Horizon Forbidden West: Burning Shores Review

gamespot.com:

Aloy returns to explore the wreckage of Los Angeles, and it's just the right amount of Horizon to scratch that itch.

By Steve Watts on

Horizon Forbidden West was too big. I enjoyed the game overall, but my main takeaway from the experience was that it was entirely too much of a good thing. At a certain point the open world just felt overwhelming, and as a result the sprawling story began to lose its punch. Burning Shores, the first and only announced major expansion to Forbidden West, takes place in an entirely new area with a narrowed focus that hits the spot for Horizon fans, while introducing a handful of creative new mechanics and weaving in intriguing plot threads to pay off in the future.

Unlike the Frozen Wilds, the major expansion to the first game, Burning Shores is explicitly an epilogue to the main campaign, not a side story. It picks up exactly where the cliffhanger ending left off, and it heavily references a mount you only received near the very end of the campaign.

Spoilers for Horizon Forbidden West follow.

This placement after the campaign makes it a special treat for fans who have seen their way through, but anyone else will have their access gated behind finishing an already substantial game. As someone who finished the main game nearly a year ago, I was eager to have another journey into this world I loved. If it had come as soon as I finished the campaign, I probably would have felt too fatigued.

Guerrilla couldn't have predicted the death of actor Lance Reddick, who provided the voice and likeness of the cunning Sylens, so his appearance here is bittersweet. Sylens bookends the experience--both pointing Aloy in the direction of her new quest at the beginning, and stage-setting their next moves at the