Finally completed this last night having had it since release. I finished at around the 40 hour mark with around 80% completion.
So to summarise my views:
Aloy - thought the start of the game was fantastic and it continued probably until
then the character development for Aloy sort of dropped off a cliff for me. Yeah there were various reveals and interesting twists and turns with the story of the
. I dunno, could be completely alone in that feeling but I just felt she was undersold. Leaves plenty of growth for sequels though is the good news!
Supporting cast - excellent. So many memorable characters with completely different personalities/motivations etc. I'd have liked to have been able to talk to them more about lore/them etc. sometimes the options felt limited.
Missions - for me, fairly poor. I would struggle to remember a single one outside of the main story arch if I'm honest. Everything else seemed way too fetch questy for me. It's a shame because some of the quest lines had potential with the NPC's associated with them being really quite interesting, I'm mainly thinking of
here.
Graphics - amazing, the game's a technical achievement. I played it on a standard PS4 so I can only imagine it on Pro/4K. Not a single performance hiccup in 40 hours, even during the more intense fights. The animation deserves a special mention, both Aloy and the machines, incredible work here. Even just the tiny little things like Aloy crawling up the steeper hills, holding her hand out for snow/rain etc.
Combat - enjoyed it at the beginning, started to get quite frustrated with it in the middle as I'd reached the point where you had more than 4 weapons and changing between weapons that are in your inventory and equipped is ridiculously cumbersome that it actually put me off ever changing my load outs past a certain point in the game. Didn't like that all armor/weapons were bought off merchants and that ammo types were tied to weapon upgrades - felt that could have been explained at some point as I was confused reading the Machine Catalogue when it mentioned freeze arrows etc. and I couldn't seem to craft them. Once I got the better weapons and unlocked Hardpoint arrows as well as the Double/Triple knock skills, that's when the combat became fun again for me.
All in all, I thought it was a great game, certainly don't regret any of the time I spent playing it. There were definitely a few issues though that dampened my enjoyment of it at times but it is without doubt the best new IP I've played since Dishonored and Dishonored was kick ass so that's a hefty compliment.