Home to the world’s most boring grapple hook.
With an intro cutscene with a broad brush of a story recap from which you can infer most major plot points, Forbidden West is a sequel in every step they throw you into a Very sci-fi story and with very little given in terms of explanation. Horizon forbidden west was released on February 18, 2022. Developed by Guerrilla Games and Published By Sony Interactive Entertainment on PS4 and PS5.
The tutorial area is surprisingly big if you want more of the story theirs plenty of scannable items in the first area to find; to help bridge that story if you haven’t played the first. gap. Relying mostly on context clues. The first few hours are rough storywise like in the first game; it’s a whole lot of not fun. But with a plethora of difficulty settings and accessibility options to tweak the difficulty of the game which is more important ill talk about that later. A super robust options menu in that sense but in terms. Of visual settings, there are two graphics settings performance mode 60 FPS at 1800p and resolution mode at 4k at 30 FPS. I played on performance mode mainly for that 60FPS. I finished the game in just under 40 hours at 37 hours with a healthy amount of side quests doing. I played on normal difficulty with explorer mode, which limits the HUD I believe.
The Grappling Hook
The potential was their the best grappling hook ever; it could have been great. But the grappling hook is useless outside of puzzles, and that’s a shame. It really is; look first, some quick history the first game came out one week before Zelda’s breath of the wild. And that featured a climb anything anywhere system where Link can climb whatever for as long as he has the stamina but no grappling hook. Which made going from Zelda to the First Horizon the lack of that stamina system noticeable. Now Forbidden West the sequel comes out with this weird mix of handhold placement you can climb on some “natural” some not Handholds, which leads to some climbable things just leading to nowhere. Or one wall just randomly is climbed but the rock wall right next to it isn’t And here’s where Horizon could have had a unique take where you could either be able to grapple across the floor sorta attack titan style. Or up a wall to avoid an attack or just an extra quick combat slide/dodge with an interruptible animation. That all flooded my brain at the word grapple hook. But nope, this was not the reality that happened. In but; we got an excellent puzzle tool. By the way, I know theirs like a dozen reasons why what I described cant work but it sounds cool and I like the idea.
Combat
Don’t go in expecting to do a ton of melee combat those skills exist but that’s it. Melee takes a back seat to the ranged options are the only ones; Guerrilla games really fleshed out the skill trees from the first game plus adding the Valor ability system. That’s super customizable to you and your playstyle with skill trees specializing in certain ways of dealing damage. There’s Warrior: which is where the small number of melee combos rescind in shame. There’s Trapper: for the people who quite literally want to leave a trail of chaos and explosion behind them in the form of trip mine and explosives. With skills improving building and setting traps quicker and better; with an emphasis on elemental damage. There is the Hunter: skill tree the blandest yet best skill tree focusing on the hunting bows; Improving concentration and crafting abilities. Survivor: explosives and healing focusing on potions and gathering while wielding bombs and frisbee with spikes going hog wild on enemies. Infiltrator: for all the hitman-loving people super stealth shadow huntress style of gameplay. Machine Master: focuses on damaging and mounted damage towards machines. Im boiling plating all the skill trees but you get the idea?
The Valor system and abilities are cool.
The whole valor system and those abilities are cool but clunky to use and learn. Everything is controlled in the wheel; crafting ammo, swapping weapons, etc. They are all in this slowed moded wheel menu, making it easier to manage. But a still a clunky interface to switch abilities in on the Dpad. Without much of a tutorial for dealing with this problem, it ultimately leads to confusion. And those things are being lost to the player for a while; adding abilities to the Dpad is huge. But it is not adequately explained in your arsenal, which only confuses the leaves the player more confused by default adding in the slow mode in combat while quick crafting different ammo types. Plus, adding In the skill trees and those skills you learn is a lot on top of everything. I re-read it but it does teach you but it doesn’t show you like I knew to change abilities I had to use Dpad I looked at the controls but it doesn’t show you where on-screen abilities are or which ability you have equipped; that’s controlled in the center of the aforementioned all-powerful wheel. But it took me way too long to figure that out. I wasn’t looking there with the crafting ammo; I was looking at the outside of the ring for the amount of ammo. So you don’t expect the skills to be there.
