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[AAK]

Once you understand the mechanics of which weapon counters which body part the combat becomes fairly beatable. Played the game on hard on my first try and beat the entire thing with few issues. Only time I died a lot was the first time I fought a Rock Breaker, I was pretty under leveled for the mission too.

The Hunting Ground trials explain everything to you.

 

[Oni Jazar]

I played on the hardest difficulty and I wish it could have been harder. Love the feeling in the beginning, but you get so powerful. I may need to do a no skill upgrade run or something.

 

[ghibli99]

I died a lot in the beginning, but that was due to getting used to the controls and understanding what worked best against the various machines. Turns out that tearblaster arrows are incredibly OP (explosive sling ammo too, my god), knocking off enemy weapons easily, and you can easily exploit environments and patrol boundaries to bait and kill things with little risk.

During the first few hours, I found the combat options to be pretty interesting, but when you actually play the game, most of them become pointless, and you can rely on the same small batch of weapons to take out everything. I thought I'd have to use tripwires and other traps a lot, but rarely did, and sadly, it didn't matter at all. Even in the cauldrons, I just went in and did my thing. Maybe ropecasters to keep the big guy down for a while as I took out the small annoying mob fodder, but not beyond that. Stealth/whistle is a silly mechanic with how easy it becomes to kill all the smaller enemies and once you can hack everything, the game gets even easier still.

I sound really negative, but I'm having an overall positive experience with the game (not quite done yet). I just think the combat becomes more simplistic and less interesting the more you play it and round out your abilities/skills when the opposite really should be happening, which was what happened to me playing through the Souls series and Bloodborne... the combat in those became better, more challenging, and stayed compelling the more I played those vs. it becoming easy mode.

 

[Miniature Kaiju]

I played on the hardest difficulty and I wish it could have been harder. Love the feeling in the beginning, but you get so powerful. I may need to do a no skill upgrade run or something.

Want a challenge? Very Hard, Hunter+War bows + melee only. Just wrapped a hardcore run like that, had a blast.

 

[Arkage]

I've beaten Bloodborne,DK1&2, but yea, this game is pretty hard at first in the sense that a lot of enemies can kill you in 1-2 hits if you're not dodging and maneuvering exactly right. Also didn't help that I wasn't bothering with the ropecaster for half the game, which makes the fights quite a bit more manageable.

 

[swearing-circle]

I felt the game was balanced pretty well. Have to admit that when the crocs first lunged at me I was taken a back at how quickly they closed the distance.

Died a fair few times in the game but I felt like it was just right.

 

[VanCityGamer]

I played it on hard and was actually surprised by how normal it was for the most part. That's partly due to the chatter around the game beeing quite hard, and then it not seeming that way.

I'm actually finding Mass Effect harder so far on Hard difficulty.

 

[CEJames]

In before the "git gud" comment.

However, I did find it rather challenging yet not frustrating at all. Well...some of the corrupted zones/one or two hunting grounds for the blazing suns might have been frustrating but I still enjoyed the game overall.

 

[autoduelist]

I'm with you OP. In fact, it ultimately made me quit playing the game because I found the combat model (damage types, arrow types, etc) too cumbersome for my tastes. It felt like encounters took forever and they ultimately got repetitive.

Battles probably took forever because, as you said, you were overwhelmed by the combat model. I can take down anything pretty darn fast, even Thunderjaws. Knock it's primary off, tie it down, freeze it, hit it in the heart, etc.

 

[Riesenfass]

Yes, found it a bit rough on normal. Got to the end of the first cauldron and couldn't beat it, had to lower the difficulty. Still found the combat challenging and enjoyed myself a lot more.

 

[kvothe]

Edgy ...

That's why I said that I usually play my games in normal mode. Horizon being the exception.

Sorry, probably came across as snarky, but it was meant to be playful. No malice intended.

 

[Indelible]

I'am playing on hard and it has been a good challenge so far but it forces you to think fast, just finished the first cauldron and it was intense as hell.

 

[ZeroMaverick]

Totally agree. For me it was the bow and how committed you had to be to every shot you made.

 

[StrongBlackVine]

I thought it was too easy. I died less than 5 times in combat. Had to bump the difficulty to the Very Hard which I never do and it was still too easy. Granted I was over-leveled by a good amount, but bumping the difficulty should have balanced that out somewhat. Tear arrows turned even the most dangerous machines into very manageable fights for the most part.

