I didn’t quite like this game when I first played it back in 2020. I thought it was a bland open world Assassins Creed copy. Then I got to the point where the story takes off, and Aloy as a character really starts to shine, and my overall judgement of the game was positive.
The sequel however was every part of the base game, polished until perfect, and it became the second best game I played in 2022. I played every part of that game, and I got the platinum trophy.
This is where the seed was planted, that I didn’t gave the first game a fair shot. I should revisit it and get the platinum also for that. When the copse was ready for plucking, they released the remaster and I was on board.
The first question that pops into everyone’s mind: Is a PS4 game from 2017 ready to be remastered? The PS4 game looked great for its generation and here they have cranked up the fidelity to max. It is not necessarily a good thing. When I started the game it was running with such a low framerate I immediately changed the graphics to performance mode. So the remaster I played probably looked more or less identical to the PS4 version.
Apart from the upscaled graphics, the remaster has some quality of life improvements but nothing that really makes this a necessary remake. I could’ve just as well replayed the PS4 version to get my platinum trophy.
I get why I didn’t like this game at start. The start of the game is really slow and it doesn’t start to shine until half way through. I find that I have improved by playing its sequel and are now able to beat the game on Normal difficulty. It is not hard, just different from other action open world shooters. You need to treat every encounter as a puzzle. Just shooting tons of arrows without a plan often leads to long and tedious fights. Taking down a storm bird in 30 seconds is possible, but you can also spend 30 minutes shooting it with arrows.
The first time I played this game I rushed headlong into every bandit camp, and got really frustrated by the amount of damage those human enemies can take. This time I think I cleared most camps in stealth. As every stealth takedown is a one-shot this is the faster approach, and I think, the intended one.
The story is excellent and Aloy is one of my all-time favorite video game characters. The variety in enemies is sadly lacking. When you fight bosses you have most likely already fought and downed that machine numerous times before.
The platinum trophy was quite alright. There were a bunch of collectibles, but each came with a puzzle and you can buy maps in-game so you don’t need to depend on online wikis. The only trophy I needed to look up was Knock over 23 Grazier Dummies. I have no idea how you’re supposed to find them all without a guide.
I rate this game as GREAT.
Replay 