Topic: Horizon: Zero: Dawn

@RogerRoger I think the Rattler and Tearblaster are the only weapons I never bothered to use in HZD. The former because, well, I just don't see a use for it, and the latter because the Shadow Sharpshot Bow + Tearblast Arrows with powerful mods is infinitely superior when it comes to quickly stripping robots.

Otherwise, almost every weapon in my arsenal has a use.

@RogerRoger I only do that with enemies that literally won't relent, like Fireclaws. Otherwise, I enjoy going full Macaulay Culkin and designing arenas full of death traps for enemies to stumble into. It's good times stringing up 20 - 30 blast wires, in particular, and then watching robots awkwardly run around trying to find a way through them. Or stunning robots and them surrounding them with blast wires. You've gotta have fun in life.

I use the ropecaster primarily to anchor those annoying Stormbirds. Otherwise, I'd rather be doing damage.

I used them on the smaller birds for a long time before discovering that they're hilariously weak to fire.

@RogerRoger I won't lie. Anytime I see Glinthawks in the distance, I equip my sneaky armor and then squat walk around them as quickly as possible. I don't detest them as much as Watchers (walking piles of garbage that exist solely to be annoying when I'm trying to fight something actually interesting), but the way they fly around everywhere is still irritating.

But yes, combat against robots is THE area where this game excels. It has some of the best combat I've ever seen in a video game. Adapts well to varied play-styles. A large arsenal of unique weapons to employ. Actual strategy when it comes to defeating the various robots.

MGSV is another one of those games I kind of guiltily glance at every time I log onto my PS4 before going to play something else. Not sure why it's so difficult for me to convince myself to start playing it!

The DLC doesn't have any credits, btw. How far in are you?

@RogerRoger I haven't bothered with the balloons at all, maybe because I keep forgetting about them. I agree about tying the robots down - it instantly makes me feel sorry for them, even if they've been kicking my are for ten minutes. @Ralizah the DLC has forced me to expand my arsenal and as a result I'm glad I played it.

My eldest son had started playing it, and he's using tactics that I either didn't know about or once knew but have since forgot. This knowledge, coupled with the weapons I'll get from the Frozen Wilds, is making me eye up an Ultra Hard playthrough. By my reckoning that's the only trophy I won't have by the time I'm done, so I'm tempted to give it a go.

@RogerRoger Also I've never played the second Parappa, one of my biggest gaming regrets. I'm sort of waiting for a remaster that probably isn't coming.

This game reminds me of Dark Souls in a way, in that everyone swaps stories about how they handle the different enemies. For example you guys don't like the Glinthawks whereas I quite like fighting them. On the other hand, I can't cope with those stupid chicken-like Longleg things. They have a fire attack which reads just like their regular melee and it gets me every time, and then they jump away, leaving me thrashing at thin air with my spear

Glinthawks were my nemesis until late in the game I did a hunting mission where the objective was to tie them down with the ropecaster. Why I hadn't thought to use it against them before that point. 😂 Before then I'd primarily been firing double fire arrows which would make them crash to the ground, but aiming could be difficult with a fast moving air target. By far the most difficult enemy in the game is the digging mole monstrosity. Absolute nightmare inducing hateful demon of death. Thunderjaws? No problem. Stealthily shoot off their weapons with a well placed tearblast arrow and then fire the disc launchers back at them. If you're careful you can even avoid taking damage. But the moles? Ugh. By the time you blast off all of their digging hand things to stop them tunnelling their health is almost depleted anyway.

@RogerRoger All I can say is; agreed! No, seriously, Frozen Wilds is really good. Have you done the challenge missions as well?

So, I beat the Ultra-Hard NG+ playthrough a day or two ago. Wasn't too bad, owing to the fact that I started with a beefy load-out filled with my favorite end-game weapons.

I also barreled through the game at an unprecedently speedy rate. It's quite remarkable how little of this gigantic game is actually required for completion, although I suppose the same is true of the majority of open-world RPGs. A more surprising note, though: several action set-pieces are completely skippable. There was one enemy cultist ambush that didn't require me to kill them, so I just... galloped through on my mount and left them in the dust. I actually pushed through the game so fast I ripped through an active bandit camp and left the scene before the surprised enemies even thought to start attacking me.

All ultra-hard really seems to do is take away enemy life-bars, make their attacks a lot more damaging, and make it a bit harder to kill them. But the AI is the same, and the same tactics work, so, in general, it wasn't too bad.

I can finally delete this game off my hard drive!

@RogerRoger They do trim a bit from NG+, because you start it as adult Aloy, so it bypasses that tedious child segment entirely. Otherwise, it's identical, but you have access to end-game equipment from the start.

@RogerRoger It's the only platinum I got to this day lol. I remember being so close, only a few collectible, so I just went for it.

@RogerRoger A few of the trials required fairly narrow strategies if you wanted to get the best times, but otherwise I liked the challenge they provided.

Also, that blast wire trial is the only way I ever managed to consistently harvest the hundreds of cans of Blaze I needed to keep my heavily explosives-dependent playstyle viable. With the sneaky armor I could easily stealth kill most of the grazers before they knew what hit them (not so in Ultra-Hard, where you can't kill more than one or two without spooking the herd), and then with harvest arrows was methodically able to gather 24 cans from each corpse.

I think I didn't do that much of the hunting ground trials until towards the end of the game when I had better gear and stats. Some of them were very tricky.

The weapons you get for completing the trials were ridiculous though.

@RogerRoger End of the game was definitely the best time to go all-in on 100% completing the trials, as they're extremely gear-dependent affairs.

lol I don't think I even used the lightning gun after upgrading it. Or electric weapons in general.

Harvest arrows allow you gather six units of a resource if you sever it with them (I tried using multi-arrows to see if this effect stacked, but it unfortunately doesn't). So, every four blaze canister on a grazer is six potential canisters if shot off with one of those arrows. So the most efficient way of doing so is quickly stealth killing the grazers to minimize damage to their components, and then methodically dismantling the canisters with your harvest arrows.

I believe I told you before I went a bit crazy with the blast wires and proximity mines, right? So I needed to farm a LOT of blaze. This became even more important with that flamethrower in the DLC, which consumes a crazy amount of blaze.

@Octane lol just saw what you called this topic

For weapons, I mostly just used bows, some elemental ones probably. It's just my style of playing, I prefer just to get stuck in and attack the enemies instead of taking time to craft traps and carefully place them.

Monster Hunter World is similar. It's much more fun for me just to attack the big monsters, and only spend time crafting new gear and accessories when absolutely necessary.

@RogerRoger They were pretty good. I'm certain I despised one or two of them, but I liked the others. There's a whole quest involving the hunting grounds in the main game, and it ends with a fight against a battered Thunderjaw. It's really cool, because it's all damaged, and has a bunch of spears stuck in its back. It's the only unique enemy model in the game as far as I know.

And there's a good one in the DLC, where they limit the number of arrows you can use. You pretty much have to one-shot everything. Even the big dinos.

@kyleforrester87 It's only right.

Hello everyone! New to this wonderful site! Big fan of HZD!