Horizon Zero Dawn - Review @ COG

As a former mainframe programmer/analyst, I look at games a bit differently. As a consumer of all kinds of goods, I do careful research and read many reviews on items that interest me. Which brings me to game reviews. Often a review tells me more about the reviewer than it does about the game. This is due to what they term as negatives or defects in a game. Whining about trivialities or tangential issues is a dead give-away to me that the reviewer isn't to be taken seriously.

I'm not saying this is true of the reviewer in this case; I don't know them or their qualifications or record. I don't own this game and haven't played it. I'm just offering a general observation and my experience.
 
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Which brings me to game reviews. Often a review tells me more about the reviewer than it does about the game.

This is why I try to always mention my tastes when reviewing or stating an opinion. If you don't prefer open-world, single-character, exploration and loot highly then my opinions will differ. Most here know me enough by now that I don't have to even say it.

As far as this game goes, I'm intrigued because it seems to be very popular and I can't figure if I would like it or not. @JDR13; knows my tastes pretty well and he doesn't think I'd be a big fan. So, I'll wait and get it on sale :D
 
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This is why I try to always mention my tastes when reviewing or stating an opinion. If you don't prefer open-world, single-character, exploration and loot highly then my opinions will differ. Most here know me enough by now that I don't have to even say it.

As far as this game goes, I'm intrigued because it seems to be very popular and I can't figure if I would like it or not. @JDR13; knows my tastes pretty well and he doesn't think I'd be a big fan. So, I'll wait and get it on sale :D
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My taste in games is similar. I prefer 3rd person, real time combat, open world, exploration type RPGs. That's why the Gothic series hit my sweet spot. FO3 & 4 and Skyrim are fine with me despite their flaws. I also played Baldur's Gate and NWN and they were fine for their time period even though they were party-based.
 
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I couldn't do the Gothics, but Risen was a fine series. HZD does have the single-character thing going for it and that's important to me. I don't really enjoy focusing on more than one person.
 
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I see you ask about twitchy combat and parkour.
There is some of both.

Melee is twichy a bit, you basically position near a hostile and click for fast hit or shift+click for slow hit that does more damage than fast hit. However, the smart thing is to cull trashmobs before doing this. Or end them without they even knew what hit them (note that this is not possible in certain main quests where you're swarmed by enemies, need to take cover and micromanage your arrows of different types):
1. Almost every quest where robots are you can avoid by stealth followed by instakill/highdamage or taming/corrupting machines.
2. To learn taming however you need to kill certain boss robots. Now they're not complicated at all (strip their heavy weapons with a special arrow then use those yourself against them, also set up traps to stun or high damage).
3. Where only humans are and no robots you can still stealth most of it and use ranged against guards on spots too high to bother climbing.

Parkour is simplistic. It's not completely automatic as in AC Origins/Odyssey, but not nearly as complicated as AC 2/Brotherhood/Revelations/3. It's even simpler than in AC Rogue.
All you do is spot where you shout go next on the screen then press/hold wasd accordingly or sometimes it the ledge is a bit far you'll add space to the mix so Lara... Um... Wrong game... Aloy, jumps.
Note that I didn't mention AC garbage sequels. :)

I'm aware you couldn't gothics as no zombies there. Once you kill something, it doesn't return.
Well, in hzd once you kill something except specific mission objectives, it'll respawn later. So you may go kill crusade freeroam till doomsday. :p

The game even makes a joke on itself and it's respawn-o-rama not happening for quest objectives, but also on players who can't appreciate a game that has no respawns through a character (Nils - sorry didn't took screenshots after you finish his third sidequest).
 
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