 

[FalsettoVibe]

Difficulty is just right for me. Not too hard, not too easy.

 

[Plywood]

I thought it had a solid default difficulty, but with that said I basically Batman prepped time the shit out of everything and when I didn't have my tools setup I had all the everything to throw at whatever.

 

[bitbydeath]

I died a bunch trying to fight the

Spoiler

Legendary Red Maw

, otherwise I didn't have too much trouble. I only played on Normal though.

 

[marzlapin]

The stealth takedowns and whistle ability are borderline OP in the early game. I didn't have much trouble with the game, but I went all in on the stealth tree right from the beginning, and it wasn't too different from taking down checkpoints in MGSV, which I played a lot of.

I play everything on normal and I'm pretty average skill-wise, so I suggest trying more stealth.

 

[MrOogieBoogie]

Been playing the game on Hard and almost done with it now and can't recall ever really having much difficulty with it. It controls well, and as long as that's the case I can handle what the game throws at me.

This is without upgrading any stealth stats. I haven't even purchased a new suit after the first one you receive in the game. Once I heard that stealth ruins the game I made a choice to not upgrade those skills, so now I have a ton of unused points while all my other stats are maxed out.

 

[Alex_Mexico]

I play a lot of games and I died more than usual in Horizon. I think it's because I'm more used to enemies keeping their distance and giving me more time to heal. By the end of the game I got my mind around it, but I was a little surprised by how difficult I found it off the bat.

Also, I haven't gotten deep into any of the Souls games... I'm betting Souls players found this game a breeze.

Yes it was and I loved it for it. Granted I was playing in hard but even after being level 50 for a while and stocked to the brim with potions and herbs I would sill ocasisonaly die. Sometimes because I got cocky and sometimes just because the game can be really difficult (corrupted Thunderjaws and Rockbreakers are a bitch... especially when there more than one!).

 

[Falchion]

Want a challenge? Very Hard, Hunter+War bows + melee only. Just wrapped a hardcore run like that, had a blast.

Not even a Sharpshot Bow?

 

[Memento]

I think it is definitely harder than your average AAA game. But I loved that aspect of it anyways. I mean, finally an western RPG with great and challenging combat.

 

[Imp the Dimp]

Maybe if DD eliminated the jank, but as it stands, it's not on the same level as Horizon. Polish matters.

I like DD better.

 

[Finaika]

Horizon is the Dark Souls of Guerrilla Games.

 

[Alpende]

I played it on Very Hard and thought it was pretty difficult early on. After a while you get used to the enemies, know which arrows and tactics to use and it got a whole lot easier.

 

[The Boat]

Played it on normal, the only thing that gave me a hard time was the lack of gyro aiming.

 

[Wesley-Sigma]

I haven't played it, but even if it was difficult for you, who cares.

Its difficulty wouldn't be able to stimulate me anyway.

 

[Savantcore]

Playing on normal and I've died a couple of times in 20 hours or so, but I've certainly come close to dying a few more times.

I think it's a nice balance between being perfectly manageable and suddenly overwhelming. If you rock up to a pack of Sawtooths and just start firing arrows then you'll be using plenty of health potions in no time, but with some preparation you should be fine. One of the game's strengths, I think.

 

[deejay]

I've played quite a bit of Dark Souls (all of them) but I still had a hard time with this game. I've stopped 15 hours into the game I think because it just wasn't fun anymore. It wasn't just the dying (which I'll admit happened quite a few times) but I just found it difficult to see what the beasts their weakness was, even though it's shown with icons when you scan an enemy. Some are very obvious, sure, but others... no clue. Still to this day. But I have plenty of other stuff to play so I don't mind it much.

 

[StrongBlackVine]

I've played quite a bit of Dark Souls (all of them) but I still had a hard time with this game. I've stopped 15 hours into the game I think because it just wasn't fun anymore. It wasn't just the dying (which I'll admit happened quite a few times) but I just found it difficult to see what the beasts their weakness was, even though it's shown with icons when you scan an enemy. Some are very obvious, sure, but others... no clue. Still to this day. But I have plenty of other stuff to play so I don't mind it much.

