Play HFW and then go back and play HZD.. see what happens

[Dynadroo]

For fun, I played Horizon Zero Dawn after playing Forbidden West a while. I had Aloy jump to her death at least 5 times in the first hour of HZD, expecting the shieldwing to deploy, and then realizing there isn't one.

[TheAspieFox]

Aye, MANY things about Forbidden West's mechanics aren't present in Zero Dawn; it can be a little jarring to go back.

[Dynadroo]

Pinging the focus to find handholds is also absent in HZD. That takes some re-acclimation.

[TheAspieFox]

Originally posted by Dynadroo:

Pinging the focus to find handholds is also absent in HZD. That takes some re-acclimation.

In case you're not aware, you can actually toggle perpetually automatically showing Handholds in Forbidden West, as opposed to having to ping for them.

Though, admittedly, I do kinda find the whole thing weird and wish they'd stuck with lightly other-colored bits of the rock (white/yellow) to indicate climbing points; make it more natural. Though, lore-wise, I can see the Focus being a tool to outline potential grabbing points for climbers. So, realistically it can go either way.

[H4NS]

Purely as a game, Forbidden West makes Zero Dawn seem ancient and honestly unplayable in comparison.

The sheer amount of gameplay and exploration improvements in the sequel cannot be understated. I find it difficult to think of a single series with so much improvement.

Zero Dawn's real charm is the storytelling, which is straight up better than Forbidden West's. On FW's defense, that's a really high bar considering all the mystique surrounding ZD's lore; plus, you can't really experience ZD twice, FW is infinitely more replayable thanks to the improvements it brought.

[The Illusion]

Ive found FW to be better in only a few, mostly minor ways. ZD is better in the most important ways. In ZD I never had hp bars as they only show up on the lowest levels. In FW they show up in all but UH (they should be an optional setting for all levels). In ZD I could easily tell how close any machine was to death. In FW its a buggy mess, with some machines showing the usual signs and others showing none of the stages (yes, there are stages).

[Fuci]

Originally posted by H4NS:

Purely as a game, Forbidden West makes Zero Dawn seem ancient and honestly unplayable in comparison.

The sheer amount of gameplay and exploration improvements in the sequel cannot be understated. I find it difficult to think of a single series with so much improvement.

Zero Dawn's real charm is the storytelling, which is straight up better than Forbidden West's. On FW's defense, that's a really high bar considering all the mystique surrounding ZD's lore; plus, you can't really experience ZD twice, FW is infinitely more replayable thanks to the improvements it brought.

Absolutely agree. FW has improved pretty much all of the gameplay mechanics by a huge margin, so going back to ZD would be a big pain, but the ZD story is just miles ahead of FW in all the aspects, it's not even close. Same with characters, most of the old ones are still good, but the only new character that I really liked is Beta.

I will most likely not replay ZD at this point, and I aim to do NG+ in FW sometime in the future, but ZD still holds a special place in my heart that FW did not get.

[Sinophile]

Originally posted by TheAspieFox:

Originally posted by Dynadroo:

Pinging the focus to find handholds is also absent in HZD. That takes some re-acclimation.

In case you're not aware, you can actually toggle perpetually automatically showing Handholds in Forbidden West, as opposed to having to ping for them.

Though, admittedly, I do kinda find the whole thing weird and wish they'd stuck with lightly other-colored bits of the rock (white/yellow) to indicate climbing points; make it more natural. Though, lore-wise, I can see the Focus being a tool to outline potential grabbing points for climbers. So, realistically it can go either way.

I hate the parkour in this game and like making it as easy as possible.

[Raider Deci]

I went immedietly from frozen wilds to forbidden west, so the opposite. The lack of a long dogeroll really felt, and some very reliable ropecasters that suddenly wasnt as reliable anymore

[Tr0w]

Originally posted by H4NS:

Purely as a game, Forbidden West makes Zero Dawn seem ancient and honestly unplayable in comparison.

