Horizon Zero Dawn Complete Edition review

Horizon Zero Dawn was originally released in 2017 on PlayStation 4, and PC users had to wait a few years.

The version I'm reviewing today is the Complete Edition from Steam, released in 2020 (including the DLC).

Meet Aloy: A Fragile Little Killing Machine

This page has been updated on July, 18, 2026. Revised and Corrected by Claude.

In Horizon Zero Dawn you play as Aloy... a girl!

Yes — if you like to customize your own character, it won't be possible: Aloy is THE main protagonist of the story. So no muscular hero, only a fragile little red-haired girl... ahah... Fragile... That's how she looks, yeah! But she's capable of free climbing like no one else, staying balanced on ropes at high altitude, and killing machines that would destroy entire villages! So in fact this little girl (and a beautiful one, if I may... shame she's only virtual) is basically a lovely killing machine. 😎

Say hello to Aloy posing in a post-apo landscape — and of course it's an RPG, so the skill trees on the right.

As for the skills in this game, it depends which difficulty mode you choose. But if, like me, you went for ULTRA HARD, I highly recommend taking sneaky skills like Silent Strike and Lure, as well as the skills that let you gather as many resources as possible from killed machines. Why? Because the harder the mode, the more you'll play hide and seek with the machines. So you'll need to trick them as much as you can, otherwise you'll be one-shotted by most of them 😅

Then for the resources you can gather from machines, wood or plants: the more the better. With the right skills, you'll always have plenty in your inventory. Besides, on the higher difficulties, all merchant prices are very high!

Ultra Hard Feels Like Dark Souls

When I said "fragile little girl"... it's not that far from the truth! Aloy is a killing machine when she uses her bow, yes...

But whenever she's hit by a machine, she takes a LOT of damage! And if you're on Ultra Hard, this game will feel like playing Dark Souls. At the beginning, most machines — even the smallest ones — will kill you in 1 to 3 hits if you're lucky. And if you add to the mix that you're still learning how to properly use your bow with a gamepad, trust me, the first hours of exploration and hunting will be: Try, Die, Quickload, Try, Die, Quickload... etc.

That's why, to ease the frustration, it's better to sneak through the tall grass, lure your enemies and silent strike them!

Silent Strike can only kill small enemies, so don't expect to silent strike the big ones... Still, it'll ease your start.

And if you have the right skills, you'll have enough resources to craft and trade with merchants!

Resources are very important in Horizon Zero Dawn, as they grant you the ability to craft your own ammunition and traps. But also to enhance the capacity of your quivers (to carry more arrows) and your satchels (to throw more bombs), and to buy from merchants — since trading requires resources too, not only the local currency (which in this game is metal shards).

And like in other games out there, there are RARE resources. If you want to maximize your chances of finding them, you need to take the skills associated with the Gatherer / Hoarding tree. (I took them from the very beginning 😌)

Use Everything at Your Disposal!

Your bow and spear are not your only friends! Laying traps to take down a bigger foe is also part of the fight. You're a fragile human being, and your enemies are mostly machines made of steel and metal. So don't underestimate their power — you need to know your enemies' weaknesses and prepare accordingly!

Lay traps to shock (stun) your opponents, or use fire arrows, for example, to make them burn!

Don't be ashamed of using any trick you can to prevail — the machines won't go easy on you!

Override: Turning the Machines Against Their Own

We talked about traps, about the spear and the bow — but it's not over!

You can also Override (charm) or Corrupt machines! Meaning the machines will fight for you 👍

Override is achieved by sneaking up to a machine and holding the button to override it. The bigger the machine, the longer it takes — and during that time, all the other machines can still attack you. So make sure you're wearing some stealth armor, or lure the machine into the tall grass to override it.

You can even mount a few machines to travel faster.

Though personally, I found the "mount" skill — as well as all the other skills related to "machine repair" — completely useless.

Traveling and exploring, even on Ultra Hard, isn't that difficult. Of course we have to sneak a lot, from bush to bush, but with all the campfires you can save at and fast travel to, there's really no need for a mount.

Overriding a Strider on the left, then mounting it on the right... Useless, but cool I guess?

Overriding upgrades will require you to explore Vaults !

You see... it would be too easy to just override any machine in the game!

