I also picked this up recently. I’m finding it to be a complete slog. Every feature is tedious, or seems half hearted. Traversal is sloppy and aggravating. Navigation via the weird teleporting waypoint drives me nuts. Crafting and everything associated with it feels so rote, but it’s an assload of busywork. It’s got the expected challenges, an “investigation mode”, stealth against humans, blah blah blah. The only remotely interesting thing is figuring out efficient ways to take out machines using the variety of gadgets and weak points. I wish that had been transplanted into a better designed game - open world or not.
I’ll be honest, I think I successfully navigated maybe three encounters with stealth throughout, usually a slip here or there and fight was on. With very few exceptions none of those were “stealth or you just die” encounters, I could always fight my way out if I kept my head on straight.
The appeal of this game is clearly the mecha-saurs, which are mega-cool. The rest ranges from pretty good to serviceable to frustratingly rote at times. The player character is appealing, though, and the story is decent at least.
Stealth is very easy, get a stealth focused suit, a couple of skills and just crouch for the most part.
HZD is very much a whole is bigger than the sum of the parts, I really liked it, mostly because of the setting, characters and story, gameplay is decent but not anything we haven’t mostly seen already before.
Yeah, the combat system is really great and pretty challenging at times. There are a lot of ways to tackle your dino problems, and different people are convinced of different “optimal” ways to tackle some big-ass dino.
I like the system in particular because you can prepare an area for a big fight - lots of tripwires and bombs all over the area, and drawing those huge dinos in. Then knocking off key components that take away particular dino abilities to make the fight easier, followed by closing in for the kill.
The crafting thing really isn’t a major part of the game once you’re established - crafting more of these weapons can be done very quickly (even in combat) and once you get going you’ve generally got tons of raw materials, unless you are spending them on even the most trivial encounters that you could wrap up with a few arrows.
The other thing I really liked is that at different parts of the game, you can wander into areas way above what you can handle, and those monster dinos will one shot you. Coming back later with better weapons and better understanding of the combat system to take one of them down successfully is super satisfying.
I do like Aloy quite a bit. The other characters are pretty generic, but she’s got a lot of personality. I just really wish they’d scoped this game down and focused it a lot more on the bits that work. Perhaps the sequel will improve on this.
It is open world but you really only need to do the parts you want to. So much is actually optional.I do think you could wear yourself out doing optional stuff, kinda like any open world game. I pretty much only farmed and crafted to make arrows or to have the components to make arrows.
The DLC does ramp up the difficulty a bit.
I think the movement/traversal is excellent in the game.
You run at a good clip, you can slide fast without really losing much (if any) speed and when you fall from something elevated you also just kind of keep trucking. So they deliberately don’t slow you down in those scenarios where lots of games would.
The mount controls are a bit fucky, but also fine if you want to go even faster.
I’m so glad I picked this up. I got it yesterday and ahead played a whole bunch. This game works for me in very similar ways to AC Odyssey, but I enjoy using bow much more in this one. I can get myself into trouble, even playing on easy, but combat is really satisfying, especially when you set up something cool (and there are a variety of ways to do that)
Oh, yeah, all the gadgets you have can get overwhelming, but setting up a good line of traps and stuff, picking the right elements and all, is very cool.
Anything in particular to keep an eye out for? I have a carja slingshot, but haven’t used it all that much. The tripcaster is fun. I need to use the bombs more.
New weapons will come along at a good pace, really the thing you need to work on is building money, you’ll have access to most weapons pretty early but they are pricey. Also, start working on your storage upgrades right away, I didn’t even notice them in the menu until midgame and felt like a fool.
I’ve done a bunch of storage upgrades already, so no worries there
I bought this on sale from Epic. Played maybe 15 hours on PS4… which is just enough time to feel like I didn’t see as much of the game as I want to while also feeling like I have a lot of re-playing ahead of me in order to get back to where I left off. Hopefully the high-res PC smooth hotness is enough to get me hooked again. Or maybe I’ll just play other games and never even install it. Such is the way of the holiday sale…
It’s been a while, but I believe the slingshot is the closest to a “rocket launcher” – it’s a direct projectile that deals a lot of damage.
Later on, I would layer a whole lotta tripwires in a specific spot and lure ro-dinos there – not many of them can survive getting like 20 tripwires’ worth of explosions or electricity.
The slingshots I have seen so far are more for status effects. I know from the skill list that heavy weapons exist in some form
I barely used wires or traps at all, I went with maximum tear on a sharp shot bow, that let me strip most attacks and armor in an initial volley. Then I would go for whatever elemental status was appropriate for the particular beast. That usually caused a stable and then crit or snipe to finish.
Lots of different approaches, to fit your style. It’s one of the charms of the game.
I used traps and tripwires a TON on the harder opponents. I didn’t use the tie down ropes or slingshot very much at all.
I love how different people can find what feels like the “right” way to play.
I can’t wait to be able to put mods on a spear
Knocking an energy cannon off an enemy, then picking it up and using against them is seriously great