Short version:

There's so much misandry in this game, I can't enjoy the story.

The skill tree isn't all that great. Lots of things I don't really need or want, attack combos that must be memorized to use. Weak valor systems.

Its hard to actually play the way you want, with lots of new elements that make no sense or are just useless.

The story in the game changed quite a bit and though I've not yet finished the game (almost), it falls very flat and is very predictable due to the woke nature of the game.

------------------

I've tried real hard to enjoy this game. However a lot of it is frankly terribly written garbage with extremely predictable outcomes. In multiple occasion you come across someone complaining about men, and in many instances you meet a a new character that you know its gonna become a primary. Its female, and strong, and intelligent, while the male they hang around with is gonna suddenly become evil or corrupt or is just selfish in some way. The game suffers a LOT of woke features. I never had a problem with the first game's writing style. This game takes it to an all new extreme where the writing constantly puts down men. Its a combination of feminism and misandrism.

In relation to woke, I don't actually encounter any lesbian/gay couples or trans individuals, you'd think the game devs would have written those two factors in for extra bonus points, you know? They totally could have, after all. Especially for the uh, advanced group of people you meet later being totally capable of the transgender stuff. I'm being vague deliberately to not spoil anything. Not that I'm mad about this or anything, it was just surprising that the game focuses solely on raising women up while also bashing men down. I guess it makes sense based on the writing time of the game. It was most likely written around late 2010s or early 2020. Years before its release date. Where as the first game was written well before the rise of new age woke garbage. So it makes a lot of sense why this game's so heavy with it.

However, I can handle a game having strong female characters. I can't handle being constantly slapped down for being a man. I'm so sick of the game treating men like ♥♥♥♥. There was a single story in the game I experienced so far involving Las Vegas that I actually liked, with three male characters who were actually well written and I loved that story. That mission was quite honestly refreshing and made me feel good again. I thought maybe not all of the game is misandrist and maybe it was just a cluster of it at the beginning, but nope. That was the one and only mission that really portrayed men being good people.

As for the non-woke parts;
I really disliked how they changed the saviors of humanity to be more evil. They even ruined Elisabet to a degree by having her help "the bad white man" design a virus to destroy databases and whatnot so that Gaia couldn't be stolen. Why would someone who wants to help save humanity, restrict giving people moving to a new world, something that could make that new world a second Eden? This really annoyed me how she just became a bad person right then and there. On top of the fact that other characters were increased in their evil ways too. It was a lot of ugh.

In relation to combat;
I really don't like this skill tree. You even find things unrelated to the skills in other trees. Like I can find spear related stuff in the ranged tree and ranged stuff in the melee tree. Lots of skill combination attacks in the melee tree that you'll have to commit to memory to use which is something I simply can't do. Many of the skill upgrades I unlocked were totally worthless to me, didn't do squat to help me. I ended up just not caring what I unlocked anymore towards the end because there was nothing that'd benefit me anymore past like, level 30 so I began just unlocking random stuff for no reason just because.

Enemies don't seem like they were in the first game, where you could target strategic points. Instead it was more bullet shields, where you just throw as many arrows as you can at it till it dies, hopefully hitting the right spots. Some enemies moving so fast that targeting a weak point was impossible. The snake for example. Even in slow motion. In this case the only time you could do actual damage was to be undetected and wait for silly AI to go "Hmm, I got hit in the eye with an arrow, must have been the wind."

I found the experience of this game to be relatively meh, compared to Zero Dawn. It felt less story rich, less content, kind of empty and void of feeling. Maybe they focused too much on building up their new characters to actually add side content you could discover in places. I loved scanning things in Zero Dawn to discover notebooks, letters, etc, finding voice logs and such. Even the old world visual spots which this game doesn't seem to have. You don't get as much of that this game.

I did like the mountain climbing thing they did. No longer using only solid painted ledges to climb. At the start of the game I thought it was every mountain and wall. You could see various grab points so you could climb any surface. However later in the game I was disappointed to find they barely did it any past the mountain you pass through. That was unique. I understand that it was probably time consuming drawing those grab points all over the place though so thats not a factor on my decision on rating the game. I did like it, just wish they did it on all mountains.

I didn't like the flight system. When you finally gain the ability to fly, it is the worst flight ever. It forces you to fly 5 feet above the ground and get stopped by every tree and big rock. Ascending takes forever, is really pathetic. Then when you go forward, you drop down to the ground again like a stone. This was the biggest letdown ever. I was so happy you could finally fly, and they nerfed it to oblivion.

Even worse, I hacked a raptor and found I could ride it, I was so happy cause I thought I'd gain its ranged attacks and such. But nope. it becomes a very slow mount that has the same standard melee or heavy melee attack. If you're gonna nerf the creature to be a mount, let the damn thing move faster.

All in all, I didn't want to rate this game down. It was a birthday gift (I bought with birthday money), and it makes me feel bad that I ended up wasting my gift money on something that makes me feel bad when I play any part of its story. I can play and ignore story parts, side missions, dialogs, but I loved the first game for its story and wanted to experience some more story again.

