Author: Rich Meister
Horizon Zero Dawn was the victim of poor timing. A great open-world game with lush environments and a memorable narrative that stuck to what felt like an old formula in contrast to The Legend of Zelda Breath of the Wild, which was released a mere month later. With Forbidden West sharing a launch window with the critically revered Eldin Ring, is it destined for the same fate?
It’s not quite that simple, but underneath some old worn-out open-world design and a lackluster intro, Horizon’s latest installment offers a lot for the patient player.
Horizon Forbidden West (PS4 PS5 [reviewed])
Developer: Guerrilla Games
Publisher: Sony
Release date: February 18, 2022
MSRP: $69.99
Horizon Forbidden West opens right where the original game’s expansion Frozen Wilds ends, so expect spoilers for Horizon Zero Dawn ahead though this review will keep things spoiler-free for Forbidden West.
Aloy is pursuing a functioning copy of Gaia; the AI intended to restore the planet after the end of all life. After coming up short, she’s forced to head west in search of another copy on the trail of an old enemy. She’ll also have to contend with the machines being produced by the rampant AI Helphasteus from the Frozen Wilds expansion. The rampant machines interference will have to justify why cauldrons are making less soil tilling deer and more thirty-foot venom spitting cobras.
Forbidden West’s story is frankly exceptional. I found myself fully invested in the story and characters with every weird sci-fi twist, and there are a few big ones along the way. The biggest detriment to the story Guerrilla sets out to tell is that it takes forever to get there. The Daunt, a steep valley, serves as your starting zone, and there's a lot to do there, but that's kind of the issue.
The Daunt is boring. Its people are one-note video game quest givers, and the scenery doesn’t offer much that you haven’t seen in the original game, but it is still incredibly easy to lose over ten hours here. Once Aloy crosses the not metaphorical but literal line into the west, you’ll find yourself embroiled in a civil war between the Tenakth, a new faction native to the west coast of what was the united states, and facing a new enemy that I won’t spoil here.
Visually Forbidden West is spectacular. The PS5 version is plagued with the occasional pop-in texture and a lot of concealing fog, but the creature designs and lighting effects on the dense forest, sprawling ruins, and vast desert are some of the best I’ve seen in any video game.
Deeper on the technical end, I had a few quest glitches that required me to restart the game to complete an objective. Still, Horizon saves early and often enough that it didn’t cause more than a minor inconvenience, and most of these issues seem to have been ironed out in recent patches.
On a mechanical level, Forbidden West works but feels incredibly dated in spots. Climbing, for example, is still handled by following brightly marked handholds like in the original game. This method gets the job done, but it feels like a limiting choice when you look at how games like BOTW and even modern Assasin’s Creed games have handled climbing in open-world environments.
Combat is primarily unchanged from Zero Dawn. Aloy has a few new toys in her arsenal, like a variation on the rope caster that fires elemental canisters and a disc thrower. The key to fun combat is still in deciding how best to engage these machines Monster Hunter style and finding the weapon sets that work for your playstyle and for each individual encounter. I’m partial to a good Sharpshot bow and an exploding spike thrower.
Combat with non-machines still feels like a bit of a drag compared to fighting giant robot dinosaurs, but thankfully Forbidden West shakes things up by giving some enemies machines mounts of their own. Fights are ten times more enjoyable when you’re not the only one riding a robot raptor.
Horizon is filled to the brim with loot. There’s a ton of armor and weapons to choose from, but there might be too much. Machines and vendors are so constantly providing new gear that even by the forty-hour mark, it felt strange to commit to upgrading anything. Why would I poor my rare Tremor Tusk parts into a bow if I was going to find something better in the next hour. Having options is always good, but Forbidden West could’ve cut the amount of gear here in half, and it still would’ve had a lot to offer. Never-ending loot seems like a recurring theme in open-world titles, but quality will always trump quantity.
Aloy also gets a few new pieces of gear to better traverse her environment with, but much like the early games, slow story burn it takes a bit too long to feed you some of these tools. I won't spoil them all here, but if you don’t make a b-line for the main plot thread, you can go a good ten hours before you get Aloy’s glider, and that would be an absolute travesty.
Forbidden West comes complete with multiple skill trees and while you won’t need every skill to survive the wilds I recommend looking over them all before you start dropping points. Experience is plentiful but there are some skills you’ll want sooner than others.
Forbidden West’s side content is a complicated affair. There’s a lot to do here and not all of it is exceptional. Guerrilla found ways to shake up quests like Tallnecks and Caludorns from the first game to keep you on your toes, but some of the more interesting side quests can be easily lost in the shuffle when you’re dealing with a map swimming in icons. Forbidden West has quantity but it’s easy to lose track of the stuff worth your time in the shuffle. I’m close to the seventy-hour mark and there’s still a lot I have left to clean up.
Verdict: Horizon Forbidden West is a phenomenal game plagued by some outdated design choices and abysmal pacing in its early game. Many will likely bounce off of this one because of how long it takes to get its wheels spinning, but the patient player is rewarded with a strange and satisfying story that takes some narrative turns you likely won’t expect.
Buy it
[This review is based on a retail build of the game purchased by the reviewer]