Review of Horizon Zero Dawn

"First off, the artistic production value in this game is very high. The graphics are beautiful, the voice acting is for the most part really well done and the story is pretty decent. Unfortunately, you'll only get the whole story if you go around collecting the *hundreds* of optional artifacts and then read, listen or view each of them. This is not how games should tell a story. On the plus side, the game is extremely huge. If you're a completionist, you'll easily get 100 hours out of the base game not counting the expansions. Now for the bad. There isn't a whole lot of variety in what you need to do to complete the game. Even though I played the game in late 2020, there are still significant bugs in the game. Sometimes the bugs get in your way, sometimes they actually help you. My biggest complaint is that the variety of weapons are a joke. They are all pretty much the same, and the most powerful one is the very first one you get! The next thing that bugs me is that you cannot use the environment when battling the machines. These are the things that kept me from really loving the game and giving it five stars. Still, it was enjoyable enough and helped me kill 100 hours during the pandemic. Outside the pandemic I'm not sure I would have played this game."