Horizon series is incredibly bland, dull and soulless in my opinion ofcourse.
I heard a lot of hype around it in 2017 but i only got to play it in 2019, after i started the game i was immensely bored.
The characters are so unlikable, i dont know why but i never could relate to any of them, Aloy and her friends are just lackluster in any interesting or fun trait, they come off as predictable and bland in every sense.
What caught my attention immediately is the pretty visuals and i think thats one of the series main strengths, the art team is talented. although only at environment and not at character/enemy design.
The gameplay started out so boring and repetitive, all i did was use the bow to hit machine weak parts but later in the game the combat improved a lot with different types of elements and strategies to destroy big machines, that i would say is the best aspect of the game.
It's basically Ubisoft game why because the writing and the story are generic, so putting it aside AC Odyssey is probably fitting but Horizon had slightly better combat and slightly worse realized open world.
I thought the story is dull and uninteresting and the concept didnt catch my attention, at many segments of the game i was in a hurry to finish because of how padded and uninteresting the story was.
I wrote a lot more in the time i was playing but im too lazy to look it up now, in short i just think the games are uninteresting, uninspired and generally not good, but overall its decent, i would rate them 3/5 trying to be as objective and unbiased as i can be here, if im rating purely on instinct and fun then it would be 2/5 but i dont do that.
I think Horizon and Dragon Dogma are two games that proved to me that Combat alone cannot carry open world games.
To make interesting and engaging open world game you have to nail at least one of the 3 aspects.
(Exploration) - Example: Elden Ring, Breath of the Wild, Outer Wilds
(Writing, aka quests and story) - Fallout New Vegas, Witcher 3, Red Dead Redemption 2
(Sandbox or rich RPG mechanics to mess around with) - The Elder Scrolls series, GTA, KCD?
I dont find Horizon nailing any of that, so it falls into the stereotypical Ubisoft camp, sorry.