TheAnt
Member
This is mostly a rant about the things I find annoying with the game, but I've put like 70 hours into it, so it must be doing something right.
This game has busywork engrained in its DNA.
Starting with the combat itself. The game is built around the idea of micromanaging so many little things during a fight, it almost feels like a real-time with pause game. You see an enemy, stop, scan the machine to find the weak spots, resume, stop, open the weapon wheel, look for the weapon which has the element the machine is weak to, craft ammo if missing, resume, hit the weak spot, stop, scan other weak points, resume, stop, open the weapon wheel, find the correct weapon, resume, hit the machine a few times, stop, you need to craft more ammo, etc. etc.
You also need to use the concentration mode to hit some of these parts since the machines are insanely fast. This further slows down the pace of the combat, because you're in a slow-mo mode every 5 seconds. Then there's the valor surge, which has this long ass animation, slowing the fight even more.
I'm being dramatic for the effect, but it's the reason I've never experienced a true combat flow with this game. For a first party, cinematic heavy, streamlined as all hell, Sony game, it doesn't have a tight combat flow. It's too busy forcing you to micromanage all of these small things during each encounter. The fix: limit the player to 2-3 weapons they can carry on them which you can swap instantly, make the valor surge instantaneous (you're invincible while the animation is playing anyway) and ditch the concentration mode completely. The last part would make shooting specific machine parts a challenge, and an actual achievement when you do it. Something akin to cutting off tails of bosses in souls games.
To alleviate this problem for my third playthrough, I decided not to scan the machines or care which elements they're weak to. I choose a weapon that seems the coolest at the moment and start wailing. And since I'm playing on normal, this actually works. I use dubstep arrows for things that seem like they could break individually, and mostly use the spike thrower and shredder disc thing rest of the time. And the combat flows so much better like this.
Another problem with the combat is that I can shoot such a small number of times before I have to go to the radial menu to craft more ammo. Some of these weapons hold like 6-12 arrows. And if you're keen on using weapon skills, that's sometimes -3 for one shot, so you find yourself crafting seemingly all the time. I'd rather these weapons had 100 arrows in the pouch, but they had to be reloaded every 4-5 shots. You still can't shoot mindleslly, but at least you don't have to stop and go into the radial menu every 15 seconds. You can stay in the game, and move and run while Aloy reloads. A small thing that would hugely improve the combat flow.
Speaking of ammo and crafting, holy shit are the upgrades here stingy. I've spent 5-6 hours in the game over the last few days, most of it just fighting and looting. And at the end of each session I naively go to a workbench, getting excited to upgrade some of my weapons. I mean I've been fighting and looting for 2 hours, most of my weapons are newly bought, so I should probably be able to upgrade most to like lvl 2-3 at least, right? Lmao. The first tier is at most what I can upgrade. Second tier already has some insanely specific machine parts you need to acquire to upgrade. "Apex clawstrider tail". The game now expects me to create a job (quest) for this, find these machines, fight them, detach their tail, and then I can upgrade. It's ridiculously convoluted. Then the tier 3 requires 2 snapmaw hearts and 2 apex behemoth eyes or something. Come on man, I don't want to be forced to fight these specific versions of these machines, extracting these specific parts N times to get my weapon to the next tier. And imagine that for every weapon, each having its own machine parts. And there's a lot of weapons to be had in this game.
So then I try upgrading my armor, or my pouches, but it's the same thing. Look at the requirements for the potion pouch upgrades:
Potion Pouch Upgrade Requirements:
The game also has too many ammo types, like holy shit. Fire, acid, tear, shock, plasma, frost, water, explosive, berserk, normal damage, normal damage with a slightly different icon, probably some other I'm missing. It feels so out of place for a normie game like this one, like it's been accidentally swapped in from a CRPG Guerrilla games have been working on in parallel. There's even two damage icons per ammo type. I haven't played the game in 1.5 years, so I don't remember what's the difference between a fire dmg on a sling, and a fire dmg with a different number. There's so many ammo types, and so many weapons, that if you have the full radial menu, it's easy to missclick multiple times while trying to select the weapon/ammo type you want. Again, a lot of weird busywork in a game which really doesn't feel built for it.
And finally, the mounts. One thing is that the Sunwing is annoyingly slow, so much so I avoid using it most of the time. Another thing is that even using the mounts is not straightforward. You need to find a mountable machine, override it (no idea if you can do it with 0 skills in that tree, but let's say yes) and then repair it and keep it alive. If it dies, you need to override a new one. I don't have a mount currently, and I can't be bothered sneaking and overriding one just to be marginally faster for some time until it inevitably dies.
The game creates a lot of friction for seemingly, in my experience at least, no gain at all, even harming the experience in the process.
Luckily, some of these things can be circumvented by applying your own rules and constraints. Some things I like to do is: turn off the compass, clean up the hud a bit, use only two weapons, quick swap between them, and once I'm out of arrows continue fighting with spear only. Craft shit only outside the combat, avoid scanning things and try to figure out weak spots by looking at the machine and with some trial and error. Applying these rules makes the combat flow a lot smoother, and the machines still mostly hit like trucks, so even on normal it's 2-3 hits and you're done.
All in all, fun game!
This game has busywork engrained in its DNA.
