The 2024 Backlog Challenge

[JamesRobot | 5,810]

10 hours ago, Reed Rothchild said:

 

MASSSIVE SPOILER

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"Where the fuck is the missing section(s)!" - me, probably

 

Fuck that.  I respect it.  Tunic reeks of secret depth.  But my old ass has no patience for that shit.  I totally internetted that page and most of the fairies.  It was honestly pissing me off near the end.  And the final boss fight was too hard.

[T-Pac | 7,577]

21/40 - The Ninja [Sega Master System - 1986]

Finished: 2024/04/20

Caveats: Used save-states and an online guide to find the secret scrolls.

[T-Pac]

[wongojack | 219]

28 minutes ago, T-Pac said:

21/40 - The Ninja [Sega Master System - 1986]

Finished: 2024/04/20

Caveats: Used save-states and an online guide to find the secret scrolls.

[T-Pac]

I also recently played this as part of a high score club.  I didn't use any save states and looked nothing up.  I think I made it to the castle walls a few times and enjoyed my time with the game.  I will probably go back to it at some point.

I hear that finding the scrolls is basically impossible without a guide.

[Floating Platforms | 733]

Arrgh, I really need to make Tunic my next game so I can go back and read all these comments.

Getting closer in Yakuza Zero. Just 8 more climax battles and the Legend difficulty run. Then I stumble around as that fox or whatever the character in Tunic is.

[T-Pac | 7,577]

23 hours ago, wongojack said:

I also recently played this as part of a high score club.  I didn't use any save states and looked nothing up.  I think I made it to the castle walls a few times and enjoyed my time with the game.

Wow - I can't imagine even getting past the river stage without saves haha!

[T-Pac]

23 hours ago, wongojack said:

I hear that finding the scrolls is basically impossible without a guide.

Well that was certainly my experience. Who would think to just go stand in front of random trees when you've got all these ninja swarming you?

[T-Pac]

[wongojack | 219]

38 minutes ago, T-Pac said:

Wow - I can't imagine even getting past the river stage without saves haha!

[T-Pac]

Well that was certainly my experience. Who would think to just go stand in front of random trees when you've got all these ninja swarming you?

[T-Pac]

The river stage was ok, the guys always come at you in the same pattern, so it is pretty easy to get through it.  Actually, I think I got through it on my first try just sort of spamming attack.  You can climb all the way up to the top "log" and then smash that garlic dude in the face before he even begins attacking you.

The real trick for me was that horse stage - had to remember to use the invisibility/cyclone power thingy.

[Lago | 221]

If you go to play a game on your backlog and all the servers have been taken offline does that count as beating the game? Asking for a friend.

[Splain | 2,574]

Knocked out Link's Awakening on Switch.

Ok. I'm a huge Game Boy dweeb, so I was very happy to see Link's Awakening get a release on the Switch. It was always one of those games that could "compete" with contemporary console games. Like, the existence of this game helped make it ok to be such a GB fanboy. After beating the remake, I see just how small the game actually is, and how much the original was (intentionally or not) lengthened by the constant item switching. It really was a groundbreaking game for GB, it made me proud to think "yes, that part/mechanic/joke/system/etc really was in the original GB game!" But a lot of those things lose their luster when playing on a modern console, where way cooler stuff already exists.

Dedicated buttons for the sword and shield (and Pegasus Boots) are an enormous QoL improvement. All the times I played through this game on GB, I was never very big on using the shield. But now that it has a dedicated button, I see that there are many, many enemies and bosses that are stupid-easy when you just keep your shield up. Also there are more warp points, can't complain about that.

It was good to see the Color Dungeon because I never actually played through the DX version that had it. Also, no joke, I'm pretty sure I always cheated my way through the Eagle's Tower dungeon, using the "select warp" glitch, but now I finally did it for reals. (they didn't port the glitch over. )

I was happy to see a lot of details preserved from the GB version, and also furious to see other details omitted. A lot of stuff was pretty obtuse originally and needed to be changed. The game has a handful of quirks and bugs that were disappointing, but it was a lot of fun to play. I'd probably be mad if I were a kid, playing this for the first time, and seeing just how fast you can rip through the game. Especially after playing TotK and even Skyward Sword.

I messed around with the added dungeon-building stuff, it's neat in theory, but I'm definitely done with it.

Oh, and thanks @JamesRobot for gifting me this game for Secret Santa 2023!

