The thread title is the question I've been asking myself for about a week now. I started playing this at launch, enjoyed it quite a bit, but realized when Zelda came out I had to stop playing one of the two games because I was getting my buttons crossed up. I decided to set this aside and played a ton of Zelda, then eventually set that aside to play (and finish) Persona 5. Having wrapped that up, I was really excited to get back to Horizon and I'm really not enjoying much of it at all.

Part of this is obviously my fault for walking away for 4 months, but the bits of story I remembered and had in my quest log were to help a Nora war party take revenge on some cultists and to trek halfway across the map to some big city. I also still had my first cauldron to explore. I completed the cauldron, I finished the war party quest, and now I'm on my long hike. The only commonality between the three is that I'm hating everything about the combat, and I don't remember that from before. I'm running into two combat scenarios: hide in grass and lure Watchers over to silent strike them one by one is the first. The second scenario is "Here's a mix of two to three types of enemies, multiple machines of each type, and they're all going to swarm you as soon as you make any offensive move. There's no cover. Go." Neither of these are fun - I'm either sitting in grass whistling and hitting R1, or running around like an idiot mashing on the health potion button while praying my last arrow that will hit a machine's weakness connects instead of being knocked off course because I'm hit by three of his friends while he spits fire at me and oops I'm dead.

For those of you who enjoyed the game: What the fuck am I missing? I think my equipment is upgraded and I've used my points to try to be more survivable/get more bang for my buck in crafting ammo. I'm just fed up with the swings between no challenge and no hope on every machine encounter. And seemingly every path to every objective is littered with these encounters.

I would say make sure you have a weapon with a lot of the damage stat with some damage mods on it. Most weapons, specially elemental ones, have almost no damage on them. If you really want to mess up machines, try to freeze them, then use a bow with a lot of the damage stat on it. Every shot will feel like you're hitting them with a railgun rather than plinking away at them no matter where you hit them.

Do you use the tripcaster at all? I'm typically not one that uses traps in games that offer them, but the Shadow Tripcaster was extremely helpful in those situations where you're getting swarmed by multiple enemies; using the shock wire to stun and follow up with a critical strike got me through a lot of the tougher fights in the game.

Placing traps before agro-ing enemies can be extremely effective. If you have the skill that lets you recollect deployed traps, you can place them liberally and just gather up any remaining unused traps after the smoke clears. I found this especially useful in enclosed combat arenas where combat options were more constrained than in the open world.

One of my most effective weapons overall was the explosive slingshot. I simply stacked all of my best straight damage mods on it. Any time I wanted sheer DPS, that thing came through for me better than anything else.

It's also very effective to exploit enemies' elemental weaknesses. Often you can disable enemies and buy yourself some time this way. I kept at least one weapon loaded and specialized to deliver each type of elemental damage, so I was always ready for anything.

My basic one-two punch was to hit an enemy's elemental weakness to get them distracted/injured, then pulverize them with a tripleshot bow or explosive slingshot.

While traversing the world map, I often avoided enemies. No need to fight everything. You can also ride a machine to travel faster and outrun almost anything. And there's obviously fast travel to expediently get to places you've visited before.

There are also melee attacks, overrides, and stealth kills, which are all effective combat options in their own ways, but I didn't rely on that stuff as much as just shooting and blowing everyone up.

I'm 20 hours in and felt exactly the same way you did until recently. The combat never felt fun and the story wasn't really grabbing me, until a few things started to click. There is actually quite alot of variety and complexity in the combat once you understand it a little more.

