Just finished it, all side quests and main story, power cells and best armor attained, I haven't collected the figurines or done the hunting grounds though, it's just too boring running around collecting ceramic junk, that's not what amounts to exciting or engaging gameplay for me.
Took me about 45 hours in total, I was level 50 at around the 35 hour mark though, which is kinda boring since there was literally no incentive to keep playing as far as leveling and gear were concerned. Have all skills save for two (Extra Ammo crafting and top Scavenger skill).
It just feels a bit empty to me, all in all, compared to The Witcher 3 where I spent almost 100 hours on the main game alone, without having done anywhere near all I could. And the sidequests are really quite bad, probably 75% of the dialogue is exposition and combat is way, way, way too easy even on Hard mode (I can easily take on two Thunderjaw at once now and Stormbirds go down without causing me any damage at all). The game also suffers under the typical open world conundrum that they can't seem to shake; "time is of the essence, but please take your time" and it sets up too many moments and scenes that are supposed to add stress and lend a sense of urgency, but that end up being just more or the same pacing, this is especially true closer to the end.
It started really well, all things considered, then the middle was quite fun and a lot more challenging, but it sort of crumbled at the final 1/3 and became too simple, way too predictable and sporting a story that isn't given nearly enough zest in the acting department to pull off without becoming a bit cheesy.
Final pros and cons:
Pros:
Staggering visuals, asbolutely amazing.
Incredibly performance, I've only seen low fps dips 4-5 times through all my time with the game.
Great music and sound, I especially like the ominous cello tones that play during encounters, it sticks! It reminds me of the first Resident Evil for some reason and is a perfect piece of ambient mood setting.
Combat against robots can be fun, especially in the middle part where foes get a lot stronger and your gear is still not all that.
Skill and crafting system does its job quite well and fits the game nicely.
Some of the best bodily animation I've ever seen in a game.
World is really big and has a fair amount of mobs.
Controls on the ground are incredibly smooth.
Aloy is overall a neat protagonist, despite not doing anything original, she's a great example on how to create proper female protagonists in gaming!
Photo mode is actually really cool, which is a first for me in any game.
Cons:
Story is quite bland and narration is overly heavy on flamboyant dialogue and the often cheesy line delivery and lack of emotion makes it fall somewhat flat, the "tell, don't show" factor is really heavy, and as a person with an above average clue on writing, structuring and pacing, this becomes annoying and a little cheap.
Climbing controls are really wonky and lack any feedback, there are also annoying animations you can't turn off, like when you make a bigger sideways leap and it runs in slomo, this gets really old really fast.
Combat against humans is a complete miss, they are dumb, provide zero challenge throughout the entire game and melee combat against smaller foes is somewhat unresponsive and cumbersome, Aloy will make huge swinging moves that sometimes screws up the camera as she tracks the attack after the foe that is nearest and it's often hard to strike the right foe when there are several, leading to frustration when you want to down one by one instead of whacking simply the one that happens to be in the way of the hit. A lock-on system would do wonders in melee, but would make archery way too easy.
Inventory system is a real pain, especially selling and buying things, as you can only purchase single units of more or less everything besides ammo, this sersiously needs a patch. The reward boxes are also annoying as they cannot be dropped, I have like 30 boxes cluttering the screen that are filled with rocks and traps I never use. I actually ended up spending time tossing rocks into the water and filling up my ammo with new ones from crates, this took a lot of time and is an insanely annoying thing to go through where a simple "drop item" could have applied to the boxes in their entirety instead. Discarding items in a game awash with useless items is far beyond a must. Or how about selling one and one trap really slowly, then exit the trading screen and add new ones to the stock from reward boxes and repeating this process, it's quite simply ridiculously clunky and poorly though out.
Animations are overly long at times, like the constant annoyance of taking a fair amount of time picking herbs and wood, for instance, this should be instant like with looting. Open world games have a knack for this bs, it seems. It's also annoying when Aloy suddenly triggers an animation on a Stealth Kill that drives her out of cover and keeps her visible for several seconds delivering her "cool" spear moves.
Combat overall is way too simple, as soon as you master the timing of rolls and get Tear arrows, there is no foe in the world that can really pose much of a threat to you unless you make a mistake, or roll into a tree or rock due to the camera (this happens a fair bit). Combat against humans may as well have been removed entirely, it gives you zero satisfaction to down human enemies in this game.
Game lacks depth, the lack of variaton in gear and mods is frustrating, you can't even change or upgrade your melee weapon (more or less, with one exception) besides increasing your damage through skill. Being able to add at least mods to it would add more depth, different types of elemental damage, more Tear bonus for light strikes, or even entire weapons specializing in heavy or light strikers (yes, there are skills adding factors, but this does nothing to improve the loot and gear system at all). Heck; how a shield or some sort of parry system? Rolling around and then looking at overly long "WHACK!" animations is not very satisfying and melee feels slow and uninteresting compared to archery. I guess I'd want more RPG elements overall, I hope the inevitable sequel will add more of this.
Points of interest are quite few and most are, well, just not very interesting. I did love the cauldrons though, great design!
Overall:
The game is really good, don't get me wrong, but it has some fairly big and very obvious weaknesses so I'm sitting here thinking whether or not people have played the same game as me. Talk of genre defining or generation defining is immense hyperbole for me, it has way too many and way too big holes in the mesh to fish up praise like that, in my honest opinion.
As it stand, it's a technical masterpiece with amazing visual and audiovisual components but rather shallow core components, that are still glued together in such a way as to make it entertaining most of the time. I did enjoy it, obviously, but it has to sit neatly a bit underneath the all time greats of gaming and also in the open world scene. All in all, Guerrilla have done a remarkable job, given their lack of experience and dramatic transition into an unknown genre and they are most certainly going to be one of the PS brand's cornerstones as far as developers go. Great job, GG.
Final score from the grumpy pope who complains about everything and is the sole reason we can't have nice things: 8.0.
