Ninja Snarl PMy helmet is my burden.Ninja Snarl: Gone, but not forgotten.Registered Userregular
edited May 2
For the Zeniths
they literally and directly refer to Aloy and her team as worms. Up until the moment they started getting slaughtered by robots, the Zenith folks felt nothing but contempt and arrogance about the whole situation. They really aren't worried about time.
And "ticking clock" can mean a lot of things, especially with interstellar distances. Nemesis could be years away from arriving and the situation looked to me like the Zenith folks were going to build dozens or even hundreds of duplicate ships with their nanotech, then launch everything so as to make it impossible for Nemesis to know which ship was the real one and where it had gone. So they were probably planning on kicking back for a while to wait for everything to get built and then still leaving with a comfortable amount of time to spare.
It's only Aloy's attack that puts any urgency in their plans.
I bought a PS5 for Burning Shores and transferred my NG+ game over from my PS4. That campaign sure goes a lot faster when you can just fly everywhere from the start.
But the replay really really hammered home that yeah, the enemies in this games are like three fucking times too aggro. Even on this short playthrough, I lost track of the number of times I had enemies literally standing on fucking top of me piling on attacks or I'm jammed inside a bush such that I couldn't even see Aloy well enough to even fucking dodge. And the enemy windups are just too fucking short, even with something like 25% draw time on a hunter bow you still won't be able to hit overdraw half the time before a beam or swarm or rock or entire fucking robot is hitting you in the face.
Just... back the fuck off and let me shoot things already.
Yeah I fought the boss in front of POSIEDON last night. And despite being supposedly out of its element, it's both huge and fast. With crazy reach. I was trying to shoot things off the head and I just couldn't, even using concentration. It was simply whipping its head around too fast. I really wonder what the hell happened to their combat tuning.
I don't want to be that guy but: they could learn from Elden Ring. Make the time to kill faster for both Aloy and enemies. Make the enemies space out their attacks more, make the AoEs smaller, but make the damage higher. Having high health and instant healing means I can tank a lot of hits, and I have to, because dodging isn't as effective. If I truly dodged until I had a clean shot, fights would take forever. The amount of arrows I use in some fights it just silly, having to go full to empty and recraft, often more than once.
I wasn't a huge fan of them in HZD, but the combat also feels like it makes tripwires and traps even less useful. Most fights are against packs of 4 enemies, and 'quest' fights often bring them in waves. I can set up a few but best case I alpha strike one enemy down, so it feels like a lot of setup for little payoff. And I can do largely the same with a sharpshot bow and the stealth damage talents with minimal setup.
The boltblaster seems cool...until you dodge roll. And you need to dodge roll constantly, so having it impaired feels really bad. I'll deal with it for heavy weapons shot off enemies, but not for my stuff.
Blast slings I honestly haven't touched at all. Didn't use them last time, haven't wanted to this game.
I do like spikes though! Short range but high damage is a good combo for me.
The spinners also seem neat, but again the need to constantly dodge means I have a lot of trouble doing the throw-catch-throw pattern you're meant to do with them.
OrcaAlso known as EspressosaurusWrexRegistered Userregular
edited May 2
I agree with everything except the Blast Slings. I find the Blast Slings are a great "OH SHIT" weapon since they have a nice AOE and you can lob them in the general direction to blow things up.
The limit, of course, is you can only carry a small amount of Blast Paste. I think you get 5 reloads, or enough to refill your ready ammunition 1 1/2 times. Which can be a limiter when you don't refill your supplies between fights.
The Volatile Sludge limit is in some ways easier, in some ways worse since it's shared between multiple ammunition types, it's not common to find in quantities larger than 1 or 2.
I'm also finding myself accidentally selecting the wrong ammo type fairly frequently, which is a sign they've got too many ammunition types on the weapon wheel. I didn't have this problem in HZD. Their overloading of buttons for the melee system just leaves me confused so I largely ignore it.
I would love it if they pared some of these systems back. In isolation it maybe makes sense, but it's just too much in aggregate.
The story is still fun (albeit not as compelling as HZD's), and I love watching Aloy's journey. The facial and other animations are next level, and the setting is gorgeous. The directing is great--I notice how well-crafted those shots are as a photographer, and most of the time I can only say "wow". And of course the voice acting is great.
The grind for the weapons is still silly. Oh well.
The systems just need some tuning.
Done with the main question, DLC comes next!
Orca on
+2
ButtersA glass of some milksRegistered Userregular
I haven't played in a while and have come back to this thread out of curiosity for the DLC, but in there were some pretty ridiculous weaves for blast slings including one that increased blast damage to units that are on fire.
I'm also finding myself accidentally selecting the wrong ammo type fairly frequently, which is a sign they've got too many ammunition types on the weapon wheel. I didn't have this problem in HZD. Their overloading of buttons for the melee system just leaves me confused so I largely ignore it.
Oh god this.
I am CONSTANTLY trying to fire precision arrows and then wondering why they're not doing any damage and then discovering I accidentally selected ice arrows. It's just so damned finicky. I realized what often happens is that I select the right ammo, but my thumb twitches when I release the stick and it moves over a tick as it's exiting.
I submitted an entry to Lego Ideas, and if 10,000 people support me, it'll be turned into an actual Lego set!If you'd like to see and support my submission, follow this link.
I'm also finding myself accidentally selecting the wrong ammo type fairly frequently, which is a sign they've got too many ammunition types on the weapon wheel. I didn't have this problem in HZD. Their overloading of buttons for the melee system just leaves me confused so I largely ignore it.
Oh god this.
I am CONSTANTLY trying to fire precision arrows and then wondering why they're not doing any damage and then discovering I accidentally selected ice arrows. It's just so damned finicky. I realized what often happens is that I select the right ammo, but my thumb twitches when I release the stick and it moves over a tick as it's exiting.
It’s also fun when you’ve been using one bow for ages and then you swap it to the epic version but for whatever reason they swapped the position of the ammo around, so you dump multiples of the wrong ammo type into the enemy.
Switch Friend Code: 6359-7575-9391
+2
OrcaAlso known as EspressosaurusWrexRegistered Userregular
I'm also finding myself accidentally selecting the wrong ammo type fairly frequently, which is a sign they've got too many ammunition types on the weapon wheel. I didn't have this problem in HZD. Their overloading of buttons for the melee system just leaves me confused so I largely ignore it.