Starting with the combat itself. The game is built around the idea of micromanaging so many little things during a fight, it almost feels like a real-time with pause game. You see an enemy, stop, scan the machine to find the weak spots, resume, stop, open the weapon wheel, look for the weapon which has the element the machine is weak to, craft ammo if missing, resume, hit the weak spot, stop, scan other weak points, resume, stop, open the weapon wheel, find the correct weapon, resume, hit the machine a few times, stop, you need to craft more ammo, etc. etc.
You also need to use the concentration mode to hit some of these parts since the machines are insanely fast. This further slows down the pace of the combat, because you're in a slow-mo mode every 5 seconds. Then there's the valor surge, which has this long ass animation, slowing the fight even more.
I'm being dramatic for the effect, but it's the reason I've never experienced a true combat flow with this game. For a first party, cinematic heavy, streamlined as all hell, Sony game, it doesn't have a tight combat flow. It's too busy forcing you to micromanage all of these small things during each encounter. The fix: limit the player to 2-3 weapons they can carry on them which you can swap instantly, make the valor surge instantaneous (you're invincible while the animation is playing anyway) and ditch the concentration mode completely. The last part would make shooting specific machine parts a challenge, and an actual achievement when you do it. Something akin to cutting off tails of bosses in souls games.
To alleviate this problem for my third playthrough, I decided not to scan the machines or care which elements they're weak to. I choose a weapon that seems the coolest at the moment and start wailing. And since I'm playing on normal, this actually works. I use dubstep arrows for things that seem like they could break individually, and mostly use the spike thrower and shredder disc thing rest of the time. And the combat flows so much better like this.
Another problem with the combat is that I can shoot such a small number of times before I have to go to the radial menu to craft more ammo. Some of these weapons hold like 6-12 arrows. And if you're keen on using weapon skills, that's sometimes -3 for one shot, so you find yourself crafting seemingly all the time. I'd rather these weapons had 100 arrows in the pouch, but they had to be reloaded every 4-5 shots. You still can't shoot mindleslly, but at least you don't have to stop and go into the radial menu every 15 seconds. You can stay in the game, and move and run while Aloy reloads. A small thing that would hugely improve the combat flow.
Speaking of ammo and crafting, holy shit are the upgrades here stingy. I've spent 5-6 hours in the game over the last few days, most of it just fighting and looting. And at the end of each session I naively go to a workbench, getting excited to upgrade some of my weapons. I mean I've been fighting and looting for 2 hours, most of my weapons are newly bought, so I should probably be able to upgrade most to like lvl 2-3 at least, right? Lmao. The first tier is at most what I can upgrade. Second tier already has some insanely specific machine parts you need to acquire to upgrade. "Apex clawstrider tail". The game now expects me to create a job (quest) for this, find these machines, fight them, detach their tail, and then I can upgrade. It's ridiculously convoluted. Then the tier 3 requires 2 snapmaw hearts and 2 apex behemoth eyes or something. Come on man, I don't want to be forced to fight these specific versions of these machines, extracting these specific parts N times to get my weapon to the next tier. And imagine that for every weapon, each having its own machine parts. And there's a lot of weapons to be had in this game.
So then I try upgrading my armor, or my pouches, but it's the same thing. Look at the requirements for the potion pouch upgrades:
Potion Pouch Upgrade Requirements:
- Level 1: 25 Metal Shards, 2 Squirrel Hides
- Level 2: 50 Metal Shards, 1 Prairie Dog Bone, 1 Rabbit Hide
- Level 3: 100 Metal Shards, 2 Carp Skin, 1 Bighorn Sheep Bone
The game also has too many ammo types, like holy shit. Fire, acid, tear, shock, plasma, frost, water, explosive, berserk, normal damage, normal damage with a slightly different icon, probably some other I'm missing. It feels so out of place for a normie game like this one, like it's been accidentally swapped in from a CRPG Guerrilla games have been working on in parallel. There's even two damage icons per ammo type. I haven't played the game in 1.5 years, so I don't remember what's the difference between a fire dmg on a sling, and a fire dmg with a different number. There's so many ammo types, and so many weapons, that if you have the full radial menu, it's easy to missclick multiple times while trying to select the weapon/ammo type you want. Again, a lot of weird busywork in a game which really doesn't feel built for it.
And finally, the mounts. One thing is that the Sunwing is annoyingly slow, so much so I avoid using it most of the time. Another thing is that even using the mounts is not straightforward. You need to find a mountable machine, override it (no idea if you can do it with 0 skills in that tree, but let's say yes) and then repair it and keep it alive. If it dies, you need to override a new one. I don't have a mount currently, and I can't be bothered sneaking and overriding one just to be marginally faster for some time until it inevitably dies.
The game creates a lot of friction for seemingly, in my experience at least, no gain at all, even harming the experience in the process.
Luckily, some of these things can be circumvented by applying your own rules and constraints. Some things I like to do is: turn off the compass, clean up the hud a bit, use only two weapons, quick swap between them, and once I'm out of arrows continue fighting with spear only. Craft shit only outside the combat, avoid scanning things and try to figure out weak spots by looking at the machine and with some trial and error. Applying these rules makes the combat flow a lot smoother, and the machines still mostly hit like trucks, so even on normal it's 2-3 hits and you're done.
All in all, fun game!
Last edited:
wish I could enjoy flying around, but I'm yelling at my screen at how stupid and downer the story went.