[Sumez | 2,970]

23 minutes ago, Splain said:

I see just how small the game actually is, and how much the original was (intentionally or not) lengthened by the constant item switching.

I haven't played the remake, but I imagine the primary thing that makes the GB game feel larger than it is, is the segmented world map that (like in Zelda 1) flips you between single-screen rooms instead of scrolling smoothly. Honestly I really love that, and I wish more exploration based action adventure games would be designed around it.

Edited April 25 by Sumez

[Sumez | 2,970]

Night in the Woods - Beaten 15/4

"At the end of everything, hold on to anything!"

Some times the right words and the right music is all it takes for me to get enthralled with a game. The original trailer for Night in the Woods managed to grab me by the throat and made me want to play it ever since. But it's one of those situations where a digital release cost a little too much for my tastes, and I ended up waiting years for the physical release, which even got really delayed due to really unfortunate real-world circumstances.

The game is centered around a small American, partially abandoned mining town. Not that precise geographics are ever mentioned anywhere, and of course all the inhabitants are anthropomorphic animals (though this is never addressed, and even though the main character is a cat, actual pet cats also exist), but regardless it's still extremely American. In that whole bizarre "kids can drive cars, but you need to be really old to buy alcohol, and both education and doctors cost money for some reason" kind of way, all of which actually plays into the story.

Mae is a kid who returns to live with her parents in the aforementioned town of Possum Springs after dropping out of college. We don't know much about her history, but can piece things together from dialogue as the story progresses.
The game does a great job at painting a picture of Mae's troubled psyche which I guess shows symptoms of ADHD or paranoia, but mostly just paints her as a person who has a really hard time growing up, taking responsibility and generally getting a grip of her own life. On a surface level, her mental problems might feel blown out of proportions since it could be difficult to relate to just how messed up she feels at times - but Night In The Woods actually does a really remarkable job at letting us into her head and take a part in how she feels at every step of the story.
Her closest friends are Gregg, a childish hoodlum who is always up for fun and games, and Bea, a woman who had grow up up much too fast after losing her mom, taking over responsibilities for the family-owned store as her dad remains unable to do so. At first, Bea seems like a stranger who refuses to acknowledge Mae, but they clearly have a past, which caused me to pursue that route, rather than the Gregg one.

To explain, the core loop of the game involves waking up, walking around town and climbing buildings, and talking to people you find. As the game progresses you'll get access to a few more locations, but nothing changes much. Once you're done running around, you'll talk to one of aforementioned friends to do a hangout with them, go home and sleep, and then repeat the process. Outside of a terrible rhythm minigame, this is as much of a "video game" as is ever offered by Night In The Woods, it's a deeply story-driven experience.

As far as I'm aware, who you choose to hang out with doesn't affect the outcome of the story much, but it does of course affect who you get to learn more about.
Those hangouts are the meat of the story, but the majority of the game will be spent walking around Possum Springs, pretty much just checking out which NPCs have new lines of dialogue. On one hand of course you could just skip all that and go straight to the person you want to hang with, but at the same time in a game all about the dialogue I don't really want to miss any dialogue.

I'm not good with story driven games, but I also don't mind them either. And Night in the Woods has some extremely well written characters that get under your skin in the best way, while always topped up with a healthy dose of sarcastic humor.
What makes the game hard to recommend however, is that repetitive cycle of going to the same places and talking to the same people over and over, while most of the time nothing really happens. The core plot of the game only really kicks off in the final few moments, and ultimately I don't think it even manages to tie particularly well into the themes that carry the story and characters anyway.

[Reed Rothchild | 9,561]

Dark Forces

It was fine.  Kinda frustrating, janky, and repetitive.  But I don't know what I was expecting considering it barely came out after Doom.  It certainly looks and plays like an FPS from 1995.

I was pretty obsessed with it as a kid.  So much so that I coveted the PC version hard, and even read the entire strategy guide at the store at one point.  Glad I finally got around to it, but it ain't gonna challenge Doom on my best ever lists.  And you can see why they went in the direction they did with Jedi Knight.  Something to set it apart.

