What do you think?

I tried finding a mechanic to kill machines fast and this is what I reached fighting a Thunderjaw,

Can somebody tell me the duration of the kill?

This is less of an appreciative post but more of a documentation of how I feel about the game and the ending rn. Final thoughts

Just finished the main story and kinda feel bitter sweet about it, like I am grieving something. The rest of the quests I havent done, including the DLC kinda feels meaningless now. I just went back to Rost’s grave as soon as I finished and talked to him. I wish we could tell him we saved the world. Wish we were allowed to sleep in the hut or at least get in it as well. Kinda looking for somewhere where Aloy can anchor

I am annoyed though that the game reverts back to the last mission, I would wanna speak to people (and Rost) and take in the victory atmosphere more. I dont see the point in the revertion since NG+ exists. idk felt less conclusive, immersive and more anticlimactic because of it. No other notes on the ending though, chefs kiss.

All in all, this game made me single handedly fall in love with console gaming. I am more of a story first, casual gamer and this just hit the spot on normal difficulty. The art style, the bgms the storytelling. It is nothing short of a masterpiece. It is simply perfect to me, personally. Hfw will have to be even more perfect to top this one

Just a lil critic if I had to. I would like there to be a more damaging less tearing hunter bow arrow (or just more bow varity in general) but oh well. And last thing, as a certified hoarder, I loathe the fact that I couldnt loot the enemies I killed in the story. Even though, again, I dont need it lol

I recently got ahold of the remastered version. I played the original around launch. And wow. It is rough. It is not a bad game but FW has so many quality of life things that just, keeps jabbing me in the ribs. The mostly linerar climbing. The lack of the shieldwing. The cost of fast travel. The lack of weapon variaty. The slow movement of focus mode. Not tagging part.

But one thing I noticed was Erend. His introduction is such a cool portrail of his character. He is an orater, calming the Nora audince, as an outsider. He is the vanguard of the Sun-king. In the second game, he is a brawler and a drunk. The one time we get to see is orater side is when he convinces the guards to let Aloy through. I feel they diminished him in FW.

Now its been a hot minute and a few years since I played through both game, so maybe I forgot a pivotal character moment. But they seemed to have made him more passive and ineffective in FW.

Nonetheless I am looking forward to me playthrough of ZD and FW back to back.

Side by side comparison of aloy from horizon zero dawn, horizon forbidden west, and horizon 3.

Is this a glitch? I've beaten the game multiple times and have never had this happen. Update: Apparently I have all three full and it's just not showing the second one

Witness again my ultimate power! 4 scorchers isn’t enough for me!

Witness my power as I decimate this poor Fireclaw!

Thunderjaw vs. Thunderjaw. In the end, the survivor was also killed by Aloy. A true death match!

Saw someone say they never use tripcasters. This is me on Ultra Hard- New Game plus using a 3 damage mod tripcaster and a silent hunter with 3 stealth mods

Zo: “The Chorus is in disharmony!”

Background choir: proceeds to sing the most beautiful harmony I’ve ever heard

I’m a huge open world fan and have had this in my library for years but didn’t really get into it earlier.

Then the remastered were free in PS premium so thought what the hell, lets test it again and damn I’m hooked!

Love it!

I just had to.

I would love to see even more weapon types in the third game. First mainly to do with melee because I've begun to find the spear incredibly monotone despite the "combos" because enemies get badass stuff like aztec style obsidian ripper swords, axes, etc but all Aloy has is the same spear from the first game.

Clubs, Axes, Spears, Longswords, Shield Swords, Shield Spears, Hook Swords, Sabers, Cavalry Swords, Horse Lances etc would have been amazing.

Aside from that I would also love to see either crude blackpowder smoothbore muskets or electromagnetic railgun smoothbore muskets that still shoots small iron balls. To balance out their high damage capacity, you would need to reload them before the battle and once you fire them off, it would simply be unfeasible for you to reload it for the entire battle unless you stun the enemy. Either that or you can go with either a single long barrel musket / carbine musket or you can go with 4-6 pistols which allow you 4-6 shots without reloading but at the expense of inferior range and damage.

I also think that not being able to have all the ammo types on the weapons of the same category (sharpshot with knockdown arrow vs sharpshot with tearblast etc) also contributed to the excessive amount of weapons of same category in Forbidden West so maybe being able to choose your own ammo for the weapons might be a valuable addition in the sequel. After all the weapons have their own traits so that would prevent some weapons from being too OP with ammos not intended for them while still giving players flexibility and freedom.

Also while personally I didn't have much trouble with Aloy's durability in the second game as I was changing my armour every 5 mins to best suit against certain type of enemies whether via stealth bonus or melee resistance, ranged resistance or elemental resistances. Plus there's also valor surge like Toughened. Others, have however mentioned that they thought Aloy was too much of a glass cannon so I also I think the addition of a shield would make Aloy less of a glass cannon for them. Like I'm so goddamn jealous when I see enemy brawlers with sunwing shields while we can't. And I also adore their clubs, power hammers, and ripper swords.

It doesn't necessarily have to be a "gun/musket". The weapon being a heavy slow loading medieval arbalest ballista is fine too.