The sheer amount of gameplay and exploration improvements in the sequel cannot be understated. I find it difficult to think of a single series with so much improvement.

Zero Dawn's real charm is the storytelling, which is straight up better than Forbidden West's. On FW's defense, that's a really high bar considering all the mystique surrounding ZD's lore; plus, you can't really experience ZD twice, FW is infinitely more replayable thanks to the improvements it brought.

I disagree, ZD is a tight, well paced, and crafted experience, FW feels like they just added and added on top just for the sake of it. Pacing is poor, gear is handled poorly (Legendaries are weaker than Purples lmfao), 100x the grind, the climbing/parkour feels really awkward/janky in comparison. Get a new purple armour or legendary well it's meh compared upgraded blues unless you spend ages grinding it's own upgrades. Combat is now just a massive Royal Rumble of turbo aggressive machines that just keep coming in from all over the area spamming aoe elemental explosions and battlefield wide tail sweeps which ends up with Aloy spending more time on the floor than anything else due to the obscenely long time it takes her to get up.

[maul]

Originally posted by Tr0w:

Originally posted by H4NS:

Purely as a game, Forbidden West makes Zero Dawn seem ancient and honestly unplayable in comparison.

The sheer amount of gameplay and exploration improvements in the sequel cannot be understated. I find it difficult to think of a single series with so much improvement.

Zero Dawn's real charm is the storytelling, which is straight up better than Forbidden West's. On FW's defense, that's a really high bar considering all the mystique surrounding ZD's lore; plus, you can't really experience ZD twice, FW is infinitely more replayable thanks to the improvements it brought.

I disagree, ZD is a tight, well paced, and crafted experience, FW feels like they just added and added on top just for the sake of it. Pacing is poor, gear is handled poorly (Legendaries are weaker than Purples lmfao), 100x the grind, the climbing/parkour feels really awkward/janky in comparison. Get a new purple armour or legendary well it's meh compared upgraded blues unless you spend ages grinding it's own upgrades. Combat is now just a massive Royal Rumble of turbo aggressive machines that just keep coming in from all over the area spamming aoe elemental explosions and battlefield wide tail sweeps which ends up with Aloy spending more time on the floor than anything else due to the obscenely long time it takes her to get up.

In ZD you'd actually have to get out of the way of attacks with long roll, but with FW they'll just change direction midair and everything will rubberband to your position, requiring you to time everything perfectly to utilize iframes. I hate this change, and there's countless times where I'll still get hit with gigantic AoE even if I seem to time it right. Or some kind of delayed or double attack, or another machine which is spamming more crap (with hardly any cooldown).

This is my second playthrough on VH and I've gotten decent at mitigating this nonsense, but very often I'm annoyed as much as I'm having fun. It's like they asked each other, "hey guys, so how can we make the combat more frustrating and the game more tedious and grindy? Let's hear your ideas."

[Raider Deci]

Originally posted by maul:

In ZD you'd actually have to get out of the way of attacks with long roll, but with FW they'll just change direction midair and everything will rubberband to your position, requiring you to time everything perfectly to utilize iframes.
"

Kinda agree on this. Its a similar problem as with AC Unity's parkour. It might look better and the more advanced animations are a sight to behold, especially when wathching pro's on youtube with hundreds of tries for a short run under their belt, but you REALLY need know where the animations starts & stops to avoid the jank. And to get the most out of it. Also the magnetism of what the character locks on to in that is insane.



