100% completion (though didn't grab all the data entries), 47:55:53 for the Platinum which I got yesterday. Awesome game, so glad it turned out well.
Mini-review below:
Pros:
- Amazing graphics, like OH MY GOD good. Utterly fantastic and makes the game feel like the most expensive shit in the world.
- Fantastic combat gameplay and superb controls. Controlling Aloy and battling the beasts is a thing of beauty and joy.
- The enemy line-up, while not the biggest one, is brilliant and many of the robots, especially the bigger ones, are super-fun to battle and feel like boss fights themselves. And the way they animate, my God.
- If you bump up the difficulty, the battles are some of the most exhilirating in gaming right now. I love how smoothly the enemies animate and track Aloy. Instead of it being like in other games where you easily dodge monsters, here you actually have to put in some effort.
- Pretty much all characters, and especially Aloy, are nicely written, interesting and with unique personalities. There is rarely bad voice acting, and you're eager to hear more.
- The main story and the missions are fantastic; really intriguing set-up, good revelations and tightly written. It's a high mark when an open-world game that riffs off Tomb Raider and The Witcher still manages to feel like a tightly controlled single-player game in many parts.
- The game takes the best parts of well-established franchises like Far Cry, Tomb Raider and so on but streamlines most parts into a fluid, and well-playing lump of joy.
Cons:
- The physics glitch when the camera repositions during cutscenes/dialogues. Always hated that in GG's engine and sad to see it isn't fixed.
- The low-quality water effects and lack of plant interactivity. Minor thing in the grand (and beautiful) scheme of things.
- No map legend to turn markers on/off, and no comparison screen for weapons (and before/after stats when modding etc.). Honestly, my biggest gripe.
- The lack of interactivity in the cities, especially in Meridian. Since they already went the Mass Effect route for dialogue, it would've been nice if there was generally more to do in the cities story- and chatting-wise. More NPCs should be fleshed out.
- Small lack of polish in certain areas, which is usually noticeable in GG games. Aside from the aforementioned physics glitch, there is stuff like numerous subtitle errors, some overlooked writing (like Aloy knowing the names of people who haven't introduced themselves, repeating quest dialogue after finishing said quest), some subpar cutscene/dialogue transitions, the shadow glitches etc.
- The item management and item gameplay/customization is quite poor. You buy most of the game's stuff from traders who pretty much share the exact same item line-up, and quest rewards are poor (aside from xp). Also, you can manage to craft almost all bags quite early on since the game doesn't require you to go out of your way to gather the necessary resources. For the next game, it should be more rewarding to explore, with more unique items etc.
- Side quests are quite bad aside from some of the more elaborate ones. They simply shouldn't rely on so many tracking quests with sparse dialogue, make them more elaborate such as different outcomes based on the clues you've found, different combat setups etc.
- I would've hoped for more boss-like enemies and unique enemies in general. An idea for the next game would be to make hunts more unique by having the hunted targets have unique colored skins and abilities, such as shields, fire/ice attacks, spawning abilities etc.