Oh god this.
I am CONSTANTLY trying to fire precision arrows and then wondering why they're not doing any damage and then discovering I accidentally selected ice arrows. It's just so damned finicky. I realized what often happens is that I select the right ammo, but my thumb twitches when I release the stick and it moves over a tick as it's exiting.
This but with the goddamn useless targeting arrows
why would you put them on an epic bow you complete wankers
I am playing the dlc now and it took me awhile to get back into the swing of the controls. I have the difficulty set to story but I am still optimizing my bows so the enemies die so fast. The character models and body language and facial expressions are so fucking good, I had forgotten. Almost done with the main missions and I really like the new characters.
Well I just finished the main story. That was very good. I am very glad to see Aloy end up where she did. I hope they don't use the fact it is a dlc as a copout to not include any of this in the next game, that would be weak as fuck. Now to finish up all the trophies
Gamertag: KL Retribution
PSN:Furlion
+2
AegeriTiny wee bacteriumsPlateau of LengRegistered Userregular
Well I just finished the main story. That was very good. I am very glad to see Aloy end up where she did. I hope they don't use the fact it is a dlc as a copout to not include any of this in the next game, that would be weak as fuck. Now to finish up all the trophies
I really really really really hope its canon and the way they move forward with her in the last(?) game.
The latest patch seemed to fix the progression issues I had been having so I was able to get back to playing last night.
I do wish I could have played it before now, though, because in the interim I played the XC3 DLC and Metroid Prime Remastered, both of which are just excellent from top to bottom, and if I'm being totally honest, I'm struggling to really get into Horizon afterward.
It just feels...janky? In a way I don't really remember the games feeling before. The camera is too pulled in, the spaces feel too cluttered and cramped in this DLC. There's too many ruins. It's just rows and rows of crumbled buildings and foliage all over them, with too many nooks and crannies to get stuck in or to mistake for something that might be worth exploring. It just doesn't feel as well designed as the areas in the main game. This is just a preference thing, but I think having there be an assumption you'll have a flying mount out of the gate really hurts exploration, and that combined with the sheer amount of ruined buildings, makes it unclear where you should even be looking for things that you should be exploring on foot, or on mount; and the layout of the actual terrain makes doing it on foot feel tedious, but doing it from the air means it's likely you'll miss lots of things.
I dunno. Again, had the DLC worked for me out of the gate, I might not have even been super aware of these things, but as I kind of expected, having to put it down till it was patched meant that I played some far better and well designed games. I've said before, I'm glad I didn't play Zero Dawn near when I played Breath of the Wild, as the space between them let me enjoy Zero Dawn in a way I know I wouldn't have if I played it at launch alongside BoTW. Knowing Tears is coming doesn't help, but hopefully I'll have finished with this before then.
Oh, also, and this is a consequence of a complaint I've had about Forbidden West since the beginning, the amount of bots I've killed in the past for upgrades is really negatively impacting my feeling on combat here, as most everything is the same enemies, and I've killed them a million times and it just doesn't feel exciting anymore. Actually more tedious than anything. Fortunately the DLC gear upgrades are relatively easy compared to the base game, but still just is an issues that compounds with the other issues I have, to lead me to not really enjoying much of what I'm playing here.
With the inevitable Horizon 3, down the road, I really hope they spend whatever necessary time to design something that keeps in mind the strengths of the series, but also is aware of the fatigue that some of their prior choices created, and incorporate that into making systems that aren't so needlessly grindy or repetitive.
Random question, hopefully answers don't really require spoilers; but some of the bot sites in Burning Shores don't seem to actually have said bot (I'm thinking of the Dreadwing site specifically right now). Is there some trigger to get them to show up? Is it a story progression thing, as I've not really progressed very far and have just been exploring. I just need some things for upgrades and was trying to farm them in the zone and not go back out to the main world, and am wondering if that's just not gonna work.
Random question, hopefully answers don't really require spoilers; but some of the bot sites in Burning Shores don't seem to actually have said bot (I'm thinking of the Dreadwing site specifically right now). Is there some trigger to get them to show up? Is it a story progression thing, as I've not really progressed very far and have just been exploring. I just need some things for upgrades and was trying to farm them in the zone and not go back out to the main world, and am wondering if that's just not gonna work.
It might be linked to story progression but if so that would be new to the dlc. That particular sight was definitely populated when I went by it but I can't remember how far into the story I was. I don't remember any bots missing while I was flying around but then again I also didn't really interact with them because of the, you know, flying.
Ninja Snarl PMy helmet is my burden.Ninja Snarl: Gone, but not forgotten.Registered Userregular
Holy fuck, the Waterwing and Bilegut enemies just 110% epitomize what Forbidden West screwed up with the game design. I have way late game gear. As in I'm out of levels to get, even the DLC levels, and I've got a full set of orange weapons, all of them are fully upgraded, and all of them are from NG+ or the Burning Isles DLC. I need some Waterwing parts so I pop over to an island where I know they're at. 1 regular Waterwing and 3 Apex versions.
What a fucking awful enemy in Apex mode. They have an absolutely insane amount of HP for their size. Seriously, one Apex Waterwing seems to have most of the HP of a regular Thunderjaw, it's fucking absurd. And they aren't damage resistant because they can't even carry a lot of armor, so it's just masses and masses of HP. On top of that, they're hyper-aggressive, will constantly try to stand on top of you, can fly, move very quickly on the ground, have a dive attack, have multiple projectile attacks, and have tracking multi-hit melee attacks that cover a huge area. They take a simply absurd amount of work to take down and they will all attack together with max aggression such that you can literally struggle to stay on your feet because you stand up from a melee attack to only get clobbered by a projectile from off-screen. The one single good thing about fighting the Waterwings is that they're hugely vulnerable to being tied down, but even then it only holds them out of the way for a bit because crit attacks, even with shooting a resonance point afterwards, do miniscule amounts of damage.
