Horizon Zero Dawn Reviews: 12 Critical Reactions You Need To Know

11. Gameplay Is Familiar... But That's OK

"Guerrilla’s first major original work outside of Killzone could easily be written off as derivative, but it’s the way in which these disparate ideas are brought together as a cohesive, lovingly crafted whole that makes it truly special...Despite its seeming unoriginality, and despite containing so many open world trappings I’d ordinarily hate, Horizon is something special...It’s liberally borrowed from the best and most successful, mixing them together in just the right portions to create an impressive marriage of features that could have mixed disastrously in less skilled hands." - The Jimquisition

"It’s nothing we haven’t seen before in other games of this ilk...but thanks to the promise of XP and loot that you can trade for currency to buy better weapons, it’s all very compulsive." - IGN

Some gamers have been skeptical of Horizon really being anything new, and from a gameplay perspective, those people actually aren't wrong.

Reviewers largely concede that Horizon's central gameplay loop will feel incredibly similar to anyone who's played an open-world Ubisoft game before (right down to it having its own version of the infamous radio towers), but add that the execution is so strong that it manages to mostly avoid the pitfalls of the genre.

There was criticism leveled at the simplicity and repetition of some side content, but the majority agree that what Guerrilla has done with the formula makes it feel fresh enough to satisfy.