Completed HFW yesterday afternoon. Played approximately 145 hours. Completed nearly everything in the game (all side quests, errands, the arena, ruins, etc. excluding one Race which oh my goodness is the worst side activity in the game. Also, I didn’t play Strike as I have zero interest in it.) My overall completion percentage is over 93%. All collectibles were completed but missing a decent amount of datapoints which are basically the notes and documents in the game. Also, still need to upgrade a few ammo pouches.
HFW is easily the best looking game that I have completed this generation and while a few other games like Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart and Miles Morales look amazing, HFW easily surpasses both overall especially when it’s a massive open world. The different biomes are excellent, the foliage, character models, cut scenes, facial animations, movements, environments, the water, the machines, just everything is simply, holy shit!!! This is current generation looking and im so looking forward to seeing games that are not cross-gen like HFW is because despite this being cross-gen, the bar has been raised in terms of visuals. If anything and this is funny - it’s too much. Like, there’s too much visuals if that’s even possible. lol.
- AUDIO - 9.0/10 (excellent)
Music is all great as are the sound effects and voice acting is top tier. No issues with the audio at all except for one major issue which is the simple fact that Aloy never shuts the fuck up. She’s constantly talking and telling the player what to do for everything and I mean everything. Need to solve a Cauldron, she’ll tell you, need to know if you have to climb up or get higher, she’ll tell you. It’s so fucking annoying and even more so, spoils a lot in terms of already being told what to do before you even have a chance to survey your surroundings and figure it out yourself. Guerrilla Games needs to add an “off/mute” option for Aloy outside of actual conversations.
- COMBAT/GAMEPLAY - 8.5/10 (great)
This will probably be surprising to some as the first game was a 10/10 for me in this category with only the camera being an issue. HFW expands on a lot of stuff in terms of combat, exploration, gameplay, traversal, etc. but for me personally, I had a lot of issues.
First and foremost is that I played the first 70 hours on hard difficulty and simply, you never feel like you get stronger or do any damage in melee or with the hunter bow which is my preference when it comes to the bows. You really need to target the components on the machines and tear them off as that does the most damage. The only time I was doing good damage was when I used the Melee Valor Surge which did far better damage but only lasts a certain amount of time. After 70 hours, I switched to custom difficulty. Easy for how much damage enemies take from Aloy and normal for how much damage Aloy receives. Even on easy (and near the end, story for damage given), enemies still feel like they have too much HP. Stealth is good but not great because you rarely can take out the machines on one hit which to me, defeats the purpose of stealth. The bombs are the best weapon to use because they’re stronger and easier to hit your targets. There’s plenty of other weapons but I didn’t like any of them to be honest.
For melee combat, I wish that there was a “lock on” feature because there’s so many times where you’ll miss attacks or Aloy will attack in the wrong direction. The Valor Surges are fine I guess. I used a Melee Valor Surge that did do more damage when activated but overall, there’s 12 in total but you can only have 1 equipped at a time which just isn’t enough considering how many there is. There’s 6 skill trees and honestly, even early on in the game maxing out the stealth attacks, I never felt like I was strong enough.
You never upgrade your spear like you do other weapons. Instead, it gets stat increases based on the armor that you wear. Not a fan of this at all. Wish I could have upgraded the spear like any other weapon. There’s a little more I could say but let me move on. lol
Traversal is worse than the first game because while there’s much more that can be climbed, it’s not like Assassin’s Creed where you can just climb 98% of the game. Here, you’re still limited to what can be climbed and in what direction. It’s more annoying, aggravating and frustrating than anything. You get a grappling hook early on in the game and you can obviously see why the climbing isn’t like AC because if it was, there would be no need for a grappling hook. This is cool in regards to opening up blocked paths or pulling out of reach chests to you so you can open them and collect the loot inside but what can be grappled is all pre-determined with “grapple points”. It’s not like Halo Infinite or even Dying Light 2 where you can either grapple at will or at least close to it. Those two games aren’t the most realistic in this regard so I can understand it but at times, I do prefer convenience over realism and this was one of them.
There’s underwater areas which are pretty damn awesome, however, there’s no underwater combat which coming off of the last 3 AC games is very disappointing. You basically have to hide in seaweed and stealth past any machines that may be underwater. Think AC IV: Black Flag because that’s exactly what it is. There’s also a glider which is pretty damn awesome. It feels great to just glide from a high mountain and not worry about some bullshit stamina meter.
There’s another gameplay element which I won’t mention but doesn’t include combat which again, is disappointing. This aspect is cool but underwhelming. One other note, you get four “special items” in this game during the story quests. Two of which are in the second half of the story which is very annoying because you will be back tracking if you want to complete what you couldn’t access earlier.
Regarding AI, I would say that even on easy difficulty, you’ll be overpowered but the enemies aren’t stupid, especially the machines. You will still have some battles unless you max out a late game slingshot that allowed me to kill machines quickly compared to not having it even on easy. Human enemies will swarm you, circle around you, shoot you from a distance, etc. Machines are tough and some of their attacks and animations, like holy shit, you can see an extreme amount of work was put into all of this. Just damn.
When everything is “hitting”, the combat and gameplay is better than what I rated it but compared to the first game, I think they added too much instead of just simplifying everything. There doesn’t need to be 6 skill trees especially when most of the skills are “meh”, at least for me and you can only equip 1 Valor Surge at a time. Simply, it’s trying to be a jack of all trades but is more of the master of none scenario. Of course, im definitely one of the few that didn’t like the combat/gameplay as all I have seen and read is mostly 90%+ positive about this category so it could just be me coming off of Dying Light 2 or just not being into it as much as I was in the first game.