Frankly, I don't think I'll be buying a third version of this game. I lost the will to support PlayStation's stuff anymore, if this is how they're gonna treat people. I may still try to play the game, finish out the story. Add additional thoughts here later. I think for the moment I might need a break. I'll leave you with this clip though.

https://www.twitch.tv/vasvadum/clip/ScrumptiousStormyWoodcockArgieB8-rAdaeUV9rxasAo3h

Short version: There's so much misandry in this game, I can't enjoy the story. The skill tree isn't all that great. Lots of things I don't really need or want, attack combos that must be memorized to use. Weak valor systems. Its hard to actually play the way you want, with lots of new elements that make no sense or are just useless. The story in the game changed quite a bit and though I've not yet finished the game (almost), it falls very flat and is very predictable due to the woke nature of the game. ------------------ I've tried real hard to enjoy this game. However a lot of it is frankly terribly written garbage with extremely predictable outcomes. In multiple occasion you come across someone complaining about men, and in many instances you meet a a new character that you know its gonna become a primary. Its female, and strong, and intelligent, while the male they hang around with is gonna suddenly become evil or corrupt or is just selfish in some way. The game suffers a LOT of woke features. I never had a problem with the first game's writing style. This game takes it to an all new extreme where the writing constantly puts down men. Its a combination of feminism and misandrism. In relation to woke, I don't actually encounter any lesbian/gay couples or trans individuals, you'd think the game devs would have written those two factors in for extra bonus points, you know? They totally could have, after all. Especially for the uh, advanced group of people you meet later being totally capable of the transgender stuff. I'm being vague deliberately to not spoil anything. Not that I'm mad about this or anything, it was just surprising that the game focuses solely on raising women up while also bashing men down. I guess it makes sense based on the writing time of the game. It was most likely written around late 2010s or early 2020. Years before its release date. Where as the first game was written well before the rise of new age woke garbage. So it makes a lot of sense why this game's so heavy with it. However, I can handle a game having strong female characters. I can't handle being constantly slapped down for being a man. I'm so sick of the game treating men like shit. There was a single story in the game I experienced so far involving Las Vegas that I actually liked, with three male characters who were actually well written and I loved that story. That mission was quite honestly refreshing and made me feel good again. I thought maybe not all of the game is misandrist and maybe it was just a cluster of it at the beginning, but nope. That was the one and only mission that really portrayed men being good people. As for the non-woke parts; I really disliked how they changed the saviors of humanity to be more evil. [spoiler]They even ruined Elisabet to a degree by having her help "the bad white man" design a virus to destroy databases and whatnot so that Gaia couldn't be stolen. Why would someone who wants to help save humanity, restrict giving people moving to a new world, something that could make that new world a second Eden? This really annoyed me how she just became a bad person right then and there.[/spoiler] On top of the fact that other characters were increased in their evil ways too. It was a lot of ugh. In relation to combat; I really don't like this skill tree. You even find things unrelated to the skills in other trees. Like I can find spear related stuff in the ranged tree and ranged stuff in the melee tree. Lots of skill combination attacks in the melee tree that you'll have to commit to memory to use which is something I simply can't do. Many of the skill upgrades I unlocked were totally worthless to me, didn't do squat to help me. I ended up just not caring what I unlocked anymore towards the end because there was nothing that'd benefit me anymore past like, level 30 so I began just unlocking random stuff for no reason just because. Enemies don't seem like they were in the first game, where you could target strategic points. Instead it was more bullet shields, where you just throw as many arrows as you can at it till it dies, hopefully hitting the right spots. Some enemies moving so fast that targeting a weak point was impossible. The snake for example. Even in slow motion. In this case the only time you could do actual damage was to be undetected and wait for silly AI to go "Hmm, I got hit in the eye with an arrow, must have been the wind." I found the experience of this game to be relatively meh, compared to Zero Dawn. It felt less story rich, less content, kind of empty and void of feeling. Maybe they focused too much on building up their new characters to actually add side content you could discover in places. I loved scanning things in Zero Dawn to discover notebooks, letters, etc, finding voice logs and such. Even the old world visual spots which this game doesn't seem to have. You don't get as much of that this game. I did like the mountain climbing thing they did. No longer using only solid painted ledges to climb. At the start of the game I thought it was every mountain and wall. You could see various grab points so you could climb any surface. However later in the game I was disappointed to find they barely did it any past the mountain you pass through. That was unique. I understand that it was probably time consuming drawing those grab points all over the place though so thats not a factor on my decision on rating the game. I did like it, just wish they did it on all mountains. I didn't like the flight system. When you finally gain the ability to fly, it is the worst flight ever. It forces you to fly 5 feet above the ground and get stopped by every tree and big rock. Ascending takes forever, is really pathetic. Then when you go forward, you drop down to the ground again like a stone. This was the biggest letdown ever. I was so happy you could finally fly, and they nerfed it to oblivion. Even worse, I hacked a raptor and found I could ride it, I was so happy cause I thought I'd gain its ranged attacks and such. But nope. it becomes a very slow mount that has the same standard melee or heavy melee attack. If you're gonna nerf the creature to be a mount, let the damn thing move faster. All in all, I didn't want to rate this game down. It was a birthday gift (I bought with birthday money), and it makes me feel bad that I ended up wasting my gift money on something that makes me feel bad when I play any part of its story. I can play and ignore story parts, side missions, dialogs, but I loved the first game for its story and wanted to experience some more story again. Frankly, I don't think I'll be buying a third version of this game. I lost the will to support PlayStation's stuff anymore, if this is how they're gonna treat people. I may still try to play the game, finish out the story. Add additional thoughts here later. I think for the moment I might need a break. I'll leave you with this clip though. https://www.twitch.tv/vasvadum/clip/ScrumptiousStormyWoodcockArgieB8-rAdaeUV9rxasAo3h