I will say a few things from my limited time with the game:

• The Lure ability sounds like a real boring way to handle combat scenarios. I've never used it although I will often stealth kill machines from bushes to wittle down their numbers or help sneak into a base. But I would strongly suggest trying new weapons and a more aggressive play style, using the Concentration ability (slow-mo) and dodging machine attacks where possible. Have you tried headshotting Watchers? You should be able to kill them with 1 or 2 well-placed arrows.
• Try setting some traps or some tripwires before you engage the enemies. These can be quite powerful and it's fun to aggro baddies and watch them run blindly into your traps.
• If you are feeling outnumbered try using Shock ammo or the Ropecaster against enemies flanking you. This will render them immobile for a short time allowing you to focus on your target. Be sure to take advantage of enemies' elemental weaknesses which can be identified with your Focus before engaging.
• Weapons that deal Tear damage actually strip weapons off machines which can reduce their ranged abilities.
• The story actually didn't grab me until a specific main mission which begins to reveal some background on what may have caused the world to be in its post-apocalyptic state. If you are not up to this yet, push on as I found this to be more enticing than some of the other story content surrounding the various tribes.

Hope this helps. I'm sure more experienced players will have useful tips.

I never did silent kills until I was real far into the story and just wanted to keep things moving along. I also rarely used the actual kill function, by that point I'd been to most of the cauldrons and was having a hell of a time pitting one Thunderjaw against another.

As for the combat, especially early game, I played this game on Hard and I rarely play games on Hard; I can't think of more than three I've completed to be honest other than a season of a sports game back when I played Madden/NBA 2K all day long in high school and college. I found the tension of the early combat exhilirating and loved figuring out how these creatures moved and how to dance around them. It's something I came to miss as I gained the elemental weapons and the traps and the tendencies of the A.I. for the various creatures became more familiar to me. I loved all that stuff as well, but there is something immensely thrilling about facing a pack of enemies that can all kill you in two or three hits and all you really have to take them out is your cunning. I still vividly recall how much fear basic Watcher enemies instilled in me for several hours.

For me it was all about that frantic, any one moment could kill me adrenaline that made the early game of Horizon so compelling to sink my teeth into.

I've tried Demon's Souls and Bloodborne and never got that feeling from those games that I get from Horizon.

Idk what to say to you about the combat, I loved it. Loved setting traps, loved sniping off machine parts, loved using weaknesses against monsters and seeing how they reacted. I felt pretty comfortable whether I wanted to approach a scenario with stealth with a bunch of traps or trying to survive by dodging and running around. I would recommend looking at the bestiary compendium about what each monster's weaknesses are but if you're already doing that, idk what else to say. Usually my strategy was looking at the compendium, set appropriate traps, use tear arrows to tear off parts revealing weaknesses, use elemental arrows or bombs against weaknesses, and then whale on them till they're dead. I got into a routine and a rhythm that worked for me.

I also used different weapons for different machines. Using the ropecaster for flying machines to tie them down, slings for weaknesses for fire and icebellows, tear arrows on the sniper bow was a staple in my repertoire. I used tripcasters around me to trip up enemies who tried to run at me. The combat system allowed me to develop multiple way to fight machines. I thought it was great.

Ye, I'd say you've forgotten the basics and rhythm of combat in the game and it's throwing you off. Doesn't really help that the game itself has an issue with teaching people how to approach combat to begin with, but it's deceivingly not as straight forward as you would think. I would suggest trying to stick to the slings for a bit until you get back into the groove of things, or just start over from scratch and hope following the gameplay curve puts you back on track. It's just super important to understand that the game is not about straight forward "shot them in the head" combat.

@asmo917: Once you upgrade your bows to have maximum tear and a few good elemental buffs then it really trivializes a lot of the encounters. I never used traps because honestly who has the time, and I tried to swap between my bows as little as possible because they didn't make that especially convenient and it breaks up the feel of combat. What you want is a maximum strength ropecaster, that is a number one priority because tying stuff down is crucial not only to kill big baddies but to give yourself some breathing room when you get swarmed from several locations at once. You also want one of those bows to have very strong fire arrows because a majority of machines will to some degree be vulnerable to fire - for some its deadly, like the tiger ones from the earlier part of the game, for others it's a good way to cause damage over time. Another tip is to invest in the skill that lets you fire 2 or 3 arrows at once as that is always a very good opener to any fight when you can instantly knock off a critical part in one shot.