Because having a machine on your side makes every fight FAR easier! Especially on Ultra Hard 😅

But at the beginning you're only capable of overriding small machines — even if at some point you'll also be able to use "Corruption Arrows", which can turn ANY machine to your side, even if you don't have the skill to override it yet. So to upgrade your overriding capabilities, you'll need to upgrade your spear by exploring the vaults of the ancients 😉

Vaults are ancient places filled with technology and machines, where most fights take place in close quarters. And in a game where running to cover is encouraged, vaults are dangerous places compared to the rest.

Entering a vault on the left, and hiding from a medium machine on the right.

It's very important to visit and complete every vault in Horizon Zero Dawn! Being able to override machines is decisive in many fights. The only thing you need to know is... there's a BOSS fight at the end of every vault, and for those you can make VERY GOOD USE of all your traps before starting them.

I'd just advise new players to STOCK UP on everything before entering a vault: traps, healing potions, resistance potions, arrows, and plenty of resources to craft even more. Because once you're inside... there's no escape!

A Big Open World for a Great RPG !

Apart from a few quests you have to complete to unlock certain parts of the world, the game is wide open.

Most of the things you can see... you can reach on foot.

Although, as in every open world out there, there are invisible barriers. There are no invisible walls in HZD, but if you go too far, a message appears on your screen saying "if you continue this way, your last savegame will be loaded".

Anyway, on Ultra graphics the game just looks AWESOME! It's not only an interesting game, it's a beautiful one!

After climbing high enough, the beauty of HZD unveils itself before your very eyes.

The Fog of War and the Tall Necks

The fog of war was popularized in old video games: everything you haven't explored on the map yet stays masked by a fog. It encourages exploration and creates suspense — who knows what lies beyond?

In HZD there's a way to unveil big parts of the fog without exploring everything on foot... and it's called the TALL NECK! Tall Necks are invulnerable machines containing all the data on the area surrounding them. So if you climb onto the neck... of a Tall Neck... you can override it to obtain all that data, and the fog of war disappears!

Preparing your jump onto the Tall Neck, then, once overridden, taking a leap of faith to go down.

Tall Necks are represented by quests of a certain level. The Tall Necks themselves aren't aggressive at all — though if you stand in front of one while it's walking its own course, you'll be smashed to pieces (quickload!). But it's all about the area they walk through: it's not deserted, and most of the time it's full of machines! So for easy Tall Necks, the area will be filled with small machines... and for harder ones, it'll be medium/large machines, or bandit settlements!

It's highly recommended to clear an area before climbing a Tall Neck... otherwise you'll get shot while climbing.

Aloy the Free Climber (Don't Look Down)

I hope you're not afraid of heights! Because Aloy is a true monkey and free climber!

There are many places scattered around the mountains where Aloy can reach heights no one else would dare to venture. Apart from the Banuk, of course — people living in the frozen wilds who are used to living in inaccessible places.

Even if it's a video game... it's truly impressive (and scary) to see Aloy climbing heights with dizzying drops below!

A Banuk route on your left (crazy motherfuckers...), and Aloy free climbing on the right.

There's truly an impressive piece of world design here — the routes to climb mountains are always subtle.

Challenging Battles All the Way!

So yeah, the smaller machines you can kill in one "silent strike" or in just a few attacks...

But of course there are also very nasty machines that look big... even from a distance!!

For these you'll need special arrows, or even special weapons! Like the Rattler, which acts as a medieval machine gun, or the Ropecaster — super useful to pin flying machines to the ground with ropes!

Thunderjaw on the left, and a Stormbird on your right! Two of the biggest machines in the game.

The first time you encounter these machines, it's like playing Dark Souls! They have a lot of HP, big plates of armor covering their bodies, protecting their weak spots... And if you play like me on Ultra Hard, depending on their attack they can literally ONE-SHOT you! But of course, after some time and a few levels, they're still strong but can be killed quite fast.

120+ Hours, a Level Cap, and a Netflix Series That Died

I could go on and on with this game...

I've spent 120+ hours of my life on it! That's quite a lot for a casual gamer like me. And that's because this is a great role-playing game, with an impressively living world and a story so good that Netflix wanted to adapt it!