Bileguts are possibly even worse and I haven't encountered their Apex version yet. They fight in arenas that spawn enemies from eggs; these enemies fly after you and do dive melee attacks at close range. The Bilegut also summons/fires out even more of these things, so one Bilegut fight is more like a Bilegut and 12-15 annoying small enemies. Then the Bilegut itself is, big surprise, stacked with too much HP, has multiple Acid projectile attacks, has near-perfect aim, and has multiple huge mobility melee attacks (including a high leap that sprays Acid everywhere on landing on top of big melee damage).
I played on story. The combat was just too imbalanced for what I was looking for. They got too much twitch fps for the enemies and not enough tools for you to deal with that.
I think to some degree the devs fell into the content creator trap.
They see a bunch of YouTubers break combat and think they have to balance towards that, when that's not how most players play.
There's definitely a sense of "oh, you want to burn down apex's in seconds? What of you are fighting 6 at once?"
And the annoying thing is that those same YouTubers seem to have it already under control, while the rest of us are left to trudge through truly obnoxious combat encounters.
The rest of us have to trudge through it. I don't want to break combat, I want to enjoy it.
They went too hard on the elemental crap which I don't recall ever being useful.
In ZD, combat was hard but you could become a master. THere was nothing more satisfying than using your slide while slowing down time to one shot one of the raptors, and while facing a T-rex robot was a challenge, you at least had a CHANCE to take the armor off it's heart and shoot the weak point. In FW I don't think I pulled that off ever, they're constantly moving so even if I got the armor off hitting the heart was difficult. It was ultimately more efficient to just hit them with every exploding javelin thing I had and watch them go down.
I think to some degree the devs fell into the content creator trap.
They see a bunch of YouTubers break combat and think they have to balance towards that, when that's not how most players play.
There's definitely a sense of "oh, you want to burn down apex's in seconds? What of you are fighting 6 at once?"
And the annoying thing is that those same YouTubers seem to have it already under control, while the rest of us are left to trudge through truly obnoxious combat encounters.
The rest of us have to trudge through it. I don't want to break combat, I want to enjoy it.
Totally. I feel the only reason tripcasters got nerfed is because of youtube videos showing people stacking 10-15 traps on top of each other so they could "one-shot" a thunderjaw. So what? It takes a lot of time to set up that many traps and it cost a crapton of resources too so it's not like it's without its cons.
I'm pretty much done with Burning shores. got the 100 percent, used the new duplication glitch (which is way harder now) to get a ton of elite coils and everything is upgraded. Only thing I'm missing is that glitched datapoint in the Heaven Cent quest. I also still need to do an UltraHard run but I'm pretty burnt out on this game so going to take a good long break and maybe do it later this year.
I liked the story overall, but it just doesn't come close to Frozen Wilds and the story of Aratak/Ourea/CYAN. DLC is also too short IMO and the tons of glitches and gameblockers makes the whole thing seem rushed out.
I played on story. The combat was just too imbalanced for what I was looking for. They got too much twitch fps for the enemies and not enough tools for you to deal with that.
Yeah, I've got enemies set to either Hard or Very Hard and it's just not fucking worth it at all. Everything just ends up a brick of HP and damage resistance.
Anyway, one thing I definitely want for the next game is for weapons to have ammo slots you can choose rather than this annoying bullshit with great weapons wasting slots on garbage ammo or ammo that is useless for your playstyle. My current Hunter bow has advanced arrows, Purge arrows, and then the third slot is utterly wasted on fucking targeting ammo. I've got a great puck-thrower with acid, electricity, and then pointless armor-stripping ammo. My spears are explosive (good because they're relatively resource-cheap), advanced explosive (good because they give me a juiced-up explosive option when I need it), and worthless fire spears that take like... 8 spears to set a medium enemy on fire. Being able to pick a "damage" ammo type, an "elemental" ammo type, and "special" ammo type would help out so much with wasting space on ammo types you will never use.
Heck, give us whole upgrade trees for weapons. Don't stick me with a high-stat Hunter bow that wastes bonuses on armor-breaking or long-range damage, let me pick the correct bonuses.
EDIT: Yeah, moving to Normal enemy difficulty is the way to go, the difficulty balance above that doesn't just jump off a cliff, it zooms down like Wile E. Coyote on skates and wearing a rocket. At Normal, having a stack of top-level gear makes you a proper powerhouse; line up a good opening shot on most medium critters and above and it's going to hurt. At Hard and above, high-level gear makes you marginally adequate and you're also forced to use elemental attacks in basically every single Apex fight outside the beginning critters. Fights become utterly dull slogs at high level, particularly since the very aggressive enemy movement combined with arrow travel times and weak points being really small in Forbidden West makes hitting weak points very unreliable even with Concentration running. And don't even get me started on shit like potions and food, I absolutely fucking hate micromanaging shit like over business like regenerating health and shields or having ability-based buffs.
Ninja Snarl P on
+4
AthenorBattle Hardened OptimistThe Skies of HiigaraRegistered Userregular
edited May 8
I am avoiding this thread to avoid spoilers, but I just had to pause in the Post-Gemini interlude, and I needed to comment.
I really am loving the story, and it is a natural extension of this word... But... Really? Varl? That was your "meaningful sacrifice" play to show things were serious and shit was going bad?
It was obvious in Zero Dawn and the beginning of Forbidden West that he was attracted to A lot. So him suddenly being attracted to Zo was odd, but I figured it was just another step in Aloys growth. I also noticed the Base dialogue rarely had the two interacting.
Then I prepped for Gemini. I didn't pick up on it at the time, but Varl kept talking about his future with Zo, and how they were going to spread teachings, all that. It was obvious the distractions wouldn't work, and it was just a question of if Sylens would betray them or not.
So then... Well, of course the trope of a sacrifice happened. Tokallo told others to run, but not Varl? He had actually witnessed their ability first hand! But no
.. he just gets offed.
It feels lazy to me. Just... Pointless stakes raising. Sigh. We'll see how the plot goes, but... He was her oldest friend through all this. He already lost his sis and almost his mom. And he didn't even get to go out like a badass... Instead to Elon musk wannabes who are playing with cheat codes.
... Ah well. At least what happened to Ceo felt good. Even if we have yet to see Faros body...
Edit: I'm through the Wings of the Ten now.