Anything yellow is a weak spot for me. Spam enough tear arrows at different areas of its body and you can cripple any machine. Learning which which machines are weak to which arrows is crucial though.

 

[spekkeh]

Slightly off topic, but Horizon has legitimately one of if not the best "battle systems" of any game I ever played. Really fantastic mix of tight controls, dexterity, preplanning, unpredictability, feedback rewards, combination experimentation, interesting and varied enemies, etc.

Honestly I cannot find a single fault with the machine fighting in Horizon. It's just perfect.

The machines are cool, but the melee is a terribly unsatisfying single swipe, the human characters are jank, and the arrows don't really have weight (literally). I'm not getting the praise.

 

[120v]

at first i was awful at the game. i remember the first "real" battle with that sawtooth i got so frustrated i switched the difficulty to Easy so i could just get on with the damn game already

later on though i got in the groove and it was a breeze, more or less. like any game you just need to wrap your head around mechanics, enemy attack patterns, ect

but yeah, one of the more challenging games i've played in awhile. not exactly Dark Souls but mindlessly traipsing past a bunch of enemies can get you boned

 

[Lupo]

I played on hard, and before I upgraded stealth and got to the late game i thought it was fairly difficult. And I've finished Dark Souls, and beaten several Platinum Games on insanity. It's not harder than those games, but I guess relative to most AAA games it was, and perhaps the sheer uniqueness of the enemies and mechanics for an open-world AAA game (analyzing and attacking weak points with different weapons, arrows etc) made it a bit harder to grasp.

 

[GlamFM]

It´s worth noting that you can bump down the difficulty at any point without missing out on anything.

That being said I thought the game started out really hard - I played it almost like a stealth/survival horror game.

It got way easier as I moved along - nice, I love the feeling of getting more powerful in a game (that´s why I hate level scaling)

At 2/3 into the game it got really hard again and that´s when I started to look at the tools at my disposal and started really paying attention at the systems (TEAR ARROWS) to make it easy again.

 

[EGM1966]

Sounds like you struggled a bit with the flow of its mechanics and damage to heal time.

I liked ZD as, like most Souls type games, the game felt fair. Enemies hit hard and you can go down quick if you goof. You can hit hard too and if you're focused and use right approach tough enemies can feel easy.

Best approach for me and part of the design that makes ZD feel immersive for me as it feels realistic in relation to weapons/foes.

 

[Donos]

I played on the hardest difficulty and I wish it could have been harder. Love the feeling in the beginning, but you get so powerful. I may need to do a no skill upgrade run or something.

Maybe GG is open for a "grounded" difficulty patch like ND did for TLOU if enough people want something like that but i doubt it.

 

[Vitten]

I guess it's kind of a hard game if you don't take an effort to learn the game's mechanics or use all the tools at your disposal and just stick to blindly shooting hunter arrows which do crap damage.

The game gives you plenty of options to tackle each situation eficiently, either by focusing more on stealth and cunning early on or simply by overpowering with status effects and explosives later when you're better equipped.

 

[Cromat]

I'm currently maybe a third into the game and I can say that for me at least it's definitely challenging on Normal. I'm used to dying basically not being an issue in most modern games anymore so it's definitely different. I like it though, you really feel you're in danger wheb you're out in the open.

 

[Markitron]

IMO the difficulty was perfectly pitched. Losing concentration will see you die but a bit of pre-planning will see you through any fight, even if you rush in you can still prevail with a bit of skill. The early sections of the game did just enough to explain the basics of the combat without hand-holding, and it left you to figure out the various classes of weapons yourself, I wish more open world games were like this.

The only thing holding it back was the human combat/stealth, it was perfectly serviceable but nowhere near as good as the god-tier dino combat.

 

[Triggerhappytel]

I initially played on Hard and most of it was manageable, but I had to turn it down to Normal when fighting the Thunderjaw at the end of one of the Cauldrons. I turned it back up to Hard, but in the canyon area kept getting my arse kicked, so I turned it back down to Normal for an easier time. Apart from the first fight with a Rockbreaker I've found it fine on Normal.

 

[Pif]

I think people who mainly play videogames as a hobby might find it easy. They have lots of dexterity and controller muscle memory to play really good.

I for one haven't touched my PS4 in 2 days due to other interests at the moment and I'm dying often in Horizon for the reason that I don't really care to die. I'm just jackassing around, experimenting stuff and just having fun.