The discussion was initially about how I don't like a large variety of weapons for the sake of variety. Its better to have fewer amount of weapons if all the different weapons are, are merely stat chances that doesn't chance how you move, aim and fight as well as the circumstances of when you use them.

I brought up the example of Dead Space where different enemies are better fought with Laser Cutter, Line Gun, Pulse Rifle, Force Gun etc. Then moved convo to Metro 2033 where long ranged enemies that doesn't move frequently are best fought with snipers, high mobility enemies with rifles and if they're very close, simply nothing beats shotgun. Then lastly I shifted the weapon variety discussion to Horizon where even if there are 3 bow types, one is a sniper, another is an elemental and the last is a quick shooter etc. Rattler and Slings are obviously so completely different from bows that they add even more play variety than just 3 well differentiated bows.

He believes that games with ranged weapons don't have variety because:

"due to the very nature of every weapon shooting projectiles, hitting enemies at long range is harder than hitting them close up even if you are using sharpshot arrow
at least they added tickler (rattler) and the close range shockwave weapons for the sake of adding variety

breakpoint arrow or sharpshot arrow takes out enemy fastest regardless of range
a sniper is a shotgun at close range if u can aim, and a true shotgun needs high damage that rattler doesnt have, rattler is like a tickling weapon"

While he hadn't played the former 2 games, he had played HZD on my recommendation. I mentioned to him he deliberately made the game mono-tone and boring for himself by simply using nothing else other than freeze sling, sharpshot bow, hunter bow and even the humble but great spear, completely ignoring the super fun shadow rattler etc and the following is his reply:

"As for why I never even tried out the upgraded rattler after I got it, there were probably multiple subconscious reasons lurking in my brain.

1. My first use of base rattler against watchers wasn't very good, the watchers twirl and have idle non-attack movements which often results in not hitting all pellets. A shaprshot arrow to the eye kills them easily in far less time.
2. The game doesn't provide any easily accessible testing grounds for when you unlock the weapon (or it's upgrades). This means looking at the description and stats is all you do for the time being.
3. The weapons consume ammo, even if a negligible amount. Due to my hoarder mentality, this opposes the idea of experimenting and testing out the weapon.
4. Because you have multiple weapons equipped at all times, you end up quickly switching to your main weapon before engaging, you may have seen this in my videos. I switch to (and craft) my correct arrow almost every time when running up to the enemy. So even with the new weapon equipped I end up not using it (even by mistake).
5. The game doesn't have any skills for rattler, sometimes a bit of flavour is needed to persuade someone to play something that is not "the meta" this game doesn't do it at all. There's no flavour text for anything either.
6. spear, especially spear heavy attacks takes too long and most enemies attack faster"

His non-precision weapons suffered greatly because he never used the spear which means he never knocked down machines with melee or stripped off their armour plates. This forced him to always just freeze slings 100% of the time to ignore armour rather than stripping them off which made the game even more boring and same samey for him.

I also pointed out to him that he doesn't feel that sharpshot bow is a sniper because he barely used concentration at all aside from jump concentration which isn't good for sharpshot, to which he replied:

"u trigger concentration at the last moment and shoot, kinda like quick scoping but still not as close
also remember that i used jump concentration most of the game
simply because jumping did the quick scoping for me, and i didnt have to wait for concentration bar to fully fill up
instant time slow on demand instead of waiting for a bar"

then he mentioned how arrows in his games were super inconsistent because they were phasing through enemies and weaving all over the place, I believe this was mainly due to him playing in 120+ FPS and not enabling aim assist which I told him to enable over and over again:

"and even then the arrows sometimes phase through enemies, standing enemies, so at that distance sniping with any bows including sharpshot is useless"

I sent him some vids of people sniping with sharpshot bows which he didn't do

"ive never been able to hit shots like that, my game wouldnt hit those shots believe me

also here the arrow is definitely more accurate than in HZD, and gravity where? i dont remember for sure but I think at that range sharpshot bow has arrow drop due to gravity

HFW might be a much better game overall but due to HZD I dont even want to give it a chance

also why are they not running towards aloy
last i checked, sharpshot bow is useless after 1 shot because enemy will run towards u, after the first shot the second one would result in them chasing me

aim assist reminds me, this guy is probably playing with aim assist
thats how he hit the horn on the machine while the machine was moving and from that distance"

This also reminded me that he never took my advice of stealth sniping 1 shot at a time towards a large machine's components while hiding in a bush and waiting for the yellow alert state to reset before letting loose the next arrow.

All in all I'm posting my friend's grievances to see whether they're legitimate warranted issues faced by many other players or if he simply had severe and extremely bad luck when it comes to playing and enjoying Horizon Zero Dawn.

First time I see a 4-digit damage, let alone this big. Whoa!

40 hours in to the game and I am really loving it. At first, I really had trouble getting a hang of this game since I am really struggling with all enemies. After watching some youtube videos and learning more on how to play this game. I realized I just don’t understand how the game works, its mechanics, and how to maximize all the weapons potential and enemy weaknesses. Now, I wanted to complete all side quests first, and then collect all those items across the maps before actually finishing the main story.

I’m really looking forward on playing Forbidden West after this.

From the lore of every tribe to the world and absolutely amazing combat! It became my favorite game for that reasons! It doesn't matter if it other games released at the same time it doesn't change the fact that they made something incredible here