1. Bloodborne (9.5/10)
2. The Witness (9/10)
3. Tunic (9/10)
4. Yakuza 2 Kiwami (8.5/10)
5. Firewatch (8.5/10)
6. Assassin's Creed: Black Flag (8/10)
7. Bayonetta 3 (8/10)
8. Rise of the Tomb Raider (8/10)
9. The Stanley Parable (7.5/10)
10. Resident Evil 3 (7.5/10)
11. The Talos Principle (7.5/10)
12. The Quarry (7/10)
13. A Plague Tale: Innocence (7/10)
14. Bravely Default (6.5/10)
15. Pikmin 1 (6.5/10)
16. Dark Forces (5.5/10)
17. Beyond Oasis (5/10)

[Gloves | 11,807]

1 hour ago, Reed Rothchild said:

Dark Forces

It was fine.  Kinda frustrating, janky, and repetitive.  But I don't know what I was expecting considering it barely came out after Doom.  It certainly looks and plays like an FPS from 1995.

I was pretty obsessed with it as a kid.  So much so that I coveted the PC version hard, and even read the entire strategy guide at the store at one point.  Glad I finally got around to it, but it ain't gonna challenge Doom on my best ever lists.  And you can see why you went in the direction they did with Jedi Knight.  Something to set it apart.

1. Bloodborne (9.5/10)
2. The Witness (9/10)
3. Tunic (9/10)
4. Yakuza 2 Kiwami (8.5/10)
5. Firewatch (8.5/10)
6. Assassin's Creed: Black Flag (8/10)
7. Bayonetta 3 (8/10)
8. Rise of the Tomb Raider (8/10)
9. The Stanley Parable (7.5/10)
10. Resident Evil 3 (7.5/10)
11. The Talos Principle (7.5/10)
12. The Quarry (7/10)
13. A Plague Tale: Innocence (7/10)
14. Bravely Default (6.5/10)
15. Pikmin 1 (6.5/10)
16. Dark Forces (5.5/10)
17. Beyond Oasis (5/10)

It pleases me every time you post these cuz Bloodborne is right where it belongs. 

[T-Pac | 7,577]

22/40 - Nuts & Milk [Nintendo Famicom - 1983]

Finished: 2024/04/27

Caveats: Used save-states.

[T-Pac]

[Tantalus | 457]

Spyro 2: Ripto's Rage.

I got the Spyro Reignited Trilogy on PC back in 2019 and quickly played through the first game. I remember enjoying my time with it. It was a nice, compact adventure that knew when to end.

Spyro 2 doesn't stray far from the first game. It does introduce a couple of new moves, but it's mostly more of the same.

I've learned from other collect-a-thons that more is not always better. Over on the N64, Banjo-Kazooie was about the perfect length for me, and then Rare would go on to develop the massively bloated Donkey Kong 64 and Banjo-Tooie, and I've never been able to find the time or energy to actually get through them; I end up stalling out a few hours in and losing interest.

While Spyro 2 is not as egregious as what Rare was doing, it is still a fair bit longer than the first, and as a result, it does start to feel a bit bloated. My playthrough clocked in around 9 hours, compared to 6 for the first. And motivation to get through it was pretty up and down throughout that time. I've been picking away at it for a few years now. One of the reasons why I chose it for this challenge was to give myself the extra motivation to finally see it through to the end.

Overall, it is a pretty good game, but one I'm not likely to return to.

[Floating Platforms | 733]

I have slayed the beast. The Yakuza 0 platinum trophy is mine!

Would I recommend going for the platinum trophy? No, there's honestly no real reason to. I personally usually like to go for platinums if my gaming skill level will allow me to and if there's no multiplayer (and I usually prefer to avoid anything with a NG+ as part of the plat). For whatever reason, I had it in my head that I wanted to go for platinum on all of the Yakuza games. Kiwami was a rough experience in a couple places like certain mini game challenges and the climax battles. This was rough mostly from the time commitment it required and that the second playthrough on Legend is a completely fresh start (there's no skill/item carryover). That made some of the situations quite difficult, but thankfully I only had to replay a couple sections once or twice. For those that are curious, I'm not sure of my exact time, but the Legend playthrough was 13 hours and the main 100% run was probably 120? So 140-ish hours total perhaps.

Storywise, I loved it and I'm glad I played this after Kiwami so that I understood a lot of references and what they were building to. I might have gotten even more out of it if I went further in the series first, but I also might have forgotten too much.  I will say that Majima's ending was a bit unsatisfying because I loved the characterization of him throughout this.  Gameplay, there's obviously a ton of variety to be had and the silliness of the sidestories and minigame content strangely complements the overtly serious main story.  I loved the presentation of the cutscenes but I don't know why they decided to have some with in-engine graphics and text, other parts in fully rendered cutscenes with voices and this third version that had subtle character movements and voiceover. Either way, I was invested until the second playthrough where you cannot skip nearly as much as you should be able to.

