One of the things I was impressed with in the game is that most of the weapons are actually quite useful - normally with games there's always something I rarely, if ever, use, but with Horizon I actually ended up using everything for different situations (except the Terablaster, but that's because the Terablaster I got *after* I finished the main quest, whoops) - even the Rattler was useful for close-quarters fights against large groups, since you could lay on some heavy status effects really quickly with it, although it was superseded by the Sling against things like Stormbirds and Thunderjaws since the build-up was just too small against such dangerous enemies.
Another nice thing was how all the status conditions were actually... you know, important and shit. Granted I ended up using frost a whole lot as the stories moved towards 'say you look like you could fight a Thunderjaw and a Corruptor at the same time' kind of fights, but otherwise everything had a use and every enemy had a certain vulnerability to exploit. Kind of a wasted effort against the human enemies though, since most of them had so little health that just inflicting the condition against them often killed them before it could really take effect.
Zhukov said:
Another point in it's favour is that you buy basically all your equipment instead of how it is in most games where buying stuff is a waste of time because you'll loot something better ten minutes later. So I actually end up wanting the game's currency which motivates me to hunt, gather and fight while I wander around instead of just running past for the sake of efficiency, because there's no other way I'm going to get that nifty outfit or new bow.
The nice thing about the 'buy all your equipment' thing too was I found myself buying multiples of certain weapons to upgrade them differently and use them on the fly - I ended up with two of the Shadow Slings, Sharpshot bows, War Bows and Trip Casters, all built to handle separate situations. Normally I don't invest in weapons like that since I'll either find something better as a random drop of there'll be a quest reward that blows everything I have out of the water, but here it was just 'You know what, I want to be able to Corrupt enemies from stealth and then Shock them when things get loud, I'll just pick up a second War Bow'. Was quite a lovely change of pace.
Sonicron said:
I have to disagree about the inventory management - the 'resources' tab flies in the face of that. Mid-game onwards you will constantly have to clean up your inventory to free up a few spaces while also keeping most of your junk because you never know when you'll need a certain lens, heart, bone or skin.
This ties in neatly with the other point I disagree with. No more farming? If only. Yes, you can buy machine parts, which is nice, but the first thing to add to this game via patch would be a vendor for animal parts. Even warping around the map and spamming the reload randomizer I spent about 2 hours trying to get a fucking goose skin. Trying to grind for a rare component of a rare random critter without a fixed spawn point has got to be the shittiest implementation of loot grinding in all of creation.
And before anyone tunnels up my butt about these criticisms: I have been mainlining this game for a week now and absolutely love it. To me there can be no denying the obvious flaws in this game; that being said, it is a stonking great game all the same.
The annoying thing with the inventory system is that not every lens or heart is useful - I was lugging around a bunch of late-game enemy components that it turns out aren't used for anything except for vendor trash. Would've been nice if the game actually told me Behemoth Hearts were just worth some scratch and didn't tell me they could be 'traded to vendors for items' so I'd hang onto a half-dozen of the damn things just in case.
The weird thing too about the machine part vendor is that... machine parts aren't that hard to come across? I was drowning in Hearts and lenses, but when it came to animal parts I was struggling to find even uncommon items - I never ended up buying anything from the parts vendor, but damn, I would've spent thousands of shards at a skin and bone merchant. Fantastic game, to be sure, but bit of a bugbear when I spend 30 minutes skinning fish and somehow manage to never find any of their bones in the process.
