When you’ve shot off the weak points and still have to carry on shooting a number of arrows, even the matched elemental ones it’s tiring. The melee combat is much worse without a lock on or parry, it’s just so…bland.

@Verecocha Are using the special attacks from your stamina pool and the uber powerful valor surge abilities? Because stuff like Braced Shot combined with Powershots will make short work of medium sized machines.

Agree with you the about the melee combat though. That's one element that this sequel fails to improve on. The critical strike ability you can pull off after you knockdown a machine is a satisfying execution move however.

Well after a staggering 84 hours, I finally got to see the end credits roll. Everything you'd want from a sequel really - bigger, bolder and bucket loads of robbo-dinosaurs! Amazingly, I've still got chunks of the map left to explore and a whole host of side-quests still untouched. Can't wait for the DLC, once its announced!

About an hour in - has it gone all uncharted on me? I’ve got a buddy chatting shit and so far no open world just like a level ??

The chatting will continue though. Even when alone. Always talking.

Oh, that’s good to know.

Coming to ps+

Now I've actually *Spoiler Alert* gotten to the Forbidden West I'm really starting to enjoy it.

The attention to detail world building and the amazing graphics really give it a strong sense of place. I like the main character and the gameplay is so solid..the climbing movement and combat are all really strong.

It does a much better job than the first game of introducing it's core concepts.

It also helps for me that the marker for where you need to go is never more than a few feet away.

Brilliant so far.

Bob wrote:

The attention to detail world building and the amazing graphics really give it a strong sense of place. I like the main character and the gameplay is so solid..the climbing movement and combat are all really strong.

Brilliant so far.

I'm not a big Aloy fan but everything else you said is the reason I like it. I dont think I've seen a more beautiful world and it all feels so well thought out and cohesive. The tribes looks, ways of life and their lands are all great to discover. Plain Song in particular is just a lovely place to be.

Theres moments when the power switched on in a certain area and I won't spoil it but its one of the best sights I've seen in any game world. Truly wonderful to behold.

Shame to much chatter from aloy kinda spoils it a little.

b0r1s wrote:

Yep the world and the story/background (the historic stuff is really well realised) is what makes the game, Aloy is not a great character at all. I mean, there could be logical reasons as to why she is like she is...

Spoiler:

A clone, she could be constantly programmed to self-reference!

One thing I noticed in the underwater bit in Vega is she is still talking, which I then took to realise she isn't talking out loud, but it's the game verbalising her thinking, which is weird.

Ah after that under water bit
I need to get back to this but I'm at a bit where there's gonna be a fair bit of talking and plot exposition (if thats the right term) and I needed a break from all that talking. Less talking, less hand holding would've improved this no end.

The first hour or so doesn't help it chances either.

@Cupatay - yep that bit in your spoiler was good, especially as I've been and also got to

I started this a few weeks ago now that it's on PS plus (and in the hope that the VR spin off would make more sense).  

I agree the combat's a bit tedious, although it's improved a little now that there are a few more toys I can play with. (Switching between the different things at my disposal, rather than just bow and arrow and melee, makes it much more interesting.) None the less, I'm mostly using stealth where possible to avoid having to faff about with actual combat.

Now that it's opened up I'm also hitting the traditional Ubi-Bloat problem of too many question marks, not enough time - but it is at least generally pretty clear what each thing is going to be and so I'm skipping anything that I find too tedious. (Like the vistas...) 

Like many I'm also finding Aloy's constant chatter to herself incredibly distracting and irritating.

But...  I'm enjoying it regardless. I fear it will ultimately end up the same way as the first game (played for a long time, but ultimately got bored before I finished it) but for now at least the appeal of a very beautiful game and, let's face it, robo-dinosaurs, is enough to keep me going.

There’s a lot of stuff to do and it’s not ubi Bloat so far it’s all good stuff.

Dropped the difficulty down though as I was ending up replaying each combat encounter too many times and the checkpoints suck

The tallneck takedowns in this are very well done. I’ve done three and all three had a different approach. Really nice touch.