I'm definitely looking forward to diving into Kiwami 2 later this year but I want to wait 2-3 months and get a couple more games done like Tunic, Danganronpa V3, AC: Valhalla (oh god...I'll have to remember how to play this) and who knows what else.

[Reed Rothchild | 9,561]

Yeah I got to 60% or so for trophies on Kiwami and Kiwami 2, but the platinums seem like they would be highly unpleasant to chase.

[Sumez | 2,970]

6 hours ago, Floating Platforms said:

Would I recommend going for the platinum trophy? No, there's honestly no real reason to.

I'd be really curious to hear of cases where there is 

[Sumez | 2,970]

The Mummy Demastered - Beaten 18/4

Some times I wonder why the Metroidvania subgenre has become so popular for these types of low-budget indie-adjacent games, given few of the qualities that made this approach to game design really unique are even present in most of them these days. If you're just progressing linearly through a set of individual areas until you reach the end, the distinction is ultimately pointless, isn't it?

The Mummy Demastered is so bog-standard I'm already starting to forget most of it a few days after having completed it. It's a WayForward game, so that really shouldn't be surprising, but I actually heard good things about this one. At this point though, I'm not sure where and from whom - Most people seem to agree it's not that interesting.

Of course, let's get the obvious out of the way. The game looks really good, and the synthwave inspired soundtrack is super awesome, too, proving that WayForward can provide great music even without the aid of Jake Kaufman.
It plays fine, too. It has some really cool ideas, even if they feel more like a fluke than overt design choices meant to drive the core gameplay. It occasionally uses platforming really well. Disappearing platforms will keep you on your toes as you climb hallways while trying to avoid enemies, and a running mechanic that takes quite a bit of windup will allow you to reach certain areas only if you can manage to pull off a fluid running and jumping rhythm across a series of multiple platforms. For a while it almost feels like the game tries to rely on this sort of design to make areas interesting and challenging, but then it kinda drops it immediately and never goes anywhere with it.

The only real constant gameplay element is the continuously respawning enemies and different types of guns you'll be using to take them out. But enemy mechanics aren't very thought through, and often they'll be spawning in unfortunate locations right as you're scrolling ahead, and their patterns often require awkward stopping and gunning, rather than providing fluid and fun action. The game isn't hard, but not taking any hits is often almost impossible due to the poorly designed enemies. And you'll be fighting the same few ones throughout the entirety of the game, so don't expect much new in the way of enemy encounters as you progress.

One interesting mechanic is the "corpse recovery". You're playing as a nameless soldier, and should you die, your character will get turned into a zombie. Continuing, you'll be playing as a new soldier and need to take out that previous character in order to get all your weapons and upgrades back to continue the game unhindered.
Don't worry, though - this happened to me exactly once throughout the course of the game. Though you'll likely take a beating throughout the game, pretty much everything you kill will drop health refills, so as soon as you've gathered a few energy tanks there is pretty much no way you can die.
Bosses, too, are extremely easy with very simple repeated patterns that can be learned on your first encounter. However, they also have a massively bloated health pool, and will take a long slog of repetition to take down.

Being a faceless and completely mute character seems like it would be nice, in the sense that this is a game that would work completely fine with absolutely no dialogue at all.
Where you need to go is always obvious, because there is only one way forward. Howevet, that is upset by Russell Crowe who constantly shows up on your screen, sending you messages via radio or whatever. All of it is completely superfluous, either telling you the already obvious thing you need to do, or trying to provide the plot, which never goes any further than "the mummy moved to a new location, go there", until all of a sudden it turns out the random boss you just fought was apparently the final one, and the game just ends.
I don't know anyone who even watched the movie this game is based on, and to my knowledge the few people who did would confirm it's very bad anyway, so I think you could probably easily leave the "plot" out of the game anyway.

