Originally I said the graphics didn't wow me. But I was referring to the look of the locations rather than its photorealistic quality. The game has great graphics (I played this in ps4 pro). But the forest and snowy grounds, I felt like I've seen them in other videogames so when it comes to the look of the locations, I wasn't wowed. However, the rocky mountains look really great. The view from the top of a mountain where you can see the lake and the rocky mountain from afar looks really nice. The conversation cutscenes look really good. Like compare to Ac Odyssey's conversation cutscenes (the ones in which you can select a dialogue), Horizon looks prettier and smoother. Also the fashion of this game is unique. The outfits and the headpieces. I like that most of the npcs look really well designed and they all look different. I also like Aloy's dozens of looks. A fashionable outcast!
I'm mixed with the combat here. I enjoy doing stealth and shooting down the flying birds but I feel Aloy lacked in melee attacks. Her spear attack lacks in range. Then the other weapons and many arrows. I was heavily dependent in fire arrows. I don't think the corrupted arrows helped me at all as I didn't really use it. I sometimes used the freeze and shock arrows but I didn't need them all the time unlike the normal arrows and fire arrows. The other weapons were there for variety which is nice but I always ended up using two types of arrows. Some of the skills which needed level up points to acquire, were also useless and just extraneous as I didn't need them.
Weirdly, my favorite activity here is the bandit camps. Taking down the machines is thrilling as well but when I'm running and dodging again and again and trying to hit its weakness, the camera gets too shaky and things get chaotic that I can't target/attack the enemy as soon as I want to. The corrupted locations were nice as they were the shortest. The hardest corrupted location for me is the one with the two rockbreakers. I died there multiple times and I came back to it when I was like level 48 and I finished it in 1 try. But Thunderjaw, Snowbird and Behemoth were much easier compare to it and I don't think those three killed me in any side quests. I totally skipped the trials. I only finished three trials just to progress a hunters lodge side quest and one of those three trials, I couldn't even get 100%, as I couldn't hit 10 cannisters in 90 seconds especially when those machines kept running away. If the first trial is already hard, I wonder how frustrating the rest are. The cauldrons for me were tedious, well the first two. But I liked the third one with human enemies and the last one was surprisingly short. I wish there were more of those giraffe machines and viewpoints. The collectibles, I liked that they weren't too many especially some of those were quite challenging to find and get.
The side quests/errands: some of these were quite long and I felt like if all or majority of those missions were part of the main story, the game would have felt longer to me and not short. I like that many of the NPCs from those side quests ended up helping Aloy in the final main mission. And I wish I didn't kill the guy who introduced Aloy of hunting down the bandit camps. I regret the decision of killing him especially he was one of the first few npcs I've encountered.
The main story was nice, though the ending wasn't as strong as the first half of the story. To me, it was kinda odd how the older lady was exaggerating that the life outside of their border is so dangerous and hopeless. The machines are dangerous but there are so many people outside of their border/wall, and life out there wasn't so harsh and toxic as she was saying. I'm not exactly a fan of the story of the ancient people/Aloy's mum, I feel like majority of the main story spent too much in that and I wish they didn't dwelve so much in discovering what happened in the past and focused more in the present days. I also didn't really enjoy exploring those bunkers. Like I wish the game focused more on the politics of the different regions out there than Aloy trying to discover what happened in the past. Thats why sometimes, I felt like the side quests were more engaging.
My other criticisms to the game: since I visited the icons in the map very early. Aloy can't take a fall which was kinda annoying, so I was quite conscious of where I was heading and I didn't want to lose the stuff I recently got. Second, the parkour here is limited. Unlike God of War, Aloy can jump but she can't grab onto all ledges and sometimes it looks really odd that if you want to climb something, she has to jump again and again instead of just climb the thing using her hands. Third, I was always dropping things off or I'm using the fast travel to sell my stuff to the merchant. I wish the inventory had more space and I already got the max upgrade for the inventory. Especially some of the things like animal parts/human things were going to be used to get things from the Frozen Wilds' merchants.
And lastly, this isn't really a big criticism since I like that the game is like a greatest hits to open world games. The only thing missing in my opinion, in terms of its openworldness is the ability to use a boat. But I don't think there's a feature in this game, that I hadnt seen before in an open world videogame. To me, Assassin's Creed, Watch Dogs, GTA and God of War were more original in terms of gameplay. Also it really reminded me of Assassin's Creed Odyssey, Shadow of the Colossus and surprisingly Watch Dogs when I started hacking/overriding the machines for my advantage. I didn't use the machines that much as a mount or to help me in battle. I feel like they need to make the override feature more accessible/better in the sequel as I rarely used those features. The enemies detect me easier when I'm riding a mount and the mount doesn't run very fast. I always need to be careful and stealthy when I want to override something especially the bigger machines and I always find it time consuming. I also couldn't use all the machines as a mount. Also it would have been so cool if multiple overriden machines just follow me around when I'm walking and they act as a bodyguard.
The Frozen Wilds:
I've started this when I finished the main story but I went back and forth into this and the leftovers from the previous locations for a couple of days. Even though the location for this doesn't look different to the previous locations, I think in a way this looks prettier. I like seeing the auroras, the ice lamps, geysers, the icy lakes, the colorful ponds. I liked that this region has animals/machines/collectibles that aren't available in the previous locations. The merchants who were buying collectibles have their own locations. I don't mind that the region was kinda small as I spent days visiting every icon in the region and for a dlc or an extension of the game, it was kinda long as they were plenty of new things to do - that it made the game/map feel bigger. Though the nighttime in this region is kinda heavy in the eyes as it gets so dark and the snow never stops. I also wish they had something like Meridian in this region instead of just campers and people living in tents.
Over-all, I got 92% in the original game then 80 something in Frozen Wilds. I also got 3/4 of the trophies. I think I prefer this over God of War (even though that one has better story/combat), as there's so much freedom in the game and I enjoyed the customization here. This is a great game but there's still a lot that they can improve and hopefully, I'd see those improvements in the sequels.
