LogFAQs > #970828208

16. Horizon Forbidden West (2022)
https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/user_image/4/6/6/AABKTfAAEFlq.jpg

It's hard to say whether this is better or worse than the first Horizon. There's a lot of basic improvements that make the game smoother and better, like fixing up the inventory system and such. There's some nice new abilities as well, like an excellent glider that makes descending from anywhere way more fun, and a final movement ability that makes exploring awesome and creates some fabulously cinematic gameplay moments. It's prettier, of course, and there's a much bigger variety of everything - more animals to hunt, more enemy machine types to fight, etc. The present-day story is so much better that there's no comparison, and the way the game gives you a recurring cast of characters allows for way more character development and lets you feel more of a connection between them.

On top of that, the music's actually good! I feel like Western AAA games typically have totally mediocre soundtracks (Japanese non-RPG AAA games sometimes do too, of course), but here, I actually enjoyed a few of the songs. Certain types of machines have their own theme song, sometimes with variations. Two of them stood out: an underwater boss called the Tideripper has a great heroic theme that makes fighting it a blast, and a Stegosaurus-type machine does something really unique. It has an attack that slowly charges up, and basically the whole song changes as it does so, getting louder and more ominous as it goes, until the attack's finally unleashed with a breaking crescendo. It's one of the coolest things in the game.

On the other hand, it doesn't feel like it's learned much from other games in the five year gap between the two games. It mostly plays the same, and exploring can be frustratingly limited. Sometimes you'll try to platform with an alternate ability than what you're "supposed" to use and instantly die because the game won't let you do that. Sometimes you'll try to jump through a big open window for a shortcut, and the air will stop you because you're not entering the area the right way. Area design is based on guidance markers: it's difficult to find the way to go without them, because areas don't have clear sightlines. Areas are made to be "realistic" so you can't just see where to go without markers, like you can in a game like BotW or Elden Ring. There's a ton of status effects, and your options for inflicting them feel a bit random sometimes with the weapons you get. And while the main story is much better than HZD, it's not as great as the past storyline was in that game.

I will say that the game got better as it went on and gave you more options. There are some mind-blowing moments, and while stuff like the swimming sucks early on, it's fairly fun once you get a certain upgrade for it. I like that almost all the side quests feel at least somewhat meaningful, though I skipped a bunch of the random side activities. I enjoyed myself most of the time. It's a fun world to explore, and the combat's fun too. I just wish they'd improve a lot of the flawed aspects, and don't have much optimism that they will in the third game because of how similar this is to the first game in general.

Next game hint: please don't make spinoffs have the same acronym as the game they're spun off from devs