Saturday Morning Gaming: I was wrong about Horizon Forbidden West

I complained about Horizon: Forbidden West a couple of weeks ago.

Geoff told me “I would say focus on the main quests until you reach The Base (not a spoiler, because you won’t know what it refers to until you get there), then take stock.”

I gave my buddy an update on where I was in the game and he told me “Dude. You’re in sidequest hell.”

I yelled back “I AM IN SIDEQUEST HEAVEN!!!”

That said, he told me that this game is better than the original. I snorted. The first one dragged me through the story and I was pleased to eventually beat it. He told me that I was spending too much time in the tutorial area and if I wanted to play the game properly, I needed to leave the tutorial area and dive into the story. I said “fine” and… without getting into spoilers… I’ll just say that holy cow, I was completely and totally wrong about my complaints about the game.

I suppose that I could salvage my take a little bit by saying that they took their sweet time getting to the good stuff but I am one of those guys who wants to upgrade everything in my possession and ESPECIALLY upgrade stuff like “how much my backpack can hold” or “how many arrows my quiver can hold”. I want to get the passive skills that let me win fights against monsters that would otherwise squash me like a grape.

For the most part, this works out well for me.

Except, of course, if you are in a Metroidvania kinda game. You’re going to encounter doors that you just don’t have the key for and there’s some pretty nifty stuff behind those doors (and, in the case of upgrading your stuff, you’re eventually going to need parts from particular florae/faunae that you’re just not going to find in Colorado).

So, without getting into spoilers, I’ll say that the map has a bunch of these kind of doors scattered about:

Horizon Forbidden West_20230519173526

There is a main storyline mission that gives you the upgrade you need to unlock these doors.

Once you get the key and then finish the area where they give you this key, the game goes from “yep, this could have been a DLC” to “HOLY COW WHAT IN THE HECK IS GOING ON”.

Who are these people?
What are their goals?
And, eventually, can I thwart their goals?

As a brief aside, along the way, I have visited Las Vegas. I was absolutely delighted to see Las Vegas at night. Wow. This is a pretty good game.

All that to say: the first game was surprisingly good.

Even more surprisingly, I no longer think that my buddy was suffering from recency bias when he was telling me that this game is better than the first one. Now, I’m not going to say that it is better, not yet… but we are now in the ballpark of how good the first game was and, once again, the story is dragging me along and every answer I get has me asking a new question.

Which is pretty cool, all things considered.

So… what are you playing?

(Featured image is “Firegleam”. Screenshot taken by the author.)