Horizon Forbidden West Therapy Challenge

Horizon Forbidden West was originally released in 2022 on PlayStation 4 / 5, and PC users had to wait until 2024.

The version I'm reviewing today is the Complete Edition from Steam, released in 2024 (including the DLC).
Patch version: 1.5.80.0

Improved Skills, Weapon Techniques & Valor Surges

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

Alright! Let's go for another round with Aloy, the Savior of Meridian!

The good thing in Forbidden West (FW) is that they kept the original skills you could unlock with skill points in Horizon Zero Dawn (HZD), and made them even more powerful in FW, provided you spend the points to improve them. For example, in HZD you could learn to concentrate and slow down time — like the "bullet time" in Max Payne — to aim more efficiently. In FW you have this skill right from the start, but you can improve it to last longer!

And besides these improvements to the basic skills, you also have Weapon Techniques to learn — like nocking 3 arrows on your bow at once, or emptying a whole clip with another weapon. Basic skill improvements + weapon techniques add real dynamism to the battles! And it's not over... because FW also introduces Valor Surges! Valor is a gauge that fills every time you hit a weak spot or take damage... and it's a real game changer!

Valor Surges, like everything else, need to be unlocked with skill points, and each has up to 3 levels of power! Some act like a potion giving you a nice % of damage resistance for as long as the surge is active — and you can even keep it active longer, because the gauge depletes slowly while the surge runs, but you keep fighting, hitting weak spots and taking damage, so you refill it while fighting!! 😎 All of this adds real dynamism to every fight, and even more during boss fights! Because those will require Valor Surges if you want to win on the hardest difficulties like Ultra Hard, where you can literally be one-shot!

The new Aloy face on the left (just slightly older) and a small part of the skill tree on the right 😊

Speaking of Aloy's face... there were some arguments online about how Aloy supposedly became "ugly" in this sequel compared to HZD. Well, first of all, she's older than in the first episode, and her look really depends on the armor she's wearing. Long after this first-cutscene screenshot, I found and equipped the Oseram Forester armor, and trust me...

Aloy looks GORGEOUS in it!

More than just words — below you'll see the weapons and armor you can find and modify to make them even stronger and more resistant! And if you know how the Horizon series works, modifying your equipment is VERY IMPORTANT to make fights easier! You can also level up, but levels only add skill points and 10 more hit points each time... So it's not about improving strength, constitution or agility — none of that in Horizon!

Modifying your gear! And as you can see on the right... Aloy is definitely not ugly in Forbidden West! 😊

As you can see on these screenshots, modifying your weapons and armor requires a lot of ingredients! And for the latest upgrades, you'll need to spend time killing the deadliest machines in the field, and hope they drop what you need... because there's always a % chance they don't 😅

Aloy's Arms Bother Me More Than They Should

Also, just on a physical note... For me, the problem with Aloy isn't that she's less beautiful than in the first episode — to me she's still beautiful as an angel. No, for me the issue is this: look at her body in the picture above, look at her arms. This woman can climb mountains with her bare hands, jump from one part of a cliff to another, fight HUGE machines, and draw a bowstring 200 times in a row... And you want me to believe this woman has fragile arms like a fashion model?

Let's cut the crap... Who the hell designed Aloy? A designer who loves cute little girls?! lol 🤣

With the feats she's capable of, she should — no, she MUST have muscular arms! Have you seen real-life fitness models who can lift their own bodyweight? That's exactly what Aloy does 100 times a day! Have you seen their arms? Sometimes they're even bigger than mine, and I'm a man who lifts heavy! Frankly, even women who don't train in a gym but who climb have muscular arms! It's just the natural result of all that hard work! 🏋🏼

Just look at all these women influencers on Instagram... They're not doing 30% all of the physical things Aloy do on a day to day basis, and they're twice or thrice as muscular as Aloy... Designers please implement some credibility in your work 😏

The Cutscenes Are Gorgeous — The Dialogue Ruins Them

So, Aloy's physical traits aren't realistic at all — but well, that's only aesthetic, and we could easily forget about it.

No, the real issue in Forbidden West — the one that impacts the game negatively, the reason I put "Forbidden Therapy" on this page's cover image, the issue literally destroying my interest in this game is...

THE CUTSCENES AND THEIR BLOODY DIALOGUE!

The cutscenes themselves are good in terms of graphics and animation... even VERY good!

On a graphics level, the cutscenes are just TOP NOTCH! They even managed to improve on the first episode! 😍

But who decided that every cutscene would be a "psychoanalysis session" where every character opens up like a book to the very first stranger they meet?!? It's crazy! Every time there's a new quest, you can be sure Aloy is going to act like Mother Teresa, trying to feel the emotions of every single NPC she comes across!

Just to remind you... this is a world where people are trying to survive.

So primal instincts like kill, gather food, find shelter should be the main priorities! Talking about feelings and trusting people you don't know should be THE LAST things you'd do if you want to stay alive! And yet... whenever you meet an NPC in this game, they all talk like they're lying on a psychoanalyst's couch!! 🤣 Better to laugh about it than cry...

Oh, by the way... here's Aloy climbing mountains and sliding with her fragile little arms 🤣

When You Just Met Someone and They Tell You Their Childhood

Some dialogue is so ridiculous that it completely DESTROYS the atmosphere of the game!

You meet a woman or a man for the first time, and they start telling you about their childhood...

I was like, what the hell?! I just met you, and you open up to me like we've been best friends for 20 years!

So again — who designed these dialogues?!? Who decided to...

Production director: "You know what, guys? The first Horizon was too good and too realistic! We got 90,000 positive reviews — that's too much! We need to make our game worse. What could we do?"

