This game was a disappointment for me. I really loved ZD on PC , even during its buggy release.
- Aloy is a horrible main character in FW. In the ZD you see her grow as a character which was great, she was a wonderful character. In FW she's stuck up and lacks any emotion.
She never stops talking. I enter a new mission area and within a few seconds she starts dropping hints, and this is is with Explorer mode enabled.
She's selfish for wanting to do everything on her own, constantly telling people she doesn't need help while the whole world depends on her. Who does that? When in such a position, you take all the help you can get. It's the whole world against the common enemy.
After defeating a fucking T-Rex she just brushes it off like it's nothing. No emotion, no nothing. The same can be felt during conversations where she has such a boring monotone voice. Don't get me started on the pauses she has to take to come up with another boring ass response. Also, what is up with repeating the last sentence someone else had made? Who talks like that. NPC: "My sister is lost in the desert". Aloy "You said your sister was lost in the desert??".
During the first hours I was invested in the stories but after a while I had to skip them or else I would fall asleep.
- The side characters are shallow and I couldn't care less about any of them. It was great seeing some familiar faces but it lacked depth. I would have loved to see some actual deep personal quests to add some background layer to the extra characters.
- The world seems to be in a chaos yet everything is always fine and there's mostly always a happy ending. You beat one the best warriors of a certain clan? No problem, we can still be friends! Please join us while we give you full access to our community oh great Aloy! You destroy our village? Hey no problem! It lacks harshness, the actual chaos of a war between tribes.
- I'm on the fence about the combat. On one hand it's still great when it comes to the actual combat between you and the robots. Having to aim at their weak spots is good, especially when every robot differs. It keeps it interesting, which I liked. Sometimes the robots tend to have jerky movements so you're permanently stuck in matrix mode or else you'll miss your shots. Melee combat is the worst. They tease you with an enemy that has a shield, yet the only option you have it to dodge. They really missed the mark on having a deep melee combat system. No shield/parry tends to make most melee combat come down to dodging and attacking, which isn't enough for me. I felt no reason to unlock the extra combos because of this and got away with the basic combos. Later enemies tend to be able to keep you down with multiple attacks. I've had attacks when I got knocked down and the moment I got up I was hit again which can be annoying.
- Climbing can be annoying at times. Aloy gets stuck, doesn't move where you want her to or doesn't grab what she's supposed to. The idea of being able to climb on most things is great, yet I had to turn on the option to mark the spots where you can climb or else you're stuck pressing R3 the whole time. Maybe an issue with detection.
- The pullcaster was overdone because most areas relied on it.
- You have an inventory, where berries are placed. When you pick up more berries, they get magically added to your stash (which is fine). When you're out of berries, they get magically added to your inventory. So what is the use of the stash? Why limit the amount in your inventory?
- Traps which you have no ammo for are still in your list. So when you're in the heat of battle and want to switch to a healing potion, you stuck having to press left/right for too long.
- The graphics on quality mode are great, but 30 fps is not for me so I was on performance mode which unfortunately is blurry. With graphics this great, it makes other things obvious, like the mediocre lipsync. Which also doesn't help the boring conversations.
All in all, this was a solid 7,5 for me, which isn't bad but it could've been way better. The ending was even worse and stopped be from even wanting to finish the remaining side quests.