Just finished a playthrough of Horizon Zero Dawn Remastered and found it disappointing.

Things I enjoyed:

- Visuals: game is visually gorgeous, lots of detailed/interesting looking environments
- Combat against robots: fighting the different robots and learning their various weaknesses had a bit of a learning curve for me, but was very fun and it felt rewarding to properly target weak points with the right ammo/weapon types

Things I thought were okay:

- Storytelling: while I found the backstory (Faro plague origin, solution, etc.) very interesting I did not enjoy having to listen to like 200 audio logs to learn it all. Some of the rooms had like 4 audio logs all in one spot, it really ruined the pacing to have to stop to listen to them all. Text logs were a bit better because I could at least read them quickly. I wish they had a few more ways of sharing the backstory other than audio/text logs. The "present day" story felt pretty generic and would've more enjoyable if NPC (other than Sylens) voice acting was better.

Things I did not enjoy:

- Voice acting: other than Aloy and Sylens most of the voice acting in the game was atrocious, it felt like they used the first takes from people who never voice acted before. It was jarring considering how gorgeous this game is visually.
- Combat against humans: fighting humans vs fighting robots was like night and day, humans do nothing interesting in combat and just have generic "hostile NPC" behaviour
- Crafting: managing my inventory felt like a chore, upgrades generally felt unrewarding (they were mostly just +% to stats) and put a damper on exploration because while the environments looked amazing, there weren't really any cool items (unless I just missed them) to find

Overall I feel like the enjoyment I got from amazing visuals and strong robot combat were heavily outweighed by the items I did not enjoy. The online impressions I got from the game were generally quite positive and I ended up feeling disappointed by what I experienced.

For what it's worth, other popular open world games I've enjoyed are Cyberpunk 2077, Spiderman, and Fallout 4. They all have their own flaws, but I found the games very fun in spite of those flaws because of their positive aspects.

I’ve been waiting two years for your review, glad I can finally make a decision on buying it.

I have no idea how we went so far back in facial animations playing that game. The poor facial and body animations, poor acting and script, really took me out of the game. Also, really disliking the trend of characters not shutting the fuck up. Like say things when in combat that's fine, but good lord, I know what ledge to look for after the 50th time.

I liked HZD but it definitely felt like an imperfect game.

I remember really feeling frustrated with the audio logs because they were placed so close together that you'd have to stand around to hear them all, and that's not even counting the times there was other dialogue happening that would interrupt the logs.

It felt like they did some things very well and other things they paid no attention to.

It was very good for 2017 standards and very fun. The title has 9 years on it now and open world fatigue has set in for sure. Still enjoyed the game for what it is, nothing groundbreaking but a lot of things done right and a compelling narrative imo. I loved the combat systems and the wild metallic animals, I found the mechanics quite engaging

See i love the lore. Loved exploring. Loved seeing new dinos. Unfortunately the combat bored me to tears. Its like the Witcher as far as a game i thought id love that I could never get into for whatever reason. Hopefully one day it clicks and I start to enjoy it.

If you played the original on PS4, there is absolutely no reason to play the remaster except for the slightly updated graphics.

i had to take a 2 week break before finishing the last mission. just got bored. i loved going to new areas and discovering new robots. especially the rockbreaker when it first popped out from the ground. one of those holy shit moments.

I had a similar experience. Mechanically it's a fun game, learning how to efficiently take down the droids and execute it felt rewarding and fun.

The backstory/lore is interesting but the storytelling was lacking. Like you I felt there were too many audio logs and large amounts of text to digest.

I'd still recommend it to anyone that can pick it up cheap/on sale.

Horizons biggest failure in my opinion is how they managed to make robot fucking dinosaur apocalypse boring to play. Somehow. I have been able to play countless other similarly styles open world games to completion with little effort. But horizon. Well I barely managed to make it past the second town before losing any motivation to play it 3 or 4 times.

And I just can’t figure why it doesn’t click for me considering it should be right up my alley.

It wasn't perfect, but it was an amazing game. Its crazy how much fun content there was for such a price.

Gotta remember this is the first new game from the Killzone team. So they know how to make games quite well and craft an interesting environment but the human elements are considerably lacking because they almost seem like an afterthought or simple FPS cannon fodder. The visuals, score, and mystery really carried the game. I also dont recommend even watching a no commentary playthrough of Forbidden West. It completely robs the first game of all of it's feats.

Played it back then and it just felt like mainstream fodder. I didn't even finish it. Got completely bored