While I'm still upset, at least they treated it respectfully. The themes keep coming back to death and life and all that, especially with Tilda... who I swear is going to try and make me a trophy in her collection. And I am sure that saving Regalia is going to end up being a mistake, but I kinda had to after saving that Oseram from the first game.
Flying is every bit as fun as I was hoping it would be. Shame I can't really do combat beyond EMP bomb stuff, and it's a bit wonky how there aren't perches near the base. But that's okay.
Ninja Snarl PMy helmet is my burden.Ninja Snarl: Gone, but not forgotten.Registered Userregular
edited May 8
So a couple things. For the Wings of the Ten, just look at the chief. And look at the plane hanging over his throne. And come to realize and accept, in your innermost person, that the chief has dressed up his head to look like a fighter jet. Why? Because Horizon games must have the best hats.
Anyway, in regards to Varl
they were telegraphing that death clear from whatever world the Zenith originally ran to, it was hard to get much out of that event when you see it coming from so far off.
My big issue is not that it happened, but they really should've done more with it. Varl knows he can't hurt the guy, so have him talk the guy into turning off his shield and having a real fight. Of course the guy still cheats, but Varl knows he's going to cheat and is just buying time for Aloy to recover or for, frankly, anything to happen. It would've been hugely better to give Varl some kind of actual agency and actual impact on the story because, as it stands, he literally dies for zero reason other than what's-her-name doesn't make a move yet. If she'd acted thirty seconds earlier, she could just as easily have saved Varl and Aloy. Hell, probably could've taken Beta too. Then the Zeniths would still have GAIA, but they would be missing both people who could actually do anything with GAIA.
Oh god, I'm glad it's not just me having trouble with the enemies in the DLC.
I was doing a side quest and ran into a flock of waterwings and was like "oh cute, robo-pelicans!" and lined up a braced shot from stealth, which is my trademark opening move, and it didn't even dent its HP total, and I knew then I was boned.
With the main game, the beefier enemies looked and felt like they should be beefy. A Watcher is small and weak, a ravager is bigger and scarier, a slaughterspine is huge and fucks your shit up. It makes sense.
It does not make sense that my level 45 ass is getting handed to me by pelicans.
I dropped it down to Easy and that brings it more inline with how I think it should feel, but it just feels off. The new scenery is gorgeous, though, and I like the characters thus far.
I submitted an entry to Lego Ideas, and if 10,000 people support me, it'll be turned into an actual Lego set!If you'd like to see and support my submission, follow this link.
apparently the HP for Waterwings is super high for some reason. saw a few people on reddit complaining about it. Dunno if it's another case of devs overcompensating in their combat balancing again or what.
Anyway, one thing I definitely want for the next game is for weapons to have ammo slots you can choose rather than this annoying bullshit with great weapons wasting slots on garbage ammo or ammo that is useless for your playstyle. My current Hunter bow has advanced arrows, Purge arrows, and then the third slot is utterly wasted on fucking targeting ammo. I've got a great puck-thrower with acid, electricity, and then pointless armor-stripping ammo. My spears are explosive (good because they're relatively resource-cheap), advanced explosive (good because they give me a juiced-up explosive option when I need it), and worthless fire spears that take like... 8 spears to set a medium enemy on fire. Being able to pick a "damage" ammo type, an "elemental" ammo type, and "special" ammo type would help out so much with wasting space on ammo types you will never use.
I never felt there was anything wrong with how Zero Dawn did it. green/blue/purple tier of weapons/armor, where the next tier just offered more ammo types and you had all (or almost all) types at the max tier. Way too many weapons and armor in FW that just never got used and too many weapon types that were more or less useless or got heavily nerfed in FW.
If there was anything wrong with how HZD did it, its that it was ridiculously easy to just skip the blue tier entirely because once you get to Meridian, you can go from green to purple directly.
Oh god, I'm glad it's not just me having trouble with the enemies in the DLC.
I was doing a side quest and ran into a flock of waterwings and was like "oh cute, robo-pelicans!" and lined up a braced shot from stealth, which is my trademark opening move, and it didn't even dent its HP total, and I knew then I was boned.
With the main game, the beefier enemies looked and felt like they should be beefy. A Watcher is small and weak, a ravager is bigger and scarier, a slaughterspine is huge and fucks your shit up. It makes sense.
It does not make sense that my level 45 ass is getting handed to me by pelicans.
I dropped it down to Easy and that brings it more inline with how I think it should feel, but it just feels off. The new scenery is gorgeous, though, and I like the characters thus far.
Ran into that last night when I was exploring the map some more, 3 apex and 1 regular took forever to bring down, didn't expect them to be as tanky as they were. Took longer than taking out a Tideripper...
Like someone tipped over a mechanical bull and duct taped a bunch of oars to it.
Just back off, you wet floppy bastard, and let me get a fucking shot in.
I submitted an entry to Lego Ideas, and if 10,000 people support me, it'll be turned into an actual Lego set!If you'd like to see and support my submission, follow this link.
+6
AegeriTiny wee bacteriumsPlateau of LengRegistered Userregular
The waterwings are probably the most terrifying enemy in the game.
They are, I kid you not, probably the only machine in the game that you cannot beat just with drill spikes trivially. They are fast, come in packs and can use their sonic scream to stun lock you instantly to death with no chance of escape. I would gladly fight Thunderjaws and Slaughterspines over those things.
This waterwing talk is making me really glad that I just snuck in, overrode one, and then a cut scene triggered as I heard the rest start screaming at me.
Switch Friend Code: SW-3944-9431-0318
PSN / Xbox / NNID: Fodder185
This waterwing talk is making me really glad that I just snuck in, overrode one, and then a cut scene triggered as I heard the rest start screaming at me.
That's what I did for that part, had to go back later for upgrade mats
Ninja Snarl PMy helmet is my burden.Ninja Snarl: Gone, but not forgotten.Registered Userregular
I definitely feel like they way overtuned the Waterwings specifically because people had already figured out how to blow up the big critters in short order and Guerilla feels some bizarre need to prevent people from stacking the deck to make fights short.
+2
AegeriTiny wee bacteriumsPlateau of LengRegistered Userregular
The interesting thing to me is that despite that, they have never nerfed Drill and Explosive Spikes. They're still utterly broken.