Edit 2026: Well... that didn't happen. The Netflix series was quietly cancelled in July 2024, in the wake of a Rolling Stone investigation into showrunner Steve Blackman, accused by 12 former colleagues of running a hostile workplace. Netflix dropped two of his projects at once — Horizon and Orbital. Other reasons floated around too: script quality, and the sheer budget needed to put robot dinosaurs on screen.

But my point still stands, because Sony has since put a Horizon Zero Dawn MOVIE into development (announced in early 2025, alongside a Helldivers adaptation). No creative team, no cast, no release date yet. So the industry still wants this world — it just hasn't figured out how to make it 😏

The level cap in this game is 60. But I only reached it during the very last mission of the DLC, and I'd already finished the main game. So the level cap isn't really an issue, unless of course you spend too much time grinding machines.

My Problem With the DLC

As for the DLC, I have to say I found it a little too "WOKE" for my taste...

In the base game, Aloy would notice that everyone always had something to ask of her — of course, otherwise there'd be no game 😉 — and she'd complain about it a little. Which was understandable! But in the DLC, she starts caring about everything and everyone, even NPCs she's just met for the first time... It's like she was turning into Mother Teresa.

And then, still in the DLC, there are dialogue options where Aloy cares about the feelings and emotions of absolutely everyone. Even the Artificial Intelligence starts to care... It's fine to talk about feelings and emotions if it's only a small portion of the dialogue. But don't make an ENTIRE conversation out of it! Because it's simply boring, and it doesn't fit the context. We're talking about survival here — we're not lying on a psychologist's couch, for fuck's sake!

Don't get me wrong: Horizon Zero Dawn Complete Edition is a GREAT game!

But this "WOKE" culture — which has already messed up The Witcher Season 3 (many fans believe that's why Henry Cavill walked away, though he's never said so publicly), Castlevania Nocturne (too bad, the original 4 seasons were great!) and more recently Halo Season 2 (when Season 1 was excellent!) — is unfortunately pushing into video games too.

At some point I hope the writers, or the lead project managers pushing this, will see their mistake. They want to please everyone, and end up losing a lot of people in the process!

You can't please everyone. Be careful about your audience.

Edit 2026 — a technical detail I didn't know when I wrote this, and it's worth knowing.

It turns out The Frozen Wilds runs on a hidden, adaptive dialogue system: Aloy's lines change automatically depending on when you play the DLC — before, during, or after the main story. The game adjusts her dialogue to reflect how much of the world's truth she's uncovered so far.

And Guerrilla designed The Frozen Wilds to be played in the middle of the campaign, around level 30-40. Me? I played it after finishing the main story, at level 60. Which means I got post-revelation Aloy: a woman who has just learned she's the clone of someone who gave up everything so that life on Earth could exist at all, and who now carries that legacy on her back.

So — woke writing, or just me playing it in the wrong order? Honestly, probably a bit of both. I still think the therapy-speak was laid on way too thick, and I'll die on that hill. But if you're about to start the DLC: play it mid-campaign like it was designed to be played, and tell me in the comments whether you get the same Mother Teresa I got 😏

Though i am perplexed about that adaptive system, which Claude AI found out after some fact-checking... Because the DLC was quite hard when i went there, even close to the level cap of 60. And the stuff i got there could have made the end game completely trivial... So, only take this "designed to be played mid-campaign" with a grain of salt 🤔

Homage to Lance Reddick

Lance Reddick — an actor I'd never seen before playing HZD. And despite the fact that we don't see him at every corner of the game, he made a great impression on me. He was the most mysterious character in the game, and I guess his voice contributed a lot to that mysterious charm. That's also why he voice acted in so many other games.

Well... after completing the game, I looked into the sequel, which I knew was going to be released on PC. And that's where I learned, with sadness, that Lance Reddick had passed away in 2023. The same year I started playing HZD.

Lance Reddick on the left, and a sad face of Aloy on the right... which is also how I feel when I look at this picture.

+ Best training for PC users to learn how to aim with a gamepad
+ Beautiful — astonishing work on a design / graphics level
+ Remarkable story and quest design from A to Z
+ Machine design is incredibly realistic!
+ VERY CHALLENGING on Ultra Hard

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- Level capped at 60, and a few useless skills
- Maybe a bit too "Woke" for my taste in the DLC...