Those abilities are mapped R1 abilities which range from notching multiple arrows on your bow. To firing an arrow straight up to make an AoE area. all this together is a lot for a quick wheel menu to manage even in slow-mo. That’s where the game loses me because the game itself promotes a specific playstyle of huntress in the wild due to its loot system. Because of this, the game funnels you into the hunter skill tree just out of the utility. But you need a little of all of them really to find your playstyle in the game. Again hunter is one of the more monotonous options when compared to others. theirs some dope abilities, like a dodge that fires off three bombs in the opposite direction. That’s fucking dope, but for some of them, they’re not all that game-changing. ultimately It’s simple It’s just weird getting used to it; I haven’t seen a way to reset skill points as of writing. I know why now because there isn’t, at least as of writing this part 2/23/22. I hope they add it later in a future patch because not having a way to quickly experiment on the six skill trees and the multitude of weapons Isn’t fun. With valor abilities being buried in sub-menus being a bummer to select, you just found out the gun you like is scaled/buffed on a different skill tree. Discourages using those other weapons more.
Let’s talk about the loot system because it’s cool.
It’s my favorite idea that loot, crafting, and shopping are all mixed together, which is fantastic but can be frustrating. Meaning some components are needed to purchase that fancy new toy at a merchant you just found are behind these components that need to be shot off to be collected. To purchase new weapons and craft upgrades to weapons and storage capacity. But this is fixed if that doesn’t sound like your cup of tea in the settings, you can turn on easy looting where these components aren’t destroyed if not shot off. All these systems overlap in combat, where combat has this microgame of disabling attacks from these oh so beautiful giant robot Dinosaurs and focusing whatever component you need to knock off the beast. Disabling that attack or start laying into it with whatever element it’s weak to however you prefer with their ten weapon types that all feel different more so thanks to different haptic feedback on the PS5 controller. That’s the loop damage it with its elemental weakness; if you need a part, switch to normal arrow or special breaking arrows to knock off said piece. The crafting ammo also uses materials you collect from downed monsters along with the currency used to purchase things from merchants; it’s used to craft ammo for weapons all that time in large quantities sometimes. This is so cool to me like I see this as a micro world-building thing where this hunting down of monsters and trading in parts are just typical and expected in this world which I love. this is cool just out of they could have just said no, those things are separate and they didn’t, which I like cool.
The World/Themes
*light spoilers
while also breaking some expectations in terms of the generic open-world formula take the tower to reveal map in some areas on a map; horizon they put their fun twist to it where it does not always find a place up high than jump on the Tallneck. It’s not afraid to hand you a mystery at one tower but then a combat encounter at another or a mix of both. It makes the icon hunt unique where the icon lies softly about what it is, which is fun and encourages exploration. Of those “?” on the map. The world itself is massive, and the settlements all feel alive, if not at the time a bit same-ish. But if you do the side missions and errands which are both super good and some well-written content in the game. While also giving out generous rewards. That plus the easy loot option, you’ll hardly notice it if you turn that on; all places have essentially the same things workbench, campfire, etc. But not in terms of merchants; those inventories are unique and which merchants are available at said settlement or outpost. Some might have only the hunter(weapons) merchant but no stitcher(armorer). Few places, at least in my experience, took me a long time to meet a face painter. I kept unlocking them and picking the flowers for the dyer, not having seen either merchant in. I’m guesstimating like 70% of my playthrough. I hadn’t seen one. It plays into one of my favorite sci-fi things/quotes.
“Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.”
Arthur C Clarke
They do such a great job of showing how the different tribes took and understood the forgotten technology and cloud it in mysticism differently. And how they applied it to their whole culture and government, and religion. It’s just so cool seeing it all fold out, and the talent on display is impressive.
With that all said, in short, it’s a great sequel offering more in every aspect over the original. The combat has a depth that was missing in the original. It looks prettier; if you like the first one, you’ll like this one. If you haven’t played the first, that’s OK. Many of the stuff they call back are things you can follow and guess what happened. You’re probably right. I didn’t go into the story mainly because I liked it a lot don’t want to spoil it. But it’s great. I liked the story a lot, and the characters are all-powerful with their personality. A solid game highly recommends whatever out of whatever.
