Near perfect sequel. The praise I can give this game is far greater than my only two minor complaints; those being the climbing/parkour snap is clunky and there is just a bit too much hand holding which can be made better but not all together eliminated. The climbing snap can be improved by having the climbable surfaces indicator always on in settings to show where you can and cant climb, but the mechanic itself is awkward at times.

Great game, great performance. You can see that it was crafted with love. Soundtrack is sick, graphics breathtaking.

Great game, a gorgeous one with the hard task of continuing the story after an-already great game that had the impact advantage of setting the gameplay and world-building up for the first time.

Incidentally, you NEED to play Zero Dawn before this. It may sound obvious, but don't skip it. Just... my personal suggestion is not to play them exactly back to back, because the core gameplay is the same and both games are quite big (just like you probably shouldn't play two AssCreeds or shooters or whatever else back to back).

As usual I'm keeping this spoilerfree.

- Game is absolutely GORGEOUS, I found myself savouring the environment or pausing fights just to take pics. I have exactly 702 screenshots in my folder. Shut up.
- While FW's writing is much lower impact than ZD's simply because the big stuff was already done, characters, dialogues and lore bits are still well and very humanly written.
- Aloy is straight up a fantastic character now and has grown so much as a person.
- Combat is still fun (I was playing at Hard), and mobility was given new tools and new mounts (and they get better). There's also enough toys between skills and weapons that there's a lot of possible ways to go about it.
- Massively improved inventory management to let you concentrate on what matters (which is hoovering up everything you loot with no worries).
- The fact that dialogues and scenes are all mocapped makes it look great and so that you don't run in the bad old problem of seeing the same damn animation seventeen times an hour.
- The world changes around you as you progress. And with practically no loading screens (that are still super fast).
- Lots of options and settings in the menu. Including, surprisingly a thalassophobia mode! I don't know if it was that or the general comfort in the game, but I didn't mind all the diving at all. (for reference, in Outer Wilds I had at one point to take 20 minutes off to get my heart rate back in control)

- Some of the returning NPCs were given a slightly short stick, aside from the fact that the new ones are just great. For example Erend felt too pigeon-holed in his self-deprecating useless drunk corner despite an amazing start.
- I wish dyes weren't tribe-specific, and while the Carja have fantastic taste, the Nora stuff in particular suffers a bit.
- Man, those human champions and bosses need to be sent to the frontline because they can probably headbutt a Thunderjaw.
- The final fight in the main plot isn't as bad as the one in ZD in terms of being compromised by how powerful and overlevelled Aloy is by then, but still more of a breeze than it should have been.
- I think the audio mix has some issues. While the quality is great, I had to halve music volume to begin with, and some machine noises felt a lot more subdued than the primal fear I remember from ZD,

- You gotta fiddle with display/visual settings. For example I had to poke hard in the eye stuff like bloom, the latency thing and frame generation, or they would cause substantial light/blur glitches.
- The hunter pouch revolver system allows for more slots than you can possibly ever actually use. IDK if it's intended to be not too convenient but yeah, it's not convenient.
- Really wish games stopped doing this "you can't get this random chest until you unlock this specific story mcguffin whose only purpose is letting you access this random chest" thing. I don't want to go back to old places just to blow up a wall and get a chest.
- Ultimately not a big issue, but collectables (ie, the sensor drones) could really use not being that negligible in terms of even cosmetic rewards.

- By the time I got there, I didn't really want to engage with a new area to explore and murderize. Gameplay fatigue was naturally starting to kick in, and I wasn't particularly interested in the new machines or outfits.
- Even the ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ amazing diving flying mount!!!! came too late to be properly enjoyed.
- However, the story is good, the villain is fantastic, the final fight is AMAZING.

I miss this game already. Maybe I might even replay it as NG+ in a while, which I hardly ever do.