Which is so bizarre that they overcompensate on some of this stuff, yet the final bosses of both main games (not DLC) are quite easy and it's not like they retuned that. It's not like we're going off to some secret part of the map to engage in optional hard core combat content for a shiny or another trophy or something. Granted the only reason you really need to engage in repeated combat with water wings is if you want to upgrade all of your gear but that's all within the normal gameplay loop Of course you could argue that it is all optional since there is plenty of other legendary gear that you can get that doesn't require waterwing parts.
I only fought a few of them to make sure I had at least one of every part so that the duplication glitch took care of the rest and got me everything I needed and I genuinely wonder what was harder, if learning the intricate jumps and techniques to get past the invisible walls of the arena ....or farming a bunch of waterwings and bileguts over and over and over if I had went the non-glitch route.
I dropped the difficulty to easy and now the combat isn't grueling, but it's still tedious. Any battle with a bilegut is just an obnoxious slog of staring at a screen full of frog butt and acid splashes while roboflies buzz around you and bathe the screen in red. It's not hard, but it's also not fun.
The story is great, though. I love the dynamic between Aloy and Reyka.
I got a little misty eyed when Reyka ran off after learning about Nemesis and Aloy was like, "Oh no, i have to fix this!"
Aloy made a friend! For realsies!
I submitted an entry to Lego Ideas, and if 10,000 people support me, it'll be turned into an actual Lego set!If you'd like to see and support my submission, follow this link.
I'm up to I think the last main quest in the DLC so of course it's time to wrap up the side quests. I know it's been said before plenty of times, but the mocap and voice acting for these characters that you only come across once or twice are pretty much better than main characters in almost any other games.
Also after playing Call of the Mountain I keep stopping in random places in the Burning Shores and looking around for hidden warning beacons to shoot (which are the main collectible thing in the VR game).
McFodder on
Switch Friend Code: SW-3944-9431-0318
PSN / Xbox / NNID: Fodder185
+4
AthenorBattle Hardened OptimistThe Skies of HiigaraRegistered Userregular
Just beat the main game!
I'm gonna be digesting/chewing on that for a bit, I think. I really enjoyed the story and where it went, though the final mission got.. extremely repetitive. I think it's just because of the machine variety.
I watched the whole credits, for some dumb-ass reason. I should've stopped after the voice credits. I think I was curious to see if they were going to patch a shout-out to Lance Reddick, but maybe that's in the DLC. I'm sure it will also have a 40 minute long credits sequence.
On the ending:
Nemesis makes perfect sense. It was hinted at by Ted Faro's fate, and a lot of stuff about the Zeniths didn't add up. I'm kind of sad they dropped the whole "2nd kernel for GAIA" angle, because honestly I could see Sylens fucking off with APOLLO and helping Aloy remotely. I didn't exactly catch which subroutines were missing when GAIA was reactivated - one is Hades, of course, but I'm not sure if it was APOLLO or a different one missing. She definitely hadd HEPHESTUS, so either that was a mistake or he'll be under control by the 3rd game.
I do have to chuckle, though. The plotline of this game is like 100% a mirror of Twilight Imperium, the board game. In that, the ancient emperors (called the Lazax) basically rotted away, until they were annihilated by humans. However, a super-smart scientist and his cult realized they were going to die, so he fucked off to a remote planet. Obsessed with prolonging their life, they started doing more and more cybernetics until they were more machine than organic. Eventually, they returned as the "L1Z1X" to "Take their rightful place." Except... in the intervening time, a bug in a piece of software warped into a malicious code, creating what is called the Nekro Virus - a pretty much unstoppable nanite plague that has followed the L1Z1X back to the galaxy.
Yeah I'd recommend anyone who finds the combat tedious, or even if you don't and just find the grinding tedious; drop that difficulty down to Story and turn on the option to have loot stay regardless of destroyed components.
It absolutely isn't worth the frustration of farming it "correctly" (hell, dupe it, who cares?) because of poor design decisions (that I feel confident in calling such, given that they dramatically reduced requirements for DLC upgrades), just to be held to some arbitrary difficulty level.
It's the same thing I recommend to anyone playing the Xenoblade games, if they go in on the maxing out or 100%'ing stuff. Drop the difficulty for the farming. If you want to prove to yourself that you can do the harder difficulty, go at it, set it up for the boss or whatever. But when you're killing the same UM for the 100th time chasing a drop, or here in Horizon killing a Slaughterspine for the billionth time for enough Apex Hearts? Who cares if it's Hard or Story, you want the thing, why torture yourself.
And the Ultra Hard difficulty is there for folks who want to put their skills to the test and not be tempted to turn it down. But honestly, I think anyone who does Ultra Hard without it being a NG+, is at best insane, and might want to reconsider how you treat yourself.
I've been watching speed running videos because I want that achievement, but I'll be damned if I'm going to intentionally play the whole game on UH. I'll do like I did with ZD; 100% everything, then "speed run" (being not a speed runner, I'm lucky if I can do it in twice the time of an actual runner, but it's still a fraction of the time it'd take me normally) the max difficulty achievement. Did it with Spider Man, etc too. The only hitch is that there's an achievement for getting everything in a NG+ also, and I don't want to earn all that at max difficulty, so at the very least I'm gonna have to do the game again in NG+, but I'll most likely be doing it in Story mode, and I've already got everything I need for the upgrades, I just need to actually earn all the stuff. Whether or not I actually "complete" it in a NG+ is questionable. Though, it could very well be I could do so and make it to Burning Shores faster than they'll put out a patch fixing the Aerial missions, so that might be how I get that achievement.
Posts
And "ticking clock" can mean a lot of things, especially with interstellar distances. Nemesis could be years away from arriving and the situation looked to me like the Zenith folks were going to build dozens or even hundreds of duplicate ships with their nanotech, then launch everything so as to make it impossible for Nemesis to know which ship was the real one and where it had gone. So they were probably planning on kicking back for a while to wait for everything to get built and then still leaving with a comfortable amount of time to spare.
It's only Aloy's attack that puts any urgency in their plans.
Yeah I fought the boss in front of POSIEDON last night. And despite being supposedly out of its element, it's both huge and fast. With crazy reach. I was trying to shoot things off the head and I just couldn't, even using concentration. It was simply whipping its head around too fast. I really wonder what the hell happened to their combat tuning.