Now the technical issues. I had one major crash to the dashboard and had to restart the game completely. Aloy got frozen in an animation where you open up a car trunk and after using fast travel, she was still in the frozen animation which was funny. So that was a restart. The screen goes black for 2 seconds randomly and this happened a lot. However, this could be connected to a patch or me changing the difficulty settings because I didn’t have this the entire game. More like the second half of the game. This happened a few times within a few minutes during a major battle but thankfully, since I was playing on custom/easy at this time, I was still able to win the battle despite being “blind” a few times due to this technical issue. One issue I had late during a side quest was a machine enemy doing an attack and going literally underground and getting stuck. Couldn’t kill the machine and thus, couldn’t advance. Had to reload the save. This happened a second time. Reloaded the save. Third time, I went in with my strong slingshot and killed both machines very quickly and thus, was able avoid this issue from happening again. And finally, there’s a main story quest which was around the halfway point that needed a “prompt” in order to complete the quest but the prompt never appeared. Restarted the game twice. Same issue. So I reloaded an earlier save file, lost just over an hour of progress and decided to do a bunch of other stuff in the game. Went back 10 hours or so of in game time and was able to complete the quest. One final note, changing the controller configuration to where the attack buttons are square/triangle instead of R1/R2 and picking up items, starting conversations, etc. with R2 instead of triangle caused an issue where I couldn’t shoot the heavy weapons like those that you can tear off a machine. Pressing R2, Aloy would simply drop the weapon. I had to change the buttons a few times in order to advance a main or side quest due to what it is required. Also had to do this once or twice for the Arena and Hunting Grounds activities. There’s also some pop-in but all minor. None of it was major or even close to what Skill Up for example showed in his review video.
- STORY/CHARACTERS - 9.0/10 (excellent)
Won’t say too much here. Story starts slow and picks up about a 3rd of the way into it and by the halfway point, something unexpected happens which adds more to the story. I will say that the game leans heavily into the sci-fi stuff especially as you progress through the main quests. I didn’t love any single character but I liked them all. Didn’t dislike a single character. There are several story lines in the game and I think that they should have had their own quest lines (like AC Odyssey for example) because for what is an action RPG to me, the main story should have been longer. There are dialogue choices but no real consequences which is fine honestly, because it’s what I prefer to be honest. I do wish that the conversations didn’t have dialog choices and was instead like AC Origins where it’s basically all scripted and just goes in one motion until concluded. I think that setup would work better here. Other than that, I wish that the antagonists (which is more than one) had more screen time. None of them are truly fleshed out and gone in depth like they should have been. It’s more quantity than quality for this lone reason and because I liked the antagonists, I would have preferred more quests and more in depth details about them. I won’t really comment on the ending. All I will say is that again, it’s heavily sci-fi based and I am intrigued and interested to see where the story goes next.
The biggest positive for the story/characters are actually the quests. All of them are good or better. They will take you throughout the game world, give you some damn good enemy encounters (humans and/or machines) and just overall, really enjoyed every main story quest which is another reason why i wish it was longer than what it actually is. This category is what kept me engaged for the entire game since I had many issues with the combat/gameplay.
- OPTIONAL SIDE CONTENT - 8.5/10 (great)
This will be debatable depending on what side content you like in open world games. There’s a lot of side content. The side quests/errands were all at least decent or better. I did them all and didn’t have one where I was like, this sucks. However, I did like all the characters and the Tribes so if you’re someone who doesn’t get invested into these two aspects, you’ll probably feel differently. Overall quality is better than the first game but is nowhere close to The Witcher 3 which in my opinion is still the bar for side quests and whatnot. At least for me anyway.
There’s your Rebel Camps/Outposts. Basically small/big. I do love these in open world games so im definitely playing favorites here. I always do all of these in every open world game. I would say that the battles are good, get tougher as you progress through them all and there’s a connection story wise to them which is pretty cool as opposed to them just being there.
The Cauldrons are so damn cool sci-fi wise. There’s not many. Like a handful but you need to complete these if you want to override the machines which isn’t really for me so I saved these for the last 15 hours or so.
One of the surprises were the Ruins. These are small areas that are basically puzzles that require traversal and just figuring out how to get the Orb that’s inside a locked area. I really liked these and wish there were more of them.
There’s melee pits, the arena and other stuff as well. I pretty much did everything. There’s races which is by far the worst activity in the entire game because it plays and controls like shit and even on easy, is a pain in the ass. I still need to win the last race but im like, meh. lol. Strike is basically a board game that looks like a turn based strategy RPG. It’s fine but not for me.
The Tallnecks return and you can’t just climb them. They’re basically a platforming/traversal puzzle that may or may not include enemies in the area. I love the Tallnecks. Basically, a walking tower but man, looks so freaking cool. Especially from a distance.
- OVERALL: 9.0/10 (excellent)
Overall, HFW is an excellent game and regarding combat/gameplay, I think that it’s more ME than the game itself because I have seen 95% of videos/impressions/etc. love all this and say it’s best/strongest part of the game. For me, it could be due to expectations as I was expecting certain things and didn’t get it. Story/characters is what really kept me fully invested as I enjoyed this aspect. Wish the main story quest line was longer but the quality of the quests themselves easily makes up for it. Voice acting is top notch and the music is great. Visually, best looking game thus far bar none. If anything, it’s too much. For reference, HZD was a 9.5/10 and my 2017 game of the year with combat/gameplay being a 10/10. I just what have preferred less depth combat/gameplay wise and simply fine tune what was already there instead of changing/adding a lot of stuff because in some ways, it just didn’t click for me most of the time. Still an excellent game and if you own a PS5 and enjoyed the original game, I definitely recommend it.
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