Finished. Wonderful final scene. Really put a nice final thought on the motherhood themes. Loved it.
The last hour was really well done, though I would have preferred something a bit more inventive for the final encounter.
There's really not much I can criticize about this game at all... Maybe gear progression was a bit poorly paced? Narrative progression drags mid-game? Needs a slight difficulty boost? Nitpicks.
Pretty much near perfect for me, and I can't wait to play more.
Finished. Wonderful final scene. Really put a nice final thought on the motherhood themes. Loved it.
The last hour was really well done, though I would have preferred something a bit more inventive for the final encounter.
There's really not much I can criticize about this game at all... Maybe gear progression was a bit poorly paced? Narrative progression drags mid-game? Needs a slight difficulty boost? Nitpicks.
Pretty much near perfect for me, and I can't wait to play more.
Finally finished this (100% completion plus armour plus so much time spent endlessly killing/hunting for pleasure). Absolutely amazing game.
I loved the story as much or more than witcher series because it felt more... close to our home... They did an extraordinary job of bringing the world to life with great details in so many dimensions, and I want overly distracted by the girl power stuff.
The gameplay and depth of hunting with traps, arrows, weak points, herd behaviour, stealth, et all never got old. I constantly found myself side tracked by hunting; this is a huge win for the game. I had to bring my A-game to most fights to avoid being one shot (until I got my face-tank armour) and I never got tired of being batman to setup every fight perfectly, including the set play stuff.
I was let down by invisible walls, limited climbing mechanics, and the ways you could gimp the agro mechanic by breaking line of sight. Oh, and the annoyances of "fake NPCs" that were not targetable or interactive. And a little annoyed by how exploring was punished with "I shouldn't be here" text.
The first third of the game, I was just having a blast at killing everything in sight. Really enjoyed the hell out of this - to excess, I ended up doing so much of it, the game started to drag a bit at a certain point (I finished the game at 92 hours, tons of robot hunting in there.) I was really impressed with the combat and the variety of the machines. I'd run into a new machine and immediately notice differences like "whoa, those are more aggressive." when running into lancehorns or broadheads after having gotten used to killing grazers and striders. Behavioral differences like that were ace. Machine weakpoints were ace..... Elements were...decent. Cold/Fire useful. Corruption was mediocre but I used it when I wanted to stand back and not get directly involved. Shock was forever useless imo.
The second third of the game was the weakest for me personally. I spent an excessive amount of time running around collecting shit for no good reason I could tell. Stopping what was otherwise awesome gameplay to try to find a way up a cliff for the 47th time wasn't compelling at all. Also, this was the point in the game when I had to come to grips with the itemization. During the 2nd third of the game, I had already collected every single weapon and armor piece in the entire game (with the exception of the Shield Weaver armor). All the lodge weapons...the works. I was let down that I really had nothing to look forward to in terms of items. Nothing to collect, nothing to craft, nothing to buy. Even new purple mods were barely compelling after I'd gotten enough to fill out my gear.
The final third of the game was Boss. How boss? Boss. As. Fuck.
I spend the entire time just questing, and doing objectives. I wasn't stopping to smell the roses and kill machines I didn't have to kill. I stopped going to vendors ENTIRELY. (I literally didn't visit a vendor for the final 30+ hours of the game even a single time until just before the final fight.) I'd just drop excess Mods and resources on the ground if I needed room..... 30,000+ metal shards without ever selling anything in the final 30+ hours. Nothing to spend them on.....all I needed was stuff to make Ammo. Literally everything else was useless. That is one area they could/should really improve on by HZD2 imo.
....BUT....
....cutting out all that stuff and just moving from one objective to the next made for an awesome fucking ride, especially in the home stretch of the Main Quest. Fuck that got good.
Loved the fucking story. The plot makes this game for me. Spoilering specifics for anyone still playing:
I've been trying to do Blind Plays as much as I can reasonably do, so I actually knew next to nothing about the story, except that folks constantly raved at how good it was. When I got to my first Cauldron, I was kinda floored. There was nothing human about the place. Utterly alien. I was convinced something from outside our own human world had something to do with what was going on. .....Buuuuuut, nope. I was SO disappointed when I found out that we had just let our toaster ovens get away from us (again.)
HOWEVER. That disappointment quickly turned into something close to awe when I learned more backstory. "Wait a minute, you mean humanity went *completely* extinct?!? Holy shit, ya'll had the balls to go there?!
The reasoning for Hades was fucking great. An apocalyptic fail safe LOL. Love it.
...and Sylens. Shit, he is great. Chaotic Neutral? LOL He was helping the protagonist during the events of the game, but from the epilogue, clearly he is just as happy to unleash another apocalypse for no better reason than he might learn something from it. LOL
That was Daniels from The Wire, right? I haven't looked it up, but it sounded like him. Sylens was made of awesome.
Aloy/Elisabeth is clearly set up to be a super-genius (who saved the world....twice.) ...But I swear Sylens comes off as even smarter, and that is scary as fuck considering that he seems completely indifferent to triggering an apocalypse simply to further his own personal interests.
More than any other character, more than even Aloy, I am looking forward to what comes next from Sylens.
I don't think it is really a fair comparison, but as to the Geralt/Aloy Witcher/HZD comparisons:
I can *maybe* see the argument that Aloy is a more compelling character. Her own personal questions and journey feel more....immediate....than Geralts. However there are other HUGE differences.
One is that the only real character in the game that Aloy had a personal connection to dies in the Prologue. She was an exile from her own people, so after Rost died, her "people" became both everyone, and no one.
