Highly recommended for explorers who also enjoy a good story!

Beautiful and interesting world to explore. Characters are actually memorable - even ones that you only meet during small side quests. The stories and lore are intriguing and it's hard not to get emotionally invested when doing quests. The game has both made me shed a tear and laugh out loud. Combat is fun and varied - it's satisfying when you manage to take out a tough machine by utilizing the information you have about weakpoints and making use of your arsenal of different weapons and ammo. There are several different difficulties you can choose from and you can change it at any point (except in New Game +). If you want to just focus on the story and want combat to be easy then Story mode is great - for the most part you don't have to worry about hitting weakpoints on machines. You can take them down without. The higher the difficulty the more important it gets to be strategic about your attacks. I especially enjoyed the stealthy features of the game, but usually it's up to you how you handle each situation. I played through on story mode (since I expect to go for the Ultra Hard New Game + achievement, so nice to just focus on the story the first time around), so often taking the stealthy approach isn't technically needed - I just found it fun. :) But it's likely a much more needed strategy at times on higher difficulties - unless you enjoy being overrun and trampled by a herd of machines. :D

A thing I really love about the game is the mix of high action combat, stealth and more chill exploration. Even if there are many machines to take on, there are also plenty of areas in the world where you have room to just relax and enjoy the scenery. I love how well the character animations are done - not just on Aloy (the character you play), but also on all the different characters that you interact with. All dialogue is voice acted and the character animations actually follow what is said - both in speech and expressing emotions. When Aloy moves around in the world her animation changes depending on the terrain - whether she's sliding down a steep slope or hiking through deep snow and so on. It's just all very well made and all helps to increase the level of immersion while playing. Small details that all add up. :)

For achievement hunters it should be noted there's no "point of no return" - once you finish the main questline you'll load the last save before that quest and can then choose to finish up anything you might have missed or intentionally skipped. It will take 2 playthroughs to get all achievements though, since you can't access New Game + until you finish the game the first time. But the second playthrough should be much faster if you completed everything else the first time around. :)

Gorgeous scenery, intriguing story, fun combat, lots of collectibles and lore elements to find, great exploration including some parkour - what's not to like??? HZD is definitely in my Top 10 of favorite games.