[Floating Platforms | 733]

11 hours ago, Sumez said:

I'd be really curious to hear of cases where there is 

Is this is a smug/flippant response or a serious question? I know the trophy hunting debate has occurred a bunch of times on this site and I'm not really interested in starting that back up

[Sumez | 2,970]

17 minutes ago, Floating Platforms said:

Is this is a smug/flippant response or a serious question? I know the trophy hunting debate has occurred a bunch of times on this site and I'm not really interested in starting that back up

Depends on your definition I guess? No intentions of being smug. I found your stance interesting because obviously I struggle to see any reason to go for "all trophies" specifically in any game, so I was wondering what separates those cases from this one, which seems to be a pretty typical example from my perspective

[Floating Platforms | 733]

22 hours ago, Sumez said:

Depends on your definition I guess? No intentions of being smug. I found your stance interesting because obviously I struggle to see any reason to go for "all trophies" specifically in any game, so I was wondering what separates those cases from this one, which seems to be a pretty typical example from my perspective

Thanks for clarifying. It can be really hard to know through text, especially when we're dealing with a weirdly divisive topic like trophies and achievements....

Still, I might not be the best person to answer what specific games are good examples of platinums, but I can say that there's a ton of variety in how games, developers and series will handle those requirements.  It's easier to outline what makes a bad platinum - online multiplayer requirements (usually too difficult and will be impossible later on), games that require multiple paythroughs (the biggest drawback to Yakuza), or ones that require a lot of luck or hyper-specific things to line up just right (too many missable trophies).

In my opinion, a good platinum will entice you to push yourself a little harder or maybe spend a little time in extra modes that you normally wouldn't touch if trophies didn't exist. Maybe the trophies are largely story based, but there are a couple that ask you to think about combat in a slightly different way, use a different weapon type for a bit, or interact with the world in a unique manner.  Of course there are also super easy ones like the newer Spider-Man games where it'll come naturally if you're searching out all the collectibles anyway.

I believe that you're an advocate of people playing Metroid enough to get yourself into a groove where you can bounce from one power up to another and optimize the run. To be honest, that doesn't sound all that enjoyable to me on the surface. However, if that's all that stood between me and a platinum, I would be more inclined to consider it (and maybe really enjoy that experience).  Maybe a close comparison I could make to that hypothetical scenario is Bioshock. That requires you to play on the hardest difficulty without using checkpoints (save as much as you want). It was a very difficult experience at first, but I'm really happy that this is how I ended up experiencing the game.

Is that approach silly to a lot of people? Sure. And I get it. But it's still fun to see those 100%s next to the game titles, especially if it doesn't require all that much extra effort.

The Yakuza series, on the other hand, are not particularly difficult platinums (although there are some parts that are rough). They do not respect the player's time at all and that's why I wouldn't recommend it to most. For Kiwami, there was a ton of time spent grinding colliseum fights to farm money to buy stuff to check off the list. Zero didn't have any farming or grinding, but there was so much content that was generally time consuming (and then Legend difficulty was annoying since nothing carried over from that 100% hunt). So, it makes total sense that Reed said he stopped at 60%. It's still really easy to see basically all the worthwhile content that way. Leave the 100% for the compulsive idiots like me because I don't mind the occasional slog or mindless Mahjong session while I watch YouTube or Twitch and then I get the added "benefit" of getting the platinum in a series I really enjoy.

So, long winded response that actually probably doesn't truly answer your question, but yeah.

Edited April 30 by Floating Platforms

[Philosoraptor | 468]

I'll throw my two cents in, although I'm going to be heavily agreeing with @Floating Platforms. I'm not a completionist and don't go for platinum trophies very often. Out of my 2167 trophies, only 7 are platinums. I've beaten 108 games with trophy support across the PS3, PS Vita, and PS4, and I've played probably another 20-30 without beating them.

Of the platinums I've gotten, a good chunk are bad, like Task Force Kampas, Null Drifter, and Project Starship X. They're far too easy to get for SHMUPS, only take about 20 minutes each to unlock, and can be unlocked before beating the game. According to https://psnprofiles.com/guide/10109-task-force-kampas-trophy-guide, 90% of PSNProfiles users who booted up Task Force Kampas walked away with the platinum. It's as if the developers were saying "thanks for buying the game; here's a free platinum."

Two recent examples I have of good platinums are Demon's Tier + and New Super Lucky's Tale. In both cases, I ended up with a majority of the trophies through normal gameplay, and the platinum pushed me to play a few more hours to get the rest. No trophies were ridiculous to get, and the additional playtime to get them didn't make the game overstay its welcome or detract from the overall experience. To get the platinum in New Super Lucky's Tale, the hardest trophies required me to not get hit in boss battles, which I mostly was able to do on the first try during my initial run-through or a few additional tries in the postgame with the level select. I also had to collect a few missing pages, but I got 90% of them in my initial playthrough. The hardest trophy in Demon's Tier + was just unlocking/buying the six characters from the shop, which just meant a few additional dungeon runs post credits.

