This game was painful to play. My friend says that it’s because I don’t have the patience to explore RPG games’ open worlds to unlock the more fun game mechanics. This is true, I don’t have that kind of time in my life.
Fantastic story, this game could be a 4-season Apple TV+ show and I’d love it. It’s basically Matrix but the Matrix hasn’t taken over the surface of the Earth and blanketed the atmosphere yet — that was what HADES was going to do before Aloy stopped it.
The combat in this game sucks, like a lot. The weapons that I got while doing a pure-story run were abysmal.
For 75% of the game, I was running from one end of the map to the other end without fast travel or being able mount the robotic wildlife. The lack of free fast travel was one of the most infuriating aspects. I didn’t use fast travel in Spider-Man 2 and was not bored because swinging and flying were fun.
The start of the story was underwhelming, some of the reveals could have been epic moments in the game but unfolded in a very “meh” way (e.g., Aloy being a robot creation, GAIA being an AI)
Some parts of the story were cliched but that’s acceptable (a white guy basically killing a bunch of people and destroying all-knowledge sending humankind back to the stone ages with some robot technology.
The fashion in the game was confusing and till much later in the game when the story unfolded, I did not understand why we are tribal-tech chic.
The colors in the game were very single tone-d for each scene.
The best mechanic in the game was the one about climbing; you didn’t have to do much, the game did most of it
