Bought it on Steam sale after 5 years of its initial launch and 2.5 years after its pc port came out. I had to say it’s a bit underwhelming.

I came with a big expectation, having long heard how good it is. But in fact, it’s not that different from an Assassin’s Creed game. It shares quite a lot of things with Assassin’s Creed Odyssey in fact.

Comparison with Assassin’s Creed Odyssey

Both AC Odyssey and this game have a female protagonist, that’s the most obvious. The world design is fairly pretty similar. Both have many different kinds of terrains and are very vibrant. They are also very “RPG”. You’ll have to collect and craft tons of items, and the world object interactions animations (like when you open a lootbox) are minimal. I really really hate this. It totally breaks the immersion. Like you’re riding your horse or a machine dinosaur across a green and lively jungle, and then you open a box with mind power 🤦 Oh and the melee combats in both are the worst of all video games.

Plot

The plot is very video-gamey, but definitely more memorable and makes you more engaged than in AC Odyssey.

Graphics

The graphics are really good, but extremely video-gamey. It is way too polished, like everything is so oiled and looks plastic. Not lifelike at all. If Red Dead Redemption 2 is on one end of the realism spectrum, Horizon Zero Dawn is on another.

Voice acting

The voice acting is very subpar. The protagonist has no emotion at all.

Gameplay

The melee combat is abysmal, even worse than AC Odyssey’s.

Hunting dinosaurs with bow and arrow and placing traps is actually pretty fun tho.

Open world

The open world is probably the most hostile one ever. In other games you can always find some public roads for safe traveling. Sure there are hostile animals but with your horse you can usually escape them if careful. However, in Horizon Zero Dawn, your mount is so fucking slow! I don’t really think it’s faster than running actually, and there are just so many hostile robots in your way. Sure you can sneak around them, but it takes a lot of time and is definitely not possible when you’re on your mount.

The default HUD settings are way too ADHD, but after turning most settings off or on demand, it became really good. The open world is beautiful and fun, with a variety of terrains, including cities, jungles, grass fields, rock fields, deserts, mountains, caves, rivers, snowy mountains, etc. I think it offers more than AC Odyssey, but AC Origins is still the king.

Overall

My total playing time according to Steam is 90.5 hr, which includes tens of hours of it running in the background while I was doing other things, so the real hours are probably 2/3 or less.

It’s fun, but toward the final third of my playthrough it’s just more of a chore tbh. The fact that I’ve just completed Jedi: Fallen Order before this certainly didn’t help. I was just a bit oversaturated by video games by the end.

8/10