 

[Unaha-Closp]

I don't recall ever dying in that game. No wait I did fall off cliffs fighting damn flying machines while dodging but otherwise I thought it was fine. I'm no uber got gud gamer who prides himself on beating games at the highest difficulty or anything. Yo I like stealth, bows and arrows and female protagonists so maybe I was just the type of player for that game. I would not say it was too difficult though. Freeze the machines and snipe the humans. Worked for me.

 

[ty_hot]

I died many times in the beginning, it was difficult to aim at the weak parts of the machines without them running over me... Then I learned how to avoid them by jumping (timing) and it got better, then I learned how to restore life mid fight (I always knew how to, I just didnt pay attention to that at first), then I started changing outfits depending on who I am fighting (they should improve this... it reminds me of MGS3 where you would have to change your outfit in a menu and then on MGS4 it would change your camo automatically)...

Another thing that help a lot is having different weapon. If you have only 3 or 4 weapons, dont start saving money to get a very good one. buy more different weapons so you can have more approaches for the encounters.

 

[Melchiah]

I played on Hard, and yeah the game is hard. It really just requires you to always pay attention. The game can actually be pretty "easy" if you preplan accordingly, but it will absolutely trample you if you run in guns a blazing without a plan.

It's actually part of a neat trend of action games that require quite a bit of thinking, and something that has only really blossomed this gen after Crysis was quietly ignored for a decade. I'll throw HITMAN, MGSV, Horizon, and Bloodborne in the same bucket of "yeah this is an action game, but you are going to be asked to sit down and think about stuff for a bit"

Honestly I love it and hope the trend continues.

Souls players by the very nature of the game must be more pesistent to push through the difficulty at first to get the reward later. Nearly all of my friends lack the patience, two of which even returned blood borne because they could not hack it. New combat systems can test a player, I definitely see the connection.

I enjoy the current reliance to planning and patience as well, and hope it'll continue despite of some gamers wanting to breeze through the encounters with guns blazing.

The hardest part for me was the first Cauldron, because I had so few healing items left at the checkpoint before its "boss". It took me half a dozen tries to beat it, with traps set across the area before the battle began. I was actually pleasantly surprised by the last battle in the game, as I feared it would be as unforgivingly hard as those in KZ2+SF were. I actually had to switch to easy to be able to beat those two.

Handling and spamming fire arrows go hand in hand. Once you got the Shadow ropecaster, bigger enemies also become a cakewalk, if you tie them down and yous those "tear pulse" arrows to remove weaponery. Or you simply tie them down and override them.

Come to think of it, I rarily tried to override the machines after tying them down. I'm going to have to try that with the Rockbreakers at some point.

 

[SoundLad]

I'm a very decent Dark Souls / Bloodborne player but the combat in Horizon even on Normal seems to be pretty tough if not being careful or if you don't know how to approach situations so I know where the OP is coming from.

I think part of the problem for me is that I'm not exactly sure what to do against some machines. For example, I can see that some machine part is weak to electricity but I'm not sure whether I should be using the slingshot or arrows for maximum benefit. Also, I feel like I'm being too careful with adding runes to equipment. I just don't know whether the one purple mod I have for 29% electricity damage is a once-per-playthrough type of rare quality rune or do much better ones come about later on? Can I reset my talents? etc. Once you know these things, I'm sure it is easy.

Example fight that I've died numerous times on and I'd love some tips:

3 Tramplers are hanging out in this desert area and I'm around level 19 at the moment. There are also some type of scavenger/bird machines watching over the plateau.
Whenever I aggro one of the tramplers, ALL of the other machines (2 Tramplers, 3 birds) also aggro to my location. Like, what the hell?? Would love to hear / see how others dealt with it.

 

[Jacknapes]

It did have it's challenges, especially early on with some of the lower leveled machines. Heck, i didn't even get the best armor in the game until i actually beat it, but have heard with the armor it makes things easy. As soon as i started getting the Carja and Shadow weapons, that's when it became interesting.

