Alright, finished the game and collected my thoughts. Ultimately after a bit of a slow start getting into it, I definitely came around and loved Horizon. Going to get my complaints out of the way first.
The bad:
- Lack of many notable side characters: Aloy didn't really have many NPCs to play off of, and the ones that are potentially interesting spend too little time on screen. Sylens was awesome though and Lance Reddick continues to be gaming's secret best celebrity voice actor. Vanasha, Erend, and Nil were great. More of them please!
- Exposition dumps in narrative: many of the datalogs were very poorly paced and spammed at you to the point where I found myself ignoring them to get to the meat of the story.
- World building: while the actual factions are great in the game, the cities felt somewhat dead and didn't actually convey the struggles of the civilians in the world. I really felt this in the last few cutscenes where it was mostly shots of the Sun King and the few soldiers who populated Meridian celebrating. It felt small.
- Some technical issues in cutscenes including pop-in, weird sound mixing issues, lighting, and odd facial animation.
- Lack of verticality and climbing: would have loved to see more climbable surfaces and ways to get down from heights. The platforming was bland, but so sporadic that it wasn't a big deal.
Stuff that was just okay:
/ Melee combat: not bad enough to be a detriment, but not good enough to say it was good. Liked being able to stun enemies and follow up with a critical, but felt really clunky when you would miss.
/ Human combat: too much of it and it's too uninteresting. Wasn't much worse than any other game, but definitely the weakest part of the combat sandbox. AI was quite bad.
/ Fewer RPG systems than it seems: not much choice in terms of story or build variety available. This is more of an action open world than an RPG.
/ Side quests: the combat was enough to carry these, but overall many didn't provide many surprises.
The awesome stuff:
+ The story: if you were to tell me that a story about robot dinosaurs would actually be some of the most compelling, unique, and interesting sci-fi in gaming, I'd laugh. The fact they pulled this off and answered all of the big questions is incredible. Well written, well paced, doesn't hold anything back, and ends with a satisfying conclusion. What's surprising is how many relevant themes get tackled here. You've got the actual dilemma of unmanned warfare, humanity, religion, tribal politics, environmentalism...it's all done with such confidence. This idea of tribal society discovering ancient technology and worshipping them as gods is so smart that I'm surprised no one has really tackled this before. Awesome.
+ Aloy: damn what a great, well written character. Kudos to Ashly Burch for the great VO, portraying a headstrong, yet a bit unsure and confused personality. She rarely ever reacts in a way that you feel isn't appropriate.
+ The combat: so much can be said about this. To put it simply, this is the best combat in an open world game to date. Figuring out an enemy's weakness and exploiting it, scrambling around and taking off it's armor pieces, and then barely taking it out is super satisfying. The responsiveness of Aloy with the movement and her dodge is really great as well.
+ Enemy variety: such an insane amount of variety with the enemies, from the Chargers, Thunderjaws, Snapmaws, Glinthawks, the list goes on. I rarely ever felt bored with the encounters, and constantly was impressed with the uniqueness of their designs and the dynamism of each encounter. Also loved the ability to use their dropped weapons in a scramble.
+ Scope: I loved that the world and amount of activities here wasn't so massive that it felt insurmountable. Everything here feels achievable to see and do, and for them most part it's all worth doing, spare a few checklist-esque design things. The combat and feel of the movement in the world is enough to carry everything.
+ Art direction: what else can be said here? From top to bottom: amazing. The way they managed to mix both the technological with the tribal created a really unique aesthetic that is just so fresh and cool.
+ Graphics: as above, the best looking open world game available. Especially on the Pro.
Overall, is Horizon a masterpiece? Probably not. I think it's definitely one of the best games of the generation though and is the start of something that could spawn something that could be up there in several years' time. It's a great game with some flaws, but not enough to dampen the overall experience.