stealth kills, lure enemies and you use a bow and arrow (and other weapons that are unlike anything in TR) that has a slow mo activation. Climbing is uncharted like, it's more automatic as you don't even have to press X to go from ledge to ledge.

But instead of humans and a few angry wild animals in horizon you fight robots that all have different attacks, patterns, and weaknesses. Also the quest structure is a lot more witcher than TR. also it's not as collect heavy, ROTR has like a million things to collect, like shoot 10 hidden birds and stuff like that; so far there is none of that in horizon.

So it has a TR feel to it but the combat is mostly it's own thing.

Right. Some mechanics feel inspired by Tomb Raider reboot's crafting and upgrades and bow combat, but I think I like it better here, maybe just because I like this game as a whole better. I want to upgrade Aloy to take down robodinosaurs. I want to craft and find health so Aloy doesn't get murdered fighting robodinosaurs. Lol.

I'm playing on Normal difficulty. It's been pretty..."normal" in difficulty so far. I'm not a badass at action games. I enjoyed Metak Gear Rising and Dark Souls and Bayonetta, but I'm not a savant at outrageous difficulties in action games (although I'm pretty good at Souls games).

This difficulty has been perfect for me. The smaller conflicts require thought but don't break pacing. You won't die if you're not stupid.

The larger conflicts I've been in required strategy and I've died a couple of times. I spent a good amount of time yesterday scavenging medical resources because I was badly wounded after an unexpected fight.

You need resources to craft ammo. Some enemies have elemental or certain weapon weaknesses, and without the ammo to craft for that, it's going to be much more difficult to take them down. So I've been caught in fights where I had to retreat or pray for mercy because I'm out of the ammo that would make it easier for me to take the beast down. But you can always win if you're clever enough :)

I imagine that normal difficulty will be good for many people. Luckily theres lots of difficulty settings.

Thank you.
 
On TR, I said it's similar because it's the closest thing I can approximate what I played yesterday to. There is an open area, obviously horizon has bigger areas than TR. as you explore there are a bunch of floating not distracting icons saying you can gather this herb. You collect various resources to make healing items, build better gear, make different kinds of ammo. You hide in tall grass and can do stealth kills, lure enemies and you use a bow and arrow (and other weapons that are unlike anything in TR) that has a slow mo activation. Climbing is uncharted like, it's more automatic as you don't even have to press X to go from ledge to ledge.

But instead of humans and a few angry wild animals in horizon you fight robots that all have different attacks, patterns, and weaknesses. Also the quest structure is a lot more witcher than TR. also it's not as collect heavy, ROTR has like a million things to collect, like shoot 10 hidden birds and stuff like that; so far there is none of that in horizon.

So it has a TR feel to it but the combat is mostly it's own thing.

That's exactly what I wanted to hear. TR was littered with so much pointless crap.

Thanks for sharing your impressions.
 

The Lamp

Member
On TR, I said it's similar because it's the closest thing I can approximate what I played yesterday to. There is an open area, obviously horizon has bigger areas than TR. as you explore there are a bunch of floating not distracting icons saying you can gather this herb. You collect various resources to make healing items, build better gear, make different kinds of ammo. You hide in tall grass and can do stealth kills, lure enemies and you use a bow and arrow (and other weapons that are unlike anything in TR) that has a slow mo activation. Climbing is uncharted like, it's more automatic as you don't even have to press X to go from ledge to ledge.

But instead of humans and a few angry wild animals in horizon you fight robots that all have different attacks, patterns, and weaknesses. Also the quest structure is a lot more witcher than TR. also it's not as collect heavy, ROTR has like a million things to collect, like shoot 10 hidden birds and stuff like that; so far there is none of that in horizon.

So it has a TR feel to it but the combat is mostly it's own thing.

Precisely. I agree 100% with this. Don't get carried away with the TR assumptions, folks.
 

SomTervo

Member
Some amazing impressions, thanks you guys.

I'll be really glad if this game/opportunity butts Guerrilla out of the Killzone 3-SF funk.
 
So have the side quests been engaging? Is the Witcher/New Vegas experience rearing its head in that aspect?

Also is there a lot of lore and info on the world/cultured to discover?
 

Showaddy

Member
I may have missed them but any impressions so far about how well the game runs on standard PS4? I know it's GG and they're games are usually rock solid but years of Bethesda's open world games have left me jittery about framerate, bugs etc.
 
I may have missed them but any impressions so far about how well the game runs on standard PS4? I know it's GG and they're games are usually rock solid but years of Bethesda's open world games have left me jittery about framerate, bugs etc.

Impressions have been great. Game runs smoothly.
 

LordofPwn

Member
do we know yet if there are difficulty related trophies and is there a new game plus? with Zelda coming out same week i want to know if I'll be able to get the platinum in one playthrough or if i'll get to spend more time with it.
 

dEvAnGeL

Member
I asked this before and The Lamp kinda mentioned something on the impressions, are there real horses in this game and if so can we ride them? The Lamp wrote "horses" i don't know it The Lamp was referring to the robo horses or real ones
 

CGwizz

Member
How long do you want this game to be?

Very excited about this. Will wait until after I'm done with Zelda though.

I want it to be long like you know, a RPG? At least 60 to 70 hours minimum for me to buy it on release date
 

The Lamp

Member
I asked this before and The Lamp kinda mentioned something on the impressions, are there real horses in this game and if so can we ride them? The Lamp wrote "horses" i don't know it The Lamp was referring to the robo horses or real ones

you can control and ride certain robobeasts
 

vivekTO

Member
I asked this before and The Lamp kinda mentioned something on the impressions, are there real horses in this game and if so can we ride them? The Lamp wrote "horses" i don't know it The Lamp was referring to the robo horses or real ones

Robo Horses, i think.

Also anyone kill a tallneck yet??
 

Neoweee

Member
I want it to be long like you know, a RPG? At least 60 to 70 hours minimum for me to buy it on release date

What RPGs have main quest lines that long for the average player? Out of the last decade, like Xenoblade 1? Maybe, possibly, Nioh?
 
I want it to be long like you know, a RPG? At least 60 to 70 hours minimum for me to buy it on release date
Banner Saga is an sRPG about 20+ hours. Age of Decadance is around 30+. RPG/shooter Mankind Divided is around 30-40. Far Cry 3 is around 25. GTA V is around 20-30.

Why are you expecting cRPG length from an action shooter/RPG?
 

Tankard

Member
You should still try it yourself, imo.

Game sounds like a jack of all trades master of non sort of deal. Combining a ton of game design concepts proven to work, and packaging it into a tightly knitted experience.

I'm fine with that. Usually when open world games try too hard to separate themselves. It doesn't without too well. Go for that in a sequel.

Really? Who said it doesn't master anything?

Well, i got what he wrote in a totally different way.
 
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