I'm blown away by this game, and not because it's a very good game with a lot of content but also because of how it's handled: this game gaveI'm blown away by this game, and not because it's a very good game with a lot of content but also because of how it's handled: this game gave me hope that some devs do care and really want the best of the best without compromising the game itself.
Also, I probably won't mention BOTW for comparison's sake because comparing two games is the laziest form of review I can think of.
With that said, the game looks great and that's not something I see often: the graphics are colorful and vibrant and the animations are really smooth! Again I usually don't care about these petty things but the game LOOKS damn good and even in some parts where it's metallic and very lacking color it still looks extremely good.
You'll control Aloy, a young girl who you'll be controlling from the early ages to her adulthood and even though it's a very sloppy start, I did actually enjoy the first hours of gameplay a lot more than I thought despite the small area. That's a sign of a good game there when even the first hours are amazingly fun and thankfully it keeps getting better!
The game is an open world action-adventure game with RPG mechanics and also stealth mechanics as well and I'm surprised to see that a lot of these mechanics do work together: stealth is heavily rewarded but also your accuracy and the fact that enemies have different weak spots makes each fight very exciting. On top of that enemies have a very good AI and they WILL outplay you a lot of times, which I didn't expect at all.
The RPG mechanics do work well as well and I haven't found any real useless skill (maybe only 2 or 3?): all of them have some usefulness and there's no real bloating, which is something that I often find in RPGs. The best thing is that the game doesn't really feel grindy either because killing machines and enemies grant materials to get, which are used for all variety of things. Seriously, not once I found my kills to be a waste: I always had something that I can use later and in the 20 hours of gameplay that I did so far, I just never got bored because there's so much stuff to do and so many ways to achieve your goals.
Speaking of goals, the map isn't as big as, say, BOTW or even Skyrim BUT I did find it to be a lot more packed and full of life than most other open world games: you will find enemies and even bandits more often and when you don't you'll be exploring in search of relics and medical herbs and more mats to refill yourself, since you can create your own arrows and you will need a lot of them.
There are also quests and they're rather nice, even the ones I found less enjoyable: they are well done and often require to travel long distances which alone is quite the enjoyable trip
Now I might forget some details but I do want to talk about the negatives and while they didn't really bother me, they should be mentioned.
The combat is rather simplified and extremely lazy: you will have one weapon most of the time and you can either do a heavy or a light attack, and that's it. Heavy attacks can stun your enemy and allow you to do a critical hit, but that's about it.
Instead, your main weapon is your ranged ones, such as bows and...precision bow and...rapid bow? yeah, it's not varied but they do their job, especially the rope launcher that ties enemies down on the ground. Just lacks variety.
Stealth could've been better, especially when you will be unseen in high grass but outside of it it's easy to get spotted, and enemies tend to have quite a sight. It's annoying but not game-breaking.
Sometimes prompts for attacks won't appear and I often smashed the enemy with a light attack instead of doing a critical hit. This also happens for other activities such as jumping and even saving,
Climbing is very off: you cannot climb anywhere unless there's a yellow spot - a bit like mirror's edge and Assassin's Creed - and that's really annoying especially when you can't jump over a small cliff!
And last, but not least, Aloy is kind of bland and that's a shame because she is seen as a very brave and independent woman but it's hardly shown. Other characters are also very rarely developed and that's probably a thing we could've used more detail on.
Overall, I highly recommend this game mostly for the simple reason that unlike many AAA games this one has no major DLC (besides the Frozen Wilds, which is included), no Microtransactions, no Lootboxes, no season pass: NOTHING! This game is as clean as the old ps2 games with FW being an expansion more than simple DLC, with its own area and more quests to play.
This alone is, for me, a selling point because I've been avoiding AAA games ever since they went full greedy and this is one of those few and I'm super glad I bought it.
With that said give this a shot and let's support devs that actually give a **** about their games!… Expand