To liken a good platinum to older examples, I'd say a good platinum is similar to when developers added bonus modes, postgame content, fun unlockables, extra characters, and other secrets to games as a reward for completing reasonable tasks. Stuff like beating higher-leveled characters from other NISA franchises in early Disgaea games to unlock them, unlocking the original Panzer Dragoon game for beating Panzer Dragoon Orta, and getting access to Cerulean Cave and Mewtwo after beating the Elite Four in Pokemon Red/Blue. A good platinum is a reward for beating the game, something that I wanted to do/get because I was enjoying the game, and something that extended playtime and challenged me while remaining fun and worthwhile. A "bad" platinum in those terms might be something like the certificate of completion for completing the Pokedex in Ruby/Sapphire/Emerald (I'll include a video showing how ridiculous this actually is in a spoiler at the end), finding all 100 gold skulltulias in OOT for infinite rupees, or the postcard for collecting 120 shine sprites in Super Mario Sunshine.

And since I compared getting a trophy to getting more content and goodies in older games, I should point out that a good game doesn't replace those unlockables with a platinum trophy and paid DLC. The trophy should be another part of the free unlockables and postgame content, if the game has them. Going back to my Disgaea example, the PS2 games had a bunch of unlockable characters in the postgame, while the PS3, PS4, and Switch games have significantly fewer unlockable characters in postgame and lots of paid DLC for the rest, including characters that were unlockable in the PS2 games for free. That's bad.

I also don't think that having a bunch of postgame unlockables is a requirement for any game, especially if the game doesn't have any DLC. Plenty of old games didn't have unlockables, and I think a Platinum trophy and no additional unlockables is an extension of that. Neither Demon's Tier + nor New Super Lucky's Tale have any DLC, and neither really have additional unlockables either. If a game's platinum trophy can be obtained during the credits on the first playthrough, that's not a bad thing.

Spoiler

 

Edited April 30 by Philosoraptor

[Reed Rothchild | 9,561]

I have 5 platinums I think.  Dark Forces, because you automatically get it, Astro's Playroom that my boys got, Ghost of Tsushima and Control both because organically playing the game got me close enough that I felt good about investing a few extra hours into "closing the loop" for both of them at the end, and then some other game that I can't even think of what it is off the top of my head.

 

I do have quite a few completed achievements lists for my long-abandoned Xbox profile.  Some because I wanted to play the game that much (Dragon Age), others because it was easily attainable.  Couldn't for the life of me remember the full list.

[Reed Rothchild | 9,561]

Horizon Zero Dawn - A couple hours in.  Not so sure about the early story shift, but we'll see if it pays off.  Pretty fun.  Very similar in some ways to Rise of the Tomb Raider, incidentally.

Ace Attorney 3 - Halfway through case two.  Not sure if I'd do Apollo Justice, Great Ace Attorney, or that Miles Edgeworth game next.

Trails in the Sky SC - 15 hours in and I'm still on chapter 2.  This one is gonna take forever.

[wongojack | 219]

5 minutes ago, Reed Rothchild said:

Horizon Zero Dawn - A couple hours in.  Not so sure about the early story shift, but we'll see if it pays off.  Pretty fun.  Very similar in some ways to Rise of the Tomb Raider, incidentally.

Ace Attorney 3 - Halfway through case two.  Not sure if I'd do Apollo Justice, Great Ace Attorney, or that Miles Edgeworth game next.

Trails in the Sky SC - 15 hours in and I'm still on chapter 2.  This one is gonna take forever.

I also thought that HZD most reminded me of the Tomb Raider reboot series, but it borrows from a lot of other games, and I've seen many other comparisons online.  I really liked it and thought that even though it was borrowing, it borrowed some really good things and put them together nicely.  I may have liked it slightly less however if I had played it back-to-back with a similar game.

My advice for HZD would be to get yourself to the capital city (I forget what it is called) and THEN make choices about where you want to spend time.  You can rush through the main story if you really want to, but I think most people get kinda caught up in the various hunting challenges.  The DLC is also quite large and very good.  If you own it, there is a point in the story where it makes sense for Aloy (and you as a player) to naturally go there.