While the game offers you a ton of choices in combat, simply investing in tear damage will get you through 90% of encounters without a problem. Ravagers? Knock off their cannons and decimate everything. Stealth panthers? Knock off their camo. Ram guys? Knock off their horns. Some machines are annoying to fight no matter what, like basically anything that flies or the harder variety of corrupted Rockbreaker, but for the most part you tie stuff down and strip it. Thats it. Sometimes thats fun, other times the controls get kinda clunky and the dodge seems inconsistent. It's a mixed bag for sure.

A cheap trick is to get the ability that slows down time when you aim in mid air. At first it seems pointless because how often are you jumping off tall cliffs, but then you realize it can be easily abused by constantly bunny hopping when aiming with the both. It's not elegant but it does give you a lot of time to think in a game where almost every enemy has this insane ability to pounce at you from across the screen in a single leap.

It's not my kind of game, like you I tried to enjoy it but it's just another map icons and button prompt-fest open world game, done well yes, but it's still just one of those.

It's ok to not like things that are popular.

Also the whole sitting in a bush whistling to get the attention of 1 enemy thing is completely dumb.

@ares42: The Hunter Training Grounds, as annoying they might appear, are actually really good at teaching how to handle certain creatures and use different gear when approaching combat. I wasn't having too much difficulty with combat, but when I finally decided to finish the training ground quests everything seemed a lot easier for me.

You're not planning things out enough. Just because you aren't stealth killing things doesn't mean not stealthing can be done by running in with no thought behind it. You need to start by scanning enemies until you understand what individual parts of them are causing you trouble and what a robot's elemental weaknesses are.

Getting shot a lot? Well, the enemy probably has a cannon you can knock off with tear damage. Enemy breathing a bunch of fire? It's probably got some part of it you can catch on fire and blow up.

Honestly, just invest in tear arrows and a blast sling. I never used traps or the Ropecaster for like 99% of the encounters because honestly I thought they weren't worth the time.

I have very mixed emotions about Horizon. It's one of those things where the highs are incredibly high, and the lows are dreadfully low. Though I do think the combat is one of the best parts.

Funny how many references there are to the sling in this post. I upgraded my sling all the way but used it maybe three times all game. Between the extensive patching Horizon has undergone and all these posts about the sling, I'm half-tempted to start a new game and see what all the fuss is about. I found it slow and inaccurate and preferred to just stick with the bows.

I found a mixture of overloading, stealth kills, hitting weak points with special arrows only, and tethering to work in most scenarios. Once I tapped into that rock-solid rhythm, I didn't die for the rest of the game (on hard difficulty). I have a really bad habit of tackling enemies way above my level, too; I beat a level 32 bellowback in one of the dungeons when I was level 14 or something. I figured unloading the rattler gun on its tank after stunning it worked extremely well early on in the fight. It's a genius game in terms of how it forces you to discover those weaknesses, not just elementally -- that's an arbitrary stat you read -- but through pure technique. You'll get nowhere staying still in stealth, it requires a much more active type of stealth if that makes sense. You need to be rolling a lot (I upgraded Aloy's roll and how quickly the enemies spot you ASAP, and it's game-changing. A lot of those upgrades are, impressively).

My first job is marking enemies, shooting watchers straight through their eyes, and then looking for a big guy to overload. Nearly always gives you the advantage instantly. The flaw there is needing to beat the dungeons first, which I decided was crucial for a quick yet complete playthrough in my first few hours.

The story is nothing new, but the way it's weaved (especially in the side-quests) is actually more competent than the more accolade-laden Sony titles of recent memory. I was fully prepared to dislike it, but it's just a superbly made piece of work.

I couldn't really get into it either. The combat's part of it - I never felt like I was really doing much damage and was just running around in circles, shooting at stuff until it dies - though it seems like taking things head-on is not the right way to do this, so that's on me.

