I just noticed that this thread exists. When I played Horizon Zero Dawn last year I put my impressions in the Games You Played Today thread.
The response ITT averages a bit on the negative side so I want to put in a more positive word for this: although I find nothing to disagree with in any particular criticism, I liked this game a lot. From my point of view, the game’s prettiness speaks for itself and the fantasy it peddles is way more compelling than all the other open-world games. Tensely drawing an arrow at a robot dinosaur’s energy canister glowing in the twilight on a ridge, what’s not to like here? Here’s how I had put it as I was playing it:
It’s also worth noting that both the storytelling and combat got a notch sharper in Frozen Wilds. If that rate of improvement continues, I expect the sequel to suffer less from the death-by-thousand-nitpicks that many people are experiencing.