I'm enjoying my playthrough of HZD yet can't ignore the areas it fails at horribly, especially after playing BotW.

After 18 hours of playing my biggest issue with it still is that it doesn't like you to explore at all. Climbing is restricted to marked paths and you can only jump up to marked edges. Other edges might still look like you should easily be ale to grab onto them, yet if it doesn't have the right scuff marks, you'll simply slide off. The only way to 'climb' is to bunny hop up the mountain side by jumping from outcrop to outcrop. At least you can still conquer mountains that way, however:

In my first few days playing (before Zelda) I already quickly ran into invisible walls, can't enter area messages and leaving play area, turn around or previous save will be loaded. Next to that, there's nothing to be found apart from admittedly gorgeous views.

Howere there no way to save off the beaten path. When I started HZD over after beating Zelda I went to the proving grounds before doing the quest. You can get up there with some work, can follow the trail (although the ziplines are missing) yet when you get to the end you can't descend to the town due to a huge invisible wall. I tried to go around but the game killed me sliding me down an invisible wall to my death, going back to a 45 minute old save.

I thought things would get better after I unlocked the rest of the map, yet maybe I'm still not far enough. Next I tried to escape during one of the early quests to no avail. Leaving quest area, can't do another 95 steps to get whatever is there.


So on to do the proper unlocking of the next region, sure it will be better now. Nope, when trying to explore I got stuck between a rock and a hard place. Wedged in between a Can't enter area wall and Turn around now threat my attempt at a shortcut ended in getting stuck in the terrain. See that nountain over there, you can't go there.


Trying to trek back I ended up here, stuck. Can't enter the only way out of here.

Luckily I still had a fast travel bag to save having to reload.

I tried to make this shortcut here, is that so unreasonable for an openworld game

This is just one example, every time I try to venture into the 'dark' it quickly gets shut down by the game.


Unfortunately it's not only exploration that's discouraged. Doing quests in alternative ways is not tolerated either. I was doing do revenge of the Nora quest where you have to sneak and blow up a bunch of blaze. Figuring i could take them out myself I did just that only to run into an infinite respwan mechanism. I took out about 100 guys (from the initial 10-15 in the area), great xp, inventory full, yet going nowhere. The simply keep coming in the most dumb way possible bodies piling up. I ran back to the entrance of the area to get the respawning to stop for them to add another 30 bodies to the pile there. They weren't allowed to follow me in that area with their own invisible wall in the way, yet happily died on the ledge.

Can't get all that loot though, those are on the otherside of an invisible wall.  Since they took up patrolling the ridge the only way to 'fix' the quest was to shoot one at a time in stealth and hide until the alerts are gone again (Killing one still alerts everyone, even out of sight with silent strike or a headshot, even when the corspe is hidden...) Repeating this 4 times the patrol was gone, so I did what the game wants, no respawns anymore, cavalry runs in, quest was over in 2 minutes. Boring.


Combat is kinda mixed experience. It's fun fighting the machines yet most of the time it comes down to bunny hopping around (to stay in slow motion) while peppering weak spots with arrows, switching between status effect arrows and damage, with the occasional dodge thrown in when they get too close. It takes a lot of arrows to take out the bigger ones, yet the mechanics don't seem to change. It's still fun though, reminds me of the good times with Max Payne. Plus you can mix it up with sneak strikes and turning machines to help you. Still feels a bit silly to jump around the battlefield like that.


I hope its true that the story gets good later on as that will have to carry the rest of the game. I'm already halfway through 'completing' the character with upgrades (lvl 25) so that honeymoon period is over already. I hope a sequel can fix the exploration and rigid quest design. Lots of potential here, yet not a lot of room to play with the mechanics.

The trial grounds are fun though, nice challenges. Take that with 1 second to spare.

if you think exploration is discouraged you are going to miss out on a lot of stuff.

The only invisible walls of the game are when you're trying to get out of the world... No game lets you out of the world...

If I remember the Revenge of the Nora quest properly (I could be thinking of another quest), you hit that respawn machine, but this is the only one.

I honestly don't know what invisible walls you're talking about though. I've literally ran up some mountains by just constantly jumping. You can get to any part of the map, assuming it's not outside the play area.

Save money to buy the purple travel bag, it gives you unlimited fast travel. The game also has a lot of camp sites so travelling is no issue. You don't even have to touch a camp site, just being near it activates it for fast travel.

Fighting humans are lame, I'll agree, but the robot fights are well done. There's a lot of weapons you can buy that opens up different strategies. The fights get pretty varied too depending on what strengths and weaknesses an enemy has. Also trying to hit those target points  with the right weapon is fun and rewarding.

Booooooo!!!
Let's keep the Zelda - HZD comparisons coming.

I get it Botw is the be all end all of open world games(not just open world but of all games apparently) now according to lots of people in this site.

GG is no stranger to having their games compared to established franchises but I imagine this helps get their game some publicity. I recall picking up Killzone because I didn't own an XBox yet, I wanted to play Halo and I had heard Killzone was Sony's answer to Halo...

Anyways, BotW and HZD are married to each other at this point. I need Link x Aloy fanart now.

I'm curious about this topic so I'm tagging.

Yawn

Check the map I posted up there. Both sides are within the play area, both unlocked. Yet it doesn't let me take a very reasonable shortcut to where I put the flag. Mountain goating up the hill was no problem, yet an invisible wall on one side and the threat to reload on the other wedged me in. I understand it when it's the actual edge of the world as when I was trying to swim out of the map. Yet I seem to frequently run into them inside the map too and they were inside the quest area too with different invisible wall rules to AI and the player. They can't follow me in some places, I can't follow them in others. It's not game breaking, yet this kind of game design belongs in the past.

I never had this problem because I didn't try go out of the map. I just explored the world we were given and did all the quests collectibles.