I don't want to be that guy but: they could learn from Elden Ring. Make the time to kill faster for both Aloy and enemies. Make the enemies space out their attacks more, make the AoEs smaller, but make the damage higher. Having high health and instant healing means I can tank a lot of hits, and I have to, because dodging isn't as effective. If I truly dodged until I had a clean shot, fights would take forever. The amount of arrows I use in some fights it just silly, having to go full to empty and recraft, often more than once.
The boltblaster seems cool...until you dodge roll. And you need to dodge roll constantly, so having it impaired feels really bad. I'll deal with it for heavy weapons shot off enemies, but not for my stuff.
Blast slings I honestly haven't touched at all. Didn't use them last time, haven't wanted to this game.
I do like spikes though! Short range but high damage is a good combo for me.
The spinners also seem neat, but again the need to constantly dodge means I have a lot of trouble doing the throw-catch-throw pattern you're meant to do with them.
The limit, of course, is you can only carry a small amount of Blast Paste. I think you get 5 reloads, or enough to refill your ready ammunition 1 1/2 times. Which can be a limiter when you don't refill your supplies between fights.
The Volatile Sludge limit is in some ways easier, in some ways worse since it's shared between multiple ammunition types, it's not common to find in quantities larger than 1 or 2.
I'm also finding myself accidentally selecting the wrong ammo type fairly frequently, which is a sign they've got too many ammunition types on the weapon wheel. I didn't have this problem in HZD. Their overloading of buttons for the melee system just leaves me confused so I largely ignore it.
I would love it if they pared some of these systems back. In isolation it maybe makes sense, but it's just too much in aggregate.
The story is still fun (albeit not as compelling as HZD's), and I love watching Aloy's journey. The facial and other animations are next level, and the setting is gorgeous. The directing is great--I notice how well-crafted those shots are as a photographer, and most of the time I can only say "wow". And of course the voice acting is great.
The grind for the weapons is still silly. Oh well.
The systems just need some tuning.
Done with the main question, DLC comes next!
Oh god this.
I am CONSTANTLY trying to fire precision arrows and then wondering why they're not doing any damage and then discovering I accidentally selected ice arrows. It's just so damned finicky. I realized what often happens is that I select the right ammo, but my thumb twitches when I release the stick and it moves over a tick as it's exiting.
It’s also fun when you’ve been using one bow for ages and then you swap it to the epic version but for whatever reason they swapped the position of the ammo around, so you dump multiples of the wrong ammo type into the enemy.
This but with the goddamn useless targeting arrows
why would you put them on an epic bow you complete wankers
PSN:Furlion
PSN:Furlion
I really really really really hope its canon and the way they move forward with her in the last(?) game.
I do wish I could have played it before now, though, because in the interim I played the XC3 DLC and Metroid Prime Remastered, both of which are just excellent from top to bottom, and if I'm being totally honest, I'm struggling to really get into Horizon afterward.
It just feels...janky? In a way I don't really remember the games feeling before. The camera is too pulled in, the spaces feel too cluttered and cramped in this DLC. There's too many ruins. It's just rows and rows of crumbled buildings and foliage all over them, with too many nooks and crannies to get stuck in or to mistake for something that might be worth exploring. It just doesn't feel as well designed as the areas in the main game. This is just a preference thing, but I think having there be an assumption you'll have a flying mount out of the gate really hurts exploration, and that combined with the sheer amount of ruined buildings, makes it unclear where you should even be looking for things that you should be exploring on foot, or on mount; and the layout of the actual terrain makes doing it on foot feel tedious, but doing it from the air means it's likely you'll miss lots of things.
I dunno. Again, had the DLC worked for me out of the gate, I might not have even been super aware of these things, but as I kind of expected, having to put it down till it was patched meant that I played some far better and well designed games. I've said before, I'm glad I didn't play Zero Dawn near when I played Breath of the Wild, as the space between them let me enjoy Zero Dawn in a way I know I wouldn't have if I played it at launch alongside BoTW. Knowing Tears is coming doesn't help, but hopefully I'll have finished with this before then.
Oh, also, and this is a consequence of a complaint I've had about Forbidden West since the beginning, the amount of bots I've killed in the past for upgrades is really negatively impacting my feeling on combat here, as most everything is the same enemies, and I've killed them a million times and it just doesn't feel exciting anymore. Actually more tedious than anything. Fortunately the DLC gear upgrades are relatively easy compared to the base game, but still just is an issues that compounds with the other issues I have, to lead me to not really enjoying much of what I'm playing here.
With the inevitable Horizon 3, down the road, I really hope they spend whatever necessary time to design something that keeps in mind the strengths of the series, but also is aware of the fatigue that some of their prior choices created, and incorporate that into making systems that aren't so needlessly grindy or repetitive.
Origin: Galedrid - Nintendo: Galedrid/3222-6858-1045
Blizzard: Galedrid#1367 - FFXIV: Galedrid Kingshand
Origin: Galedrid - Nintendo: Galedrid/3222-6858-1045
Blizzard: Galedrid#1367 - FFXIV: Galedrid Kingshand
It might be linked to story progression but if so that would be new to the dlc. That particular sight was definitely populated when I went by it but I can't remember how far into the story I was. I don't remember any bots missing while I was flying around but then again I also didn't really interact with them because of the, you know, flying.
PSN:Furlion
Though, it would be awesome if you could use that to your advantage to farm some dreadwing parts
I'll just have to continue a bit and stop getting so side tracked.
Origin: Galedrid - Nintendo: Galedrid/3222-6858-1045
Blizzard: Galedrid#1367 - FFXIV: Galedrid Kingshand
What a fucking awful enemy in Apex mode. They have an absolutely insane amount of HP for their size. Seriously, one Apex Waterwing seems to have most of the HP of a regular Thunderjaw, it's fucking absurd. And they aren't damage resistant because they can't even carry a lot of armor, so it's just masses and masses of HP. On top of that, they're hyper-aggressive, will constantly try to stand on top of you, can fly, move very quickly on the ground, have a dive attack, have multiple projectile attacks, and have tracking multi-hit melee attacks that cover a huge area. They take a simply absurd amount of work to take down and they will all attack together with max aggression such that you can literally struggle to stay on your feet because you stand up from a melee attack to only get clobbered by a projectile from off-screen. The one single good thing about fighting the Waterwings is that they're hugely vulnerable to being tied down, but even then it only holds them out of the way for a bit because crit attacks, even with shooting a resonance point afterwards, do miniscule amounts of damage.