With Geralt, that is completely different, he has deep personal connections with a wide cast of characters going back decades.
In both games, there is a "Gather your allies for a huge f'n battle" sequence. In HZD, if any of those allies died, I'd have had a classic Sienfeld "Thaaaat's a shame." response. (...of course none did.) In The Battle for Kaer Morhen, there were a half-dozen different characters that would have left me devastated if they died. (...and one did.) Maybe it makes a difference that I first got into The Witcher 10 years ago, played all the games multiple times and read the books....I've known those characters for a decade myself heh. That said, I think an argument can be made that HZD is driven more by plot and TW3 is driven more by characters......Both are pretty fucking great.
Bottom Line: I absolutely love the story in HZD. Holy shit, I will definitely be playing through this game again just to pay attention to all the details a second time, knowing what I know now.
If they can keep the writing up to this level in future installments, it will end up being one of my all-time favorite video game IP's.
PS:
I wonder if they will ever address what was going on behind that one batshit insane guy that has you running around for machine "blood" and drinking it to experience visions. Specifically, that it actually seemed to fucking work. Dude should have died drinking that shit, yet he was having accurate visions instead? Let's not sweep that under the rug because he was batshit nuts. I hope they write in legitimate meaning to how it was possible at some point.
Also, that "mysterious signal" that initially prodded Hades to wake and begin the 'reset' process....It wasn't from inside GAIA...it wasn't HADES itself, it wasn't Sylens......doubt it was another human character. Maybe we'll get an alien influence after all at some point? I actually kinda hope so.
It would be nice to get a restored version of APOLLO if by HZD3 we are finally fighting the Aliens who wanted to use Hades to wipe the Earth's slate clean for it's next Terraforming phase lol.
Doesn't matter. Eagerly awaiting HZD2 regardless. Story was too fucking good.
I wonder if they will ever address what was going on behind that one batshit insane guy that has you running around for machine "blood" and drinking it to experience visions. Specifically, that it actually seemed to fucking work. Dude should have died drinking that shit, yet he was having accurate visions instead? Let's not sweep that under the rug because he was batshit nuts. I hope they write in legitimate meaning to how it was possible at some point.
Also, that "mysterious signal" that initially prodded Hades to wake and begin the 'reset' process....It wasn't from inside GAIA...it wasn't HADES itself, it wasn't Sylens......doubt it was another human character. Maybe we'll get an alien influence after all at some point? I actually kinda hope so.
It would be nice to get a restored version of APOLLO if by HZD3 we are finally fighting the Aliens who wanted to use Hades to wipe the Earth's slate clean for it's next Terraforming phase lol.
Doesn't matter. Eagerly awaiting HZD2 regardless. Story was too fucking good.
Well there's a few ways they could go with it. Ted or something Ted left behind did but this is unlikely. Although I really loved to hate Ted so maybe they can work him in somehow. He was a good villain in the sense of being an awe inspiring level of piece of shit.
The other idea is that HADES may have been triggered by the Beta Apollo on the spaceship. The idea that it, "exploding" was just a cover to keep the group working on GAIA motivated to continue working as it was humanity's last hope.
Well there's a few ways they could go with it. Ted or something Ted left behind did but this is unlikely. Although I really loved to hate Ted so maybe they can work him in somehow. He was a good villain in the sense of being an awe inspiring level of piece of shit.
The other idea is that HADES may have been triggered by the Beta Apollo on the spaceship. The idea that it, "exploding" was just a cover to keep the group working on GAIA motivated to continue working as it was humanity's last hope.
Yea, and to be honest, either of those things or some other source would all be more likely than "aliens" heh. Just wishful thinking on my part. 'Aliens' can very easily become a cliche'd mess, but with quality writing it can be an amazing avenue to widen the scope of the story/universe.
Dunno, I'm talking out of my ass
EDIT:
Also, yea, Ted. Jesus, that fuckin' guy.
There are not enough facepalms in the world for that guy.
Damn it, my copy shipped from Amazon already. I would have rather gotten it digitally, but I didn't think the PSN version would go on sale too. I figured everyone else was matching Target's sale.
Picked this up from Target today, they had to price match Amazon even though they had the "9 days of play" ads all around the game. What's the cliff notes on things to do first or tips you wish you'd have known?
Harvest Arrows are your best friend. After killing any creature with canisters on it you should shoot those canisters off with Harvest Arrows. Make sure it's before you loot it! Lot's of people don't know about this and end up short on resources and struggling. You won't ever have that problem using these suckers.
Other than that everything else is pretty much self explanatory. Have fun, the game is one of those that defines a console generation. It's still my easy pick for GOTY.
Picked this up from Target today, they had to price match Amazon even though they had the "9 days of play" ads all around the game. What's the cliff notes on things to do first or tips you wish you'd have known?
Enjoy the story and play up until the point of no return and decide if you want to do all the side quests, explore stuff. Don't get lost in that or resentful that it is kinda boilerplate. Because the main game is incredible.
My only fear is that Guerilla Games and Sony did not seem to fully appreciate what a monster hit they had on their hands. Subsequently I don't think they have even started working on a sequel as they are hip deep in their next project.
This game was a surprise. Usually a female lead character is shoe horned into games like this, however Aloy has to be one of my favorite heroes to date.
She fucking pulls a khal drogo and stares into his eyes as the guy bleeds out.
Great gameplay, incredible world, and the ending story, this literally just needs an inventory system and more expanded gear and this would shit on a lot currently out.