Non-Violent Activist on the team: "What about making every character ramble about their own life? Let's have them all talk about their feelings, their emotions... basically useless stuff to fill the cutscenes!"

Production director: "Great idea! With a bit of luck, we'll manage to cut our sales by 3!"

Again, with her fragile little arms she can literally break walls, or plunge her spear into rock-hard flowers 🤣

Jesus Christ... There's even a cutscene with a small argument between Aloy and her double (play the game to understand), and Aloy raises her voice just a little... The kind of thing that could happen 50 times a day! We all have arguments with people, we disagree, and so we begin to speak louder because we're angry! That's just a human emotion...

Well... it seems someone in the production team decided to include "non-violent communication" in Forbidden West. Why? Because after this cutscene... all the other NPCs on your team will bring it up! As if they all heard you from the other side of the base, as if they all needed to understand your motives for being angry, as if being "angry" were bad — not a valid emotion... Who did they design that for? It's a game for adults, for crying out loud!

The feeling I get playing this game is that someone on the team decided "anger" wasn't a good emotion — which is nonsense, because if you choose to be positive at all times and suppress anger, you set yourself up for your own downfall. Anger is a natural feeling, and you have to face it, not suppress it!

So if it was meant to educate players, it's a very bad way to do it

— and besides, it's a game for adults, not for small children! The result is simple: there are tons of threads online where players say they SKIPPED most of the dialogue. I didn't, but trust me, it was a PAIN to sit through them... And in the end, my interest in this game keeps getting HIT HARD by the next cutscene. Every time I find the motivation to play Forbidden West, there's always a cutscene to remind me why I'd put the game on pause for the last week or two 😤

Graphically Superb, But the Level Cap Strikes Again

Apart from this major dialogue and "non-violent communication" issue... the game is graphically superb!

If you have the right computer to crank everything to Ultra graphics, it's literally jaw-dropping! 🤩

The map is HUGE! I remember it took me at least 120+ hours to complete Horizon Zero Dawn, but in Forbidden West I'm already past 120 hours... and I still have around 100 more ahead of me, no kidding! The thing is... will it be that interesting to do? I don't know — that's why I started this game in 2024, and still haven't finished it in 2026. Because at some point I get bored and lose motivation (thanks to the dialogue 😅).

But also because they made the same mistake as in the first episode: they capped the max level at 60.

Already in HZD it was a mistake, even if I only reached max level at the very end — it kept me away from fighting random machines in the field to avoid leveling too fast. But in FW, as I said, the map is HUGE! And the max level is the same... So most of the time I simply avoid encounters when I don't need to kill the machines, otherwise I'd hit max level very quickly and the rest of the game would be even more boring...

Killing machines for 50 hours to finish the game but getting no XP out of them... how fun is that?

Nevertheless, there are good ideas — like manufacturing special devices that help you open hidden passages. Every time you craft one of these devices, you can go back and re-explore areas you'd previously discovered but where a tunnel was locked or a spot was unreachable.

A device to breathe underwater on the left (most useful device in the game!), and one for skydiving on the right 😎

One more gameplay gripe, and I'm not alone on this one:

The melee combat is genuinely weak. Many players online call it one of the worst they've encountered. Thankfully, Horizon is all about the bow — but whenever a fight forces you into melee, you feel it.

Don't Buy These Games to Be Educated

So, just so you know i have been discouraged by Claude AI to write the following below...

There are many Black protagonists in Horizon and i have no problems with that... I sincerely miss Lance Reddick.

But to my surprise, GAIA the backup Artificial Intelligence created by Elizabet Sobek is Gold with Black traits...

Let's do some Credibility-Check here... Elizabet Sobek is a White woman, confined to her scientific studies to save the world, in a Bunker without any other images in her mirror than herself. Anyone in this position would think first about "World Survival", and not care even one second about representing minorities, or care about any colors...

Why would a scientist, on the brink of human extinction, would care about any of that ? Even more as her project to save humanity could have failed in the end ! Nobody would even then be alive to see that she cared... So when designing this SUPER AI... GAIA ! Even if it was only a backup... She should have made it to her image.

If Elisabet Sobeck had been Black, I wouldn't even have mentioned it... And in that case, I would have had the same problem if GAIA had been White! Because I stand by my position: the super-AI should have been created in her image.

So, is the studio exploiting the issue of race, by introducing a Black super-AI to pander to #BlackLivesMatter or to meet a quota? Are they doing what Sony did ages ago in Everquest, where the wisest playable race was the (Black) Erudites...

You know it's very easy to please a community... Black, White, Asian, Arab, Indian, Latino or people from Mars... Just make the wisest people ingame like them and you'll gain customers. A little too obvious though... as their sales dropped!

Fighting machines has never been more fun and rewarding! A great improvement over HZD!

What's done is done... Horizon Forbidden West is far from being as interesting as the first episode was. But like Mass Effect: Andromeda was to the rest of its series, it brought more dynamism while trying to include some so-called "wise speech" to educate players. The problem is: We don't buy these games to be educated.

Some people who design these games think they're wise enough to "spread their good word"... but we don't have to agree — and if we don't, the gaming experience suffers for us. I'd rather these designers wrote from inside the heads of their virtual characters, without being influenced by the external politics and activism of our world.

We're already targets of media noise every single day... I don't want video games heading in that direction too.

+ Dynamic fights — it's really enjoyable to win a battle!
+ Superb graphic design, even better than Horizon Zero Dawn
+ The map is HUGE, it feels like playing The Elder Scrolls!
+ Quests and side quests are very interesting! as long as you...

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- ...Don't listen to the dialogue, which is ruining the game!
- Again, a max level of 60, which quickly becomes a problem!
- The dialogue, again... Who on earth supervised this?!?