Bileguts are possibly even worse and I haven't encountered their Apex version yet. They fight in arenas that spawn enemies from eggs; these enemies fly after you and do dive melee attacks at close range. The Bilegut also summons/fires out even more of these things, so one Bilegut fight is more like a Bilegut and 12-15 annoying small enemies. Then the Bilegut itself is, big surprise, stacked with too much HP, has multiple Acid projectile attacks, has near-perfect aim, and has multiple huge mobility melee attacks (including a high leap that sprays Acid everywhere on landing on top of big melee damage).
What a total pain in the ass.
PSN:Furlion
They see a bunch of YouTubers break combat and think they have to balance towards that, when that's not how most players play.
There's definitely a sense of "oh, you want to burn down apex's in seconds? What of you are fighting 6 at once?"
And the annoying thing is that those same YouTubers seem to have it already under control, while the rest of us are left to trudge through truly obnoxious combat encounters.
The rest of us have to trudge through it. I don't want to break combat, I want to enjoy it.
Origin: Galedrid - Nintendo: Galedrid/3222-6858-1045
Blizzard: Galedrid#1367 - FFXIV: Galedrid Kingshand
In ZD, combat was hard but you could become a master. THere was nothing more satisfying than using your slide while slowing down time to one shot one of the raptors, and while facing a T-rex robot was a challenge, you at least had a CHANCE to take the armor off it's heart and shoot the weak point. In FW I don't think I pulled that off ever, they're constantly moving so even if I got the armor off hitting the heart was difficult. It was ultimately more efficient to just hit them with every exploding javelin thing I had and watch them go down.
Totally. I feel the only reason tripcasters got nerfed is because of youtube videos showing people stacking 10-15 traps on top of each other so they could "one-shot" a thunderjaw. So what? It takes a lot of time to set up that many traps and it cost a crapton of resources too so it's not like it's without its cons.
I'm pretty much done with Burning shores. got the 100 percent, used the new duplication glitch (which is way harder now) to get a ton of elite coils and everything is upgraded. Only thing I'm missing is that glitched datapoint in the Heaven Cent quest. I also still need to do an UltraHard run but I'm pretty burnt out on this game so going to take a good long break and maybe do it later this year.
I liked the story overall, but it just doesn't come close to Frozen Wilds and the story of Aratak/Ourea/CYAN. DLC is also too short IMO and the tons of glitches and gameblockers makes the whole thing seem rushed out.
Enlist in Star Citizen! Citizenship must be earned!
Yeah, I've got enemies set to either Hard or Very Hard and it's just not fucking worth it at all. Everything just ends up a brick of HP and damage resistance.
Anyway, one thing I definitely want for the next game is for weapons to have ammo slots you can choose rather than this annoying bullshit with great weapons wasting slots on garbage ammo or ammo that is useless for your playstyle. My current Hunter bow has advanced arrows, Purge arrows, and then the third slot is utterly wasted on fucking targeting ammo. I've got a great puck-thrower with acid, electricity, and then pointless armor-stripping ammo. My spears are explosive (good because they're relatively resource-cheap), advanced explosive (good because they give me a juiced-up explosive option when I need it), and worthless fire spears that take like... 8 spears to set a medium enemy on fire. Being able to pick a "damage" ammo type, an "elemental" ammo type, and "special" ammo type would help out so much with wasting space on ammo types you will never use.
Heck, give us whole upgrade trees for weapons. Don't stick me with a high-stat Hunter bow that wastes bonuses on armor-breaking or long-range damage, let me pick the correct bonuses.
EDIT: Yeah, moving to Normal enemy difficulty is the way to go, the difficulty balance above that doesn't just jump off a cliff, it zooms down like Wile E. Coyote on skates and wearing a rocket. At Normal, having a stack of top-level gear makes you a proper powerhouse; line up a good opening shot on most medium critters and above and it's going to hurt. At Hard and above, high-level gear makes you marginally adequate and you're also forced to use elemental attacks in basically every single Apex fight outside the beginning critters. Fights become utterly dull slogs at high level, particularly since the very aggressive enemy movement combined with arrow travel times and weak points being really small in Forbidden West makes hitting weak points very unreliable even with Concentration running. And don't even get me started on shit like potions and food, I absolutely fucking hate micromanaging shit like over business like regenerating health and shields or having ability-based buffs.
It was obvious in Zero Dawn and the beginning of Forbidden West that he was attracted to A lot. So him suddenly being attracted to Zo was odd, but I figured it was just another step in Aloys growth. I also noticed the Base dialogue rarely had the two interacting.
Then I prepped for Gemini. I didn't pick up on it at the time, but Varl kept talking about his future with Zo, and how they were going to spread teachings, all that. It was obvious the distractions wouldn't work, and it was just a question of if Sylens would betray them or not.
So then... Well, of course the trope of a sacrifice happened. Tokallo told others to run, but not Varl? He had actually witnessed their ability first hand! But no
.. he just gets offed.
It feels lazy to me. Just... Pointless stakes raising. Sigh. We'll see how the plot goes, but... He was her oldest friend through all this. He already lost his sis and almost his mom. And he didn't even get to go out like a badass... Instead to Elon musk wannabes who are playing with cheat codes.
... Ah well. At least what happened to Ceo felt good. Even if we have yet to see Faros body...
Edit: I'm through the Wings of the Ten now.
Flying is every bit as fun as I was hoping it would be. Shame I can't really do combat beyond EMP bomb stuff, and it's a bit wonky how there aren't perches near the base. But that's okay.
