"Robot Dinosaurs and Brilliant Combat Trapped in Ubisoft's Map"
About
Horizon Zero Dawn is set in a post-apocalyptic world where nature has reclaimed civilization and mechanical creatures roam the landscape. You play as Aloy, a hunter who scavenges and crafts weapons and armor to take down these machines through a combination of stealth, traps, and direct combat across an open world. The game emphasizes learning enemy weaknesses and exploiting them tactically rather than relying on straightforward fighting.
Verdict
The combat is the real draw here, a tactical archery sandbox where prying armour off a Thunderjaw with the right trap feels earned every time. It's wrapped in an open world that buries a genuinely sharp story under icon clutter and codex dumps, and it overstays its welcome by a good ten hours. Worth playing for the machine fights alone, even when the structure around them is pure 2017 template.
You'll like it if …
- +you enjoy reading enemy patterns and prepping traps before a fight
- +you want a strong central mystery worth committing the runtime to
- +you happily replay through New Game Plus and chase side content
You'll dislike it if …
- −you want worldbuilding shown in play rather than parsed from audio logs
- −you tire of icon-checklist open worlds and want a tighter campaign
- −you prefer human-scale combat over fighting machines
Breakdown
- +Machine combat rewards reading enemy patterns, setting traps, and exploiting elemental weaknesses rather than relying on reflexes alone
- +Tactical choices between stealth approaches and direct engagement create genuine decision-making in each encounter
- −Human combat is flat and lacks the depth of machine encounters
- −Stealth breaks unreliably on slopes, undermining tactical planning
- +New Game Plus mode and extensive side content provide 60-plus hours of total playtime
- +Machine encounters offer meaningful variety in approach and element loadouts across different enemy types
- −Open world relies on standard icon-clutter and checklist design that drags in the back half
- −Second playthrough repeats the same machine and bandit-killing loop without substantial structural changes
- −Campaign overstays its welcome by roughly ten hours
- +The central mystery of Zero Dawn pays off better than the marketing suggests and justifies the runtime
- +Aloy is a protagonist with genuine agency and personality rather than a blank slate
- +The setting—primitive tribes coexisting with the remnants of a collapsed machine civilization—is a strong conceptual hook
- −Most lore and worldbuilding arrives as text and audio logs rather than integrated narrative
- −Supporting cast is inconsistent in quality and impact
- +Art direction carries the visual appeal and ages better than raw polygon fidelity
- +Score and ambient design support the atmosphere effectively
- +The game runs well on modest hardware years after release
- −Audio mix is poorly balanced and flagged repeatedly by players as a recurring issue
- −Some audio mixing bugs affect the clarity of dialogue and effects
- +Mechanically smooth overall with responsive core systems
- −PC port suffers from crashes and stability issues
- −Climbing mechanics are unreliable and break in specific terrain conditions
- −UI and menus follow the standard open-world template without refinement or distinction
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