Horizon Forbidden West Reviews
Horizon Forbidden West builds upon the formula of the first game in smart (if not always revolutionary) ways to craft an even stronger open-world experience. The stunning visuals make for a great showpiece of what Sony's first-party studios can accomplish on PlayStation 5, with gameplay that holds up its end of the bargain. Unfortunately, storytelling missteps and a lack of polish keep Aloy's latest adventure just shy of joining the all-time greats.
A natural evolution of Zero Dawn, Horizon Forbidden West fulfills its mission as a sequel: to aspire to higher peaks, and reach them.
Review in Italian | Read full review
Horizon Forbidden West is a superb sequel, adding even more robot monsters to slay while introducing a deep crafting and upgrade system that creates a rewarding Monster Hunter-style gameplay loop.
Horizon: Forbidden West is everything I wanted from a follow-up to the excellent Zero Dawn, from the twisting story and fierce combat to the cast of memorable characters.
It’s hard to imagine how a Zero Dawn fan could be at all dissatisfied with Guerilla Games’ choices here - the studio has delivered exactly what they were waiting for.
Horizon Forbidden West takes everything that made Horizon Zero Dawn an excellent action-adventure title, and adds more environmental variety and quest verticality to create an even better game.
Horizon Forbidden West is a spectacular sequel
Horizon Forbidden West is a more confident sequel building on what made its predecessor great. What holds it back are some pacing issues and a few antiquated gameplay elements.
When Horizon Forbidden West lets you enjoy its incredible open world in peace, Aloy's second outing is a marvel to play, even if its swollen map doesn't fully make up for a lack of true invention.
This is one of those sequels where the developers have really upped their game in just about every way, and even though I’ve now finished the main campaign, I still can’t wait to play more of it!
Horizon Forbidden West is everything you could hope for in a sequel. Not only does it provide more content to sink your teeth into, but it makes smart design decisions that refine its systems to be near faultless. Aloy’s personal story continues to evolve, this time with an even stronger supporting cast and memorable antagonists propelling her journey to another level. Above all, its moment-to-moment gameplay expertly combines the fun traversal, exciting combat, and creative problem-solving to awesome effect, meaning it always feels excellent to play. Horizon Forbidden West is one of the best open-world adventures available today and is a stellar experience from its strong introduction all the way to its dramatic conclusion, and beyond.
Thematically rich and bursting with content, Horizon Forbidden West is a beautiful and bloated behemoth of a game.
Horizon Forbidden West doesn't try to reinvent the genre, and it's barely an evolution either. The developers have simply mixed all the current ingredients in perfect proportions. What they did in the end was throttling the freedom, gradually revealing the full extent of the experience in Forbidden West. One of the finest adventures we've recently had for sure!
Review in Polish | Read full review
Horizon: Forbidden West is a masterclass open-world game for gameplay and visual flair, but falls flat with its story. While it gets close, Forbidden West never reaches the potential heights of what it attempts to set up. Instead, Forbidden West serves as a solid chapter in what could be a fairly large tale that is an absolute joy to play and take in.
Forbidden West isn't a game that will surprise you or make you rethink the possibilities of what games can do, but it's proof that games can still be really fun even if they don't try anything new, and that's something we don't often see from big budget corporate games like this one.
[Horizon Forbidden West] is a game of contrasts. A game about robot dinosaurs where you spend far too much time fighting robot meerkats and boars instead for some reason. One with brilliant voice acting that you begin to hate because some characters won't shut up. Where the side quests are great, but they're so simple as to feel pointless.
Horizon Forbidden West is an exceedingly clever sequel, a deep and addictive action RPG, a dense world that unfolds with an impeccable sense of pace, a visual tour de force and the masterful delivery of a promising concept.
Horizon: Forbidden West is a worthy sequel to Zero Dawn, reaching new impressive heights in terms of story, gameplay, mechanics and the open world design.
Horizon: Forbidden West is an enjoyable game from start to finish which easily allows you to become lost in its virtual mythology. The gameplay, sound and graphics work hand-in-hand to create an engaging PS5 title. It's also well-written and directed by the developers with fantastic voice acting and a soundtrack that sounds it has been taken from a Hollywood blockbuster which makes this game a masterpiece on the PlayStation 5 and a must play game… no, masterpiece of 2022!