Anyway, in regards to Varl
My big issue is not that it happened, but they really should've done more with it. Varl knows he can't hurt the guy, so have him talk the guy into turning off his shield and having a real fight. Of course the guy still cheats, but Varl knows he's going to cheat and is just buying time for Aloy to recover or for, frankly, anything to happen. It would've been hugely better to give Varl some kind of actual agency and actual impact on the story because, as it stands, he literally dies for zero reason other than what's-her-name doesn't make a move yet. If she'd acted thirty seconds earlier, she could just as easily have saved Varl and Aloy. Hell, probably could've taken Beta too. Then the Zeniths would still have GAIA, but they would be missing both people who could actually do anything with GAIA.
But Varl got completely chumped instead.
I was doing a side quest and ran into a flock of waterwings and was like "oh cute, robo-pelicans!" and lined up a braced shot from stealth, which is my trademark opening move, and it didn't even dent its HP total, and I knew then I was boned.
With the main game, the beefier enemies looked and felt like they should be beefy. A Watcher is small and weak, a ravager is bigger and scarier, a slaughterspine is huge and fucks your shit up. It makes sense.
It does not make sense that my level 45 ass is getting handed to me by pelicans.
I dropped it down to Easy and that brings it more inline with how I think it should feel, but it just feels off. The new scenery is gorgeous, though, and I like the characters thus far.
Enlist in Star Citizen! Citizenship must be earned!
I never felt there was anything wrong with how Zero Dawn did it. green/blue/purple tier of weapons/armor, where the next tier just offered more ammo types and you had all (or almost all) types at the max tier. Way too many weapons and armor in FW that just never got used and too many weapon types that were more or less useless or got heavily nerfed in FW.
If there was anything wrong with how HZD did it, its that it was ridiculously easy to just skip the blue tier entirely because once you get to Meridian, you can go from green to purple directly.
Enlist in Star Citizen! Citizenship must be earned!
Ran into that last night when I was exploring the map some more, 3 apex and 1 regular took forever to bring down, didn't expect them to be as tanky as they were. Took longer than taking out a Tideripper...
Destiny Profile : http://www.bungie.net/en/Profile/254/7028016
Like someone tipped over a mechanical bull and duct taped a bunch of oars to it.
Just back off, you wet floppy bastard, and let me get a fucking shot in.
They are, I kid you not, probably the only machine in the game that you cannot beat just with drill spikes trivially. They are fast, come in packs and can use their sonic scream to stun lock you instantly to death with no chance of escape. I would gladly fight Thunderjaws and Slaughterspines over those things.
I sniped it from a cliff, it's stupid water wheel couldn't get me from all the way up there!
Destiny Profile : http://www.bungie.net/en/Profile/254/7028016
PSN / Xbox / NNID: Fodder185
That's what I did for that part, had to go back later for upgrade mats
Destiny Profile : http://www.bungie.net/en/Profile/254/7028016
I only fought a few of them to make sure I had at least one of every part so that the duplication glitch took care of the rest and got me everything I needed and I genuinely wonder what was harder, if learning the intricate jumps and techniques to get past the invisible walls of the arena ....or farming a bunch of waterwings and bileguts over and over and over if I had went the non-glitch route.
Enlist in Star Citizen! Citizenship must be earned!
The story is great, though. I love the dynamic between Aloy and Reyka.
Aloy made a friend! For realsies!
Also after playing Call of the Mountain I keep stopping in random places in the Burning Shores and looking around for hidden warning beacons to shoot (which are the main collectible thing in the VR game).
PSN / Xbox / NNID: Fodder185
I'm gonna be digesting/chewing on that for a bit, I think. I really enjoyed the story and where it went, though the final mission got.. extremely repetitive. I think it's just because of the machine variety.
I watched the whole credits, for some dumb-ass reason. I should've stopped after the voice credits. I think I was curious to see if they were going to patch a shout-out to Lance Reddick, but maybe that's in the DLC. I'm sure it will also have a 40 minute long credits sequence.
On the ending:
I do have to chuckle, though. The plotline of this game is like 100% a mirror of Twilight Imperium, the board game. In that, the ancient emperors (called the Lazax) basically rotted away, until they were annihilated by humans. However, a super-smart scientist and his cult realized they were going to die, so he fucked off to a remote planet. Obsessed with prolonging their life, they started doing more and more cybernetics until they were more machine than organic. Eventually, they returned as the "L1Z1X" to "Take their rightful place." Except... in the intervening time, a bug in a piece of software warped into a malicious code, creating what is called the Nekro Virus - a pretty much unstoppable nanite plague that has followed the L1Z1X back to the galaxy.
It absolutely isn't worth the frustration of farming it "correctly" (hell, dupe it, who cares?) because of poor design decisions (that I feel confident in calling such, given that they dramatically reduced requirements for DLC upgrades), just to be held to some arbitrary difficulty level.
It's the same thing I recommend to anyone playing the Xenoblade games, if they go in on the maxing out or 100%'ing stuff. Drop the difficulty for the farming. If you want to prove to yourself that you can do the harder difficulty, go at it, set it up for the boss or whatever. But when you're killing the same UM for the 100th time chasing a drop, or here in Horizon killing a Slaughterspine for the billionth time for enough Apex Hearts? Who cares if it's Hard or Story, you want the thing, why torture yourself.
And the Ultra Hard difficulty is there for folks who want to put their skills to the test and not be tempted to turn it down. But honestly, I think anyone who does Ultra Hard without it being a NG+, is at best insane, and might want to reconsider how you treat yourself.
I've been watching speed running videos because I want that achievement, but I'll be damned if I'm going to intentionally play the whole game on UH. I'll do like I did with ZD; 100% everything, then "speed run" (being not a speed runner, I'm lucky if I can do it in twice the time of an actual runner, but it's still a fraction of the time it'd take me normally) the max difficulty achievement. Did it with Spider Man, etc too. The only hitch is that there's an achievement for getting everything in a NG+ also, and I don't want to earn all that at max difficulty, so at the very least I'm gonna have to do the game again in NG+, but I'll most likely be doing it in Story mode, and I've already got everything I need for the upgrades, I just need to actually earn all the stuff. Whether or not I actually "complete" it in a NG+ is questionable. Though, it could very well be I could do so and make it to Burning Shores faster than they'll put out a patch fixing the Aerial missions, so that might be how I get that achievement.
Origin: Galedrid - Nintendo: Galedrid/3222-6858-1045
Blizzard: Galedrid#1367 - FFXIV: Galedrid Kingshand