Horizon Forbidden West Complete Edition is an open-world adventure set in the stark, barren hardpan of developer Guerilla Games’ vast post-apocalyptic world.
You are Aloy, a hero in a world overrun with monstrous animalistic machines and a deadly blight that’s spreading a red menace across the Earth. To survive, you’ll need to make peace with the last vestiges of humanity, scraping out an existence while fending off threats from both past and present. If there’s a future to be had, you’re humanity’s last, best hope—even if some of the remnant remain faithless.
In this guide, written from the perspective of a Horizon Forbidden West PS5 veteran, you’ll get a head start on combat, exploration, worthy diversions, and more.
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Don’t sweat the story
Horizon Forbidden West is the sequel to Horizon Zero Dawn, but you don’t have to be an expert at the first game to thrive in the second.
Horizon Forbidden West is effectively a clean break, a soft reset that acknowledges and nods to its predecessor without requiring any in-depth narrative or mechanical knowledge. You’ll learn what the developers think you need to know during the first few hours as you acclimate to the game.
That said, if you like what you’re playing and want to go back, you can pick up Horizon Zero Dawn Complete Edition in the Epic Games Store.
Combat is a puzzle
Horizon Forbidden West’s combat distinguishes the series. In short, it thinks you should play it in a certain way—and you really should.
For your first several hours, animal-like machines will be your primary adversaries. You could just run and gun at them, swinging your spear, pulling off light combos with the bluntest of weapons, and rolling away from the inevitable counterattacks. But there’s little fun or skill involved with that approach. Also, a lot of death.
Horizon Forbidden West is much more interesting when you fight as its creators intended. Every machine is made up of parts, and several of those parts are invariably interesting. Aim at a weak spot, and you’ll deal bonus damage. Hit certain parts—the ones labeled “Contains Valuable Resources” in your menu—and you’ll earn more and special loot.
Before starting a combat encounter, find some cover—you can hide in the gently swaying red plants that are pretty much everywhere—and use Aloy’s Focus (her bluetooth-like scanner) to locate a nearby machine. Then hit the button to view your enemy in your notebook. Spend a minute in there looking for the detachable parts and whether they’re weak to any elemental damage. Then match your weapon with your knowledge and start popping pieces off your enemy.
A great fight goes a little something like this:
- Sneak up
- Scan
- View in notebook
- Note weaknesses
- Load the appropriate weapon
Don’t run and gun. Scan and exploit. You’ll defeat things faster, and you’ll get bonuses when the fight ends, which means you’ll level up faster.
Upgrade your Concentration early
When you have a weapon like a bow equipped and you pull the string back, you can press a button to slow down time with the Concentration mechanic. It’s wildly effective at pulling off precision shots, which are useful for detaching components and hitting weak spots.
But Concentration is also a super limited resource at the beginning of the game.
When you have skill points to spend, prioritize Concentration+ (which gives you more time to concentrate) and Concentration Regen (which lets you refill your concentration meter faster). They’re among the first two nodes in the Hunter skill tree.
Hold off on skills
Every time you level up, you earn skill points. With the exception of the Concentration-focused skills I just mentioned, you don’t need to pour skill points into your skill trees early. In fact, I’m glad I waited long enough to figure out how I wanted to play before spending wildly.
Some of Horizon Forbidden West’s skill trees map to different combat approaches. The Warrior tree, for example, unlocks some simple melee attack combos, while the Infiltrator tree’s early nodes make stealth-focused players quieter. Experiment with different approaches, and then apply your points to your preferred style.
You could totally take the opposite approach and spend them on whatever you want as soon as you get them. After all, you can reset and reallocate your skills from within the skills menu. But I still prefer the more deliberate approach because it allowed me to grow Aloy a little more thoughtfully.
Scan everything
You can tap a single button to scan your immediate surroundings. Do that, and you’ll invariably discover things that you wouldn’t catch at a glance.
I already discussed how the scanner reveals information about the machines Aloy encounters—but it applies to the terrain around Aloy as well. Use it to find consumables while you’re walking around, handholds when you’re climbing, and even crates you might have otherwise walked past.
If you don’t see climbing markers, go to the settings > Visual menu and toggle Climbing Annotations Always On.
Gather and upgrade
There is stuff everywhere, and you’ll need that stuff to make useful things like weapons and ammo and upgrades to your pouch. With an upgraded pouch you can pick up more materials and use that to upgrade your bag so that you can carry more materials and upgrade your bag and carry more…well, you get the point.
If you’re anything like me, you’ll find yourself wondering if you should pick up everything. And after many hours of playing, our answer is: Nah. Pick up what you find on your path. You don’t have to go out of your way to gather everything you see, but there’s really no downside to picking up everything that’s more or less along the path you’re already traveling. Future you will be happy that you did because you won’t have to go out and gather something when you need it.
Also, anything that you can’t carry in your inventory will be teleported to your stash, a magical chest that you can access in many locations (like settlements) to refill your inventory.
You can streamline your experience slightly by heading to the General > Pickups menu and turning off Aloy’s pick-up animation, which makes gathering resources less realistic but much faster. You can even have her pick up almost everything she walks past automatically.
Learn to love your map
Checking your map is the best way to find cool things—and a lot of the coolest things in Horizon Forbidden West begin as question marks on your map.
As you explore the world, things that you may not even have seen will appear on your map. They could be interesting places to explore or even people to meet. Some of them will turn into side quests. Others will become fast-travel points. You won’t know until you explore, so make it a habit to check your map for new icons and take a short hike to find out what they are.
Enjoy the journey and explore the edges
Some of the most interesting bits of Horizon Forbidden West are just off the critical path.
The game is full of 10-minute diversions where you, say, find an ancient building and explore it to find hidden treasure. It’s all optional, but it’s fun, too. Take those breaks early, follow your curiosity, invest a few minutes into it, and see if you like it. Worst case, you don’t have to do the next one, but you’ll still walk away with some valuable loot.
The game won’t lead you to most of these, but years after playing Horizon Forbidden West I find that the things that I accidentally discovered and invested time into tend to be the most memorable parts.
PC-exclusive features make it more than a port
Horizon Forbidden West isn’t just the same game that released on PlayStation 5. The new Complete Edition has special PC-only features that console players don’t get.
With the right hardware, Horizon Forbidden West Complete Edition supports Ultrawide (21:9) and Super Ultrawide (32:9) and even triple monitor (48:9) resolutions. If you have a compatible Nvidia GPU, the game also supports DLSS 3 upscaling and frame generation as well as image enhancing DLAA and latency reducing Nvidia Reflex. AMD FidelityFX Super Resolution and Intel Xe Super Sampling support are built in, as well.
And if you like Sony’s DualSense controller, Horizon Forbidden West Complete Edition supports its haptic feedback and adaptive trigger functionality—though you’ll need to plug your controller in to take advantage of every special hardware feature.
If any of this sounds like fun (and it is!) you can pick up Horizon Forbidden West Complete Edition.