The Tear and Corruption Arrows work wonders, and so does overriding. Did use a Sawtooth to my advantage against a Thunderjaw once (it didn't last long before it was ripped to shreds) And used hacking against some of the tougher machines in Snapmaws, Ravagers, Glinthawks*

*Corruption Arrows/hacking these is a wonder and relief when against a fleet of them

 

[Vitten]

I'm a very decent Dark Souls / Bloodborne player but the combat in Horizon even on Normal seems to be pretty tough if not being careful or if you don't know how to approach situations so I know where the OP is coming from.

I think part of the problem for me is that I'm not exactly sure what to do against some machines. For example, I can see that some machine part is weak to electricity but I'm not sure whether I should be using the slingshot or arrows for maximum benefit. Also, I feel like I'm being too careful with adding runes to equipment. I just don't know whether the one purple mod I have for 29% electricity damage is a once-per-playthrough type of rare quality rune or do much better ones come about later on? Can I reset my talents? etc. Once you know these things, I'm sure it is easy.

Example fight that I've died numerous times on and I'd love some tips:

3 Tramplers are hanging out in this desert area and I'm around level 19 at the moment. There are also some type of scavenger/bird machines watching over the plateau.
Whenever I aggro one of the tramplers, ALL of the other machines (2 Tramplers, 3 birds) also aggro to my location. Like, what the hell?? Would love to hear / see how others dealt with it.

- get the Tinker ability asap. This will allow you to switch around runes at will.
In the meantime don't worry too much about using a rune, you'll be drowning in purple runes with + 40% damage once you can safely take on a Thunderjaw about midway through the game.
- if a machine is weak to a certain element, keep firing it with that element until it's either burning, frozen, or shut down. After that, switch to the blast sling or the rattler to inflict massive damage
- in your Trampler scenerio I would sneak and override one Trampler or use some Corruption arrows to get some chaos going and then mop up when they're all weakened.

 

[Mojoraisin]

In the beginning of the open world part (particularly desert) I snuck around a lot and tried not to aggro the enemies. Lots of sneaking going on and keeping to the beaten path.

I think difficulty was perfect on normal for me personally. I died occasionally even in the later stages of the game when I didn't pay attention to what was behind me.

Superb game.

 

[Wind's Howling]

I found out it is pretty much the same as Bloodborne for me. As in, you need to learn the tactics and patterns of each enemy you encounter and then work your way around it.

I had tons of issue's with those underground tremor enemies until I realize that you have to stand still when they go underground cause they 'hear' you.

By the end of the day I could kill two Thunderjaws and two Behemoth's without breaking a sweat. That wasn't the same the first 20-30 hours of the game.

 

[Melchiah]

I'm a very decent Dark Souls / Bloodborne player but the combat in Horizon even on Normal seems to be pretty tough if not being careful or if you don't know how to approach situations so I know where the OP is coming from.

I think part of the problem for me is that I'm not exactly sure what to do against some machines. For example, I can see that some machine part is weak to electricity but I'm not sure whether I should be using the slingshot or arrows for maximum benefit. Also, I feel like I'm being too careful with adding runes to equipment. I just don't know whether the one purple mod I have for 29% electricity damage is a once-per-playthrough type of rare quality rune or do much better ones come about later on? Can I reset my talents? etc. Once you know these things, I'm sure it is easy.

Example fight that I've died numerous times on and I'd love some tips:

3 Tramplers are hanging out in this desert area and I'm around level 19 at the moment. There are also some type of scavenger/bird machines watching over the plateau.
Whenever I aggro one of the tramplers, ALL of the other machines (2 Tramplers, 3 birds) also aggro to my location. Like, what the hell?? Would love to hear / see how others dealt with it.

You get a plenty of better ones along the way, and you can exchange the mods when you unlock the skill, which was something I did very early on. Planning how to level up the character, as well as how to approach the battles, makes the progress easier. Personally, I concentrated on the Gatherer skill tree at first, as it had several skills that were better to learn sooner rather than later, like bating enemies, increased healing speed and item capacity, increased override duration, and being able to reuse mods and traps. You get more than enough points to unlock all skills, if you do side quests along with the main one.

As for tips... I'd set Tripcaster traps for the Tramplers beforehand, and use fire arrows for the Glinthawks. You can also tie the Tramplers down with Ropecaster, and damage them with what you have while they're incapacitated. Tear arrows are a good choice, if you have Sharpshot bow, but not necessary. Slingshot explosives get the job done as well.