But nothing about it was really grabbing me. It's the same thing I felt when I first saw the trailers - indifference. I can't tell you why, really, it's unique and plays well and the writing is actually better than you'd expect and it's gorgeous to look at, I should by all means be all over it. But I'm not, for reasons I can't quite pin down. One solid complaint I can level at it, though, is that the field of view is super narrow. Yeah, the game's pretty, but you can't get that wide-angle shot and soak in everything because it feels like you're wearing goggles or something.

I'll try it again at some point and try to take some of the combat pointers in this thread to heart before jumping in.

This is my biggest grievance at the moment, particularly when fighting aerial enemies circling above you. It's so sluggish.

I fell off the game as well. The enemies seem way too spongy to me. Constantly having to craft arrows isn't very fun either and I never seem to have enough crafting for the heavier (stronger) arrows. Also, I hate the camera so much. I dunno why it seems there aren't many people that have an issue with it (at least no one talks about it). The way it's not locked to the left of your character like EVERY other game. It swims around behind you and 90% of the time when it decides to settle in one place it's always with your character to the right of the screen which is just feels wrong.

I've liked the Killzone games for the most part and when GG releases their most critically acclaimed game (if I'm not wrong) it happens to be one I don't like ;/.

@nodima: The sling is just the closes you come to straight up fighting, so it's easier to wrap your head around. You won't be able to completely rely on it though (costly ammo), but if you just need to kill some stuff and move on it should do the job most of the time.

I gave this another shot tonight and thanks partly to some of the tips in this thread and partly due to dumb luck, I found myself having a better time.

I had focusing on weaknesses of machines and trying to hit those with the right special arrow/ammo, but I wasn't really paying attention to my overall power level. In part because I felt resource constrained I tried to use 1, maybe 2 special arrows and finish off the mechs with normal ass arrows. Then I looked at the damage difference between my normal and sharpshooter arrows and...yeah, I'm dumb. Normal arrows for wildlife minus boars and watchers, better arrows for everything else. I also took down a Snapjaw with relative ease in part due to the reminders to use non-bow weapons and by getting it to stumble through a few fire traps. So cheers all.

The other thing that helped was going back and trying to clean up a low-level "clear the bandit camp" mission I had gotten from the Cartja. This was where I had left off the first time I stopped, pretty much right after I had met them and gotten the quest to go to their capital, with some side missions to find a lost raiding party and clear a bandit camp. Finding the party was where I took down the Snapjaw, and clearing the camp put me on a COMPLETELY different, more southerly path towards the capital, dotted with settlements and campfires. This has been much more manageable that fields/skies of "fuck off" machines I was running into before with limited fires.

I'm definitely enjoying the game more than I was a day or so ago, but I'm not convinced I won't get distracted again by something shinny. I have zero problem writing off a game if I just know it's not for me (Souls games) or play it and don't enjoy it, but this was so at odds with what I remembered of playing in February/March I had to give it another try. Thanks again everyone for the tips.

Well, after saying I don't much care for the game.... long weekend due to holidays... I beat it. I was closer to the end than I realized; like 2-3 missions away. One thing that made the game far more enjoyable was getting the special shield regenerating armor. Sure made it much easier and less frustrating. Having beat it, though, I say my original opinion stands. Didn't much care for it. I was expecting a better ending too based on how Jeff said it was good.

@handlas: after a pretty good reveal about 2/3 of the way through the game kinda drags over the finish line, stumbling over a bunch of videogame cliches along the way. After such a buildup the big bad is such a disappointment.

Take a look at what you need to craft/purchase stronger weaponry. I too was getting slogged down by the combat until I realized I can just craft higher capacity ammo bags for everything. Also didn't have to feel so bad conserving my ammo/resources when I found I needed to do the body pile from the bushes. Sure this has been mentioned too but, finding a good set of armor is important along with trying to find/get that special regen suit.

I thoroughly enjoyed my time with Horizon, probably lucky for it too that I didnt have a Switch/Zelda to be distracted by at the time.