Aside from that I think FW is a major improvement in every way

[Dynadroo]

I enjoy both games, and I like the evolution apparent in HFW over HZD. The ongoing development of characters (including Aloy) introduced in HZD is great, and I feel they did a great job with the whole thing. Aloy has matured and is less girlish. That is to be expected and appreciated. Varl's character has grown. Erend is more drunk and funny.
Inventory management was a bit of a pain in the ass in HZD because of the limited space you had. The introduction of the stash in HFW was great. Going back to play HZD again, you immediately run into inventory space problems again that make you understand why they fixed it. I was worried at first about the crafting bench thing in HFW, thinking it would make life difficult. But the crafting benches are plentiful, so it turned out ok. I prefer crafting on the run like in HZD, but I'm ok with the other as long as you don't make it a nuisance.
They removed bow fishing for HFW. I rather enjoyed that in HZD, so that was a bummer.
I love the shieldwing. Gliding is good.
I feel that HFW is truly a masterful sequel. I hope there's another.

[joridiculous]

Originally posted by a passerby:

HFW has its problems with parkour, ragdolling, more unforgiving dodge windows, and issues with resource management, but other than that, it definitely is an upgrade in gameplay in virtually every way. The visuals are also absolutely spectacular.

Another thing to note is that there is quite a big difference in difficulty, because I don't remember HZD being this challenging. I'm currently on UH NG+ and damn are machines much harder to kill than on UH in HZD.

Hard in this game is about the same as UH in HZD.

[longjohn119]

I still find it hard to believe that Ubisoft is about the only developer that has figured out how to make a PC climb just about everything without the use of "magic paint" or light up hand holds .....

[H4NS]

Originally posted by Tr0w:

Originally posted by H4NS:

Purely as a game, Forbidden West makes Zero Dawn seem ancient and honestly unplayable in comparison.

The sheer amount of gameplay and exploration improvements in the sequel cannot be understated. I find it difficult to think of a single series with so much improvement.

Zero Dawn's real charm is the storytelling, which is straight up better than Forbidden West's. On FW's defense, that's a really high bar considering all the mystique surrounding ZD's lore; plus, you can't really experience ZD twice, FW is infinitely more replayable thanks to the improvements it brought.

I disagree, ZD is a tight, well paced, and crafted experience, FW feels like they just added and added on top just for the sake of it. Pacing is poor, gear is handled poorly (Legendaries are weaker than Purples lmfao), 100x the grind, the climbing/parkour feels really awkward/janky in comparison. Get a new purple armour or legendary well it's meh compared upgraded blues unless you spend ages grinding it's own upgrades. Combat is now just a massive Royal Rumble of turbo aggressive machines that just keep coming in from all over the area spamming aoe elemental explosions and battlefield wide tail sweeps which ends up with Aloy spending more time on the floor than anything else due to the obscenely long time it takes her to get up.

Don't understand your first point since I've made clear the storytelling in HZD is better.

>Gear
You're absolutely wrong if you think Legendary gear is worse than Very Rare gear. The grind is a little icky, but there are two defenses for it; first, gear in HFW is leaps and bounds stronger than in HZD, if you know what you're doing; second, grinding in the DLC is almost non-existant for most of the upgrades, and nearly everything is slightly better than in the base game.

>Climbing/parkour
HZD's climbing system is utter garbage and streamlined. HFW has multiple paths in many cases and combines the use of directional jumping, shield wing and the grapple hook to break up the monotony.

>Combat
HZD's machines are much dumber, and have not even a third of HFW's weakspots, they're FAR less complex. Behemoths, Thunderjaws, Rockbreakers in HFW are just as annoying as in HZD with the ranged/AoE spam. Snapmaws and Glinthawks in HZD are particularly awful, better in HFW.

HZD, compared to HFW, has terrible melee, terrible UI, terrible transversal (no shieldwing/hook, and the mounts are slower), a bunch of ??? gameplay elements (bizarre sellers in Meridian, training quests, the whole box opening system).

HFW brought gorgeous flying, meaningful collectibles (wish people talked about this more), far better sidequests, new weapons and special abilities to spice of the combat, and builds are more of a thing now, because in HZD it was just Shield-Weaver and Banuk weapons plus one of the slingers.

It really baffles me choosing HZD over HFW, unless all you care about is the main quest (which you can realistically only experience every few years).