Gaming

Ubisoft style open world games. I honestly know I'm not built to enjoy them but I convinced myself to try and finish Horizon Zero Dawn and it was a huge mistake.

For a single player game, it vigorously wastes your time. The entire game is based around crafting but each time you need to gather something you need to come to a full stop, and spend a second watching the interact meter fill before you can gather each thing you see in the overworld.

The talent trees either contain things that are not meaningfully impactful on the core experience, ie tons of talents are slightly dressed up raw damage increases. Or they are things that are meaningful, but not surprising such as silent takedowns or bullet time. Overall it feels like Aloy was designed to be kind of fun and then they hamstrung her in a bunch of different ways to give a reason for the talent system to exist, and it takes the runtime of the whole game to undo this.

Many quests do not have anything to say about the lore or characterization of the world, whether it be for individual characters or the world overall.