This game is not good for a couple of specific reasons and for other, various minor reasons. The biggest reasons are that the writing and acting are absolutely atrocious. The voice acting, and physical acting, is so unbelievably corny and hack that I skipped every single cutscene or moment of dialogue.
The actress playing Aloy maintains this "exasperated", tired, and annoyed tone of voice the entire game - showing no growth or emotional range. Everything in the game invokes a kind of prestige that the character only gets from the previous game. Other characters keep referring to her past deeds across the forbidden west as if they would have even known about them. It's a post-cataclysmic society without long-range communication. There's no reason for people in the burning shores or anywhere in the forbidden west to have heard about "The Savior of Meridian" or even care about her if they did hear. In this game, Aloy is portrayed as this larger-than-life figure who spends all of her time doing small investigations and fetch quests for people. She is the unelected arbiter of everything she comes across which is incredibly unbelievable.
The story itself is corny and the dialogue is beyond melodramatic. Characters are introduced and then immediately referred to with a level of "familiarity" to Aloy and the player without establishing any emotional equity. The DLC, Burning Shores, especially does this referring to "I better get back to Seyka...", and "Seyka this" and "Sekya that" as if we care about Seyka. The player is not invested in Seyka's emotional barriers or her challenges with her tribe. Every quest character has some annoying and overly emotional background as the basis for Aloy's involvement. The writing plays out as if it were an episode of Days of Our Lives where everything is interwoven and complicated in a character's background and emotion rather than something simply being wrong or right.
One can only conclude that this story, the direction, and the acting were concocted by a woman and that the story is specifically and intentionally created for women.
The second issue, the casting is also ridiculous. It's obvious that the development team intended to have a "diverse" cast which, in and of itself, is not a problem. The problem arrives when we have different groups of actors in the same "tribe" such as the Oseram, Nora, Utaru, Carja, Tenakth, and Quen. Whoever cast and directed this game has Asians, Black people, White people all in the same tribe together. All tribes have all races of people available in the game which patently makes no sense. Ironically, I have played this game for 85+ hours and I can't recall seeing any Latino/a people in this game. People group up by race, and it wouldn't make any sense for a tribe of post-apocalyptic people born in different regions to be made up of completely different races. This isn't a jab at diversity, it's simply a comment on the reality of humans. You can argue that this is a video game and that we can suspend the rules because of it. However, the game is set in an "earth" setting. We can refer to it as "magical reality". The writers and directors fully intended there to be some connection to real-world phenomenon and not have the game set in a completely fantastic universe.
The other issue with the casting is that we've cast the most unbelievable people in the roles such as the actress that plays Seyka - The way they've captured and modelled the actress (as well as everybody in the game) makes it appear like we have modern day western post 2010s people put back in the stone age. None of the acting is believable and its completely ham. The models are rendered with eyeliner, which is patently ridiculous for the setting.
The game has no "design" when it comes to the characters, no "accents" created for the game to represent regionality, or mannerisms that would represent the fact that we have people born into a fantasy-stone / bronze aged society. We have no pidgin English or unique eccentricities. You could remove the garb from the actors in the game and they could immediately be placed into an episode of CSI: Miami and you would have no idea. The way they speak is modern, the language, dialects, lexicons are completely modern-day which breaks investment and immersion into the game. The only thing missing is the rap music when a battle happens. Along with the casting, I felt the gender aspect of this game was a blatant attempt to cram woke, DEI nonsense into the games along. It is so bad, in fact, that I could not get past it even when attempting to give the game the benefit of the doubt.
The mechanics feel subjectively worse in this game from the original. There have been many times I've jumped to a grab-able ledge or handhold and simply "missed" falling to my death. The angles of some of these jumps are wonky, but I do think there is a recognition problem the game has with some hand holds which makes the player have to unnecessarily go through the section again, especially if the game hasn't auto-saved in a while. This is silly and causes a lot of frustration.
As well, I feel like normal arrows are nearly completely useless 1/3 of the way into the game and you simply must use Sharpshot bow or hunter bow with advanced arrows. As these are significantly more costly to build and use, it adds a slowness to the game that is not wanted and not enjoyed. A few times I have run out of Machine Muscle to craft them, leading to another complaint.
Having to manually hold the Y button to pick up every piece of loot in the game is annoying - I understand for major items like chests, or maybe large enemy kills. Perhaps there should have been something on the skill tree to "auto-loot" enemies or even medicinal herbs in the field.
The enemies are often so over powered, even if the character is 12 to 15 levels higher than them, that one hit will eliminate half of your health bar. Now combine that with attempting to hold the frigging Y button in a field to get 1 or 2 herbs to heal yourself with. Yes, the game has health potions but these cost money and also take time to consume.
The enemies attack slightly too fast to pull a sharpshot bow on or heal up effectively and I found myself getting "juggled" as if I were fighting in an EVO Tournament multiple times throughout the game. This is unfun. Aloy simply moves perhaps 10 to 15% too slow for the games and I feel like mashing my button through the controller to get her to move faster out of the way.
The hitboxes for damage in this game are also a joke. The boxes for the enemies appear to have been calculated on the atomic level - an arrow will miss its target if it's 0.0001 microns off. The "aim assist" here doesn't appear to do anything because I have it turned on to the highest setting and still miss by millimeters. In contrast, enemies can hit Aloy through walls with AOE attacks like throwing rocks or throwing their bodies even if she's behind or under cover. The amount of time it takes Aloy to stand up after being knocked down is absurd and makes the player want to curse.
Overall, I feel like the bulk of the money of this game was spend on level design and mo-cap. Those are the only real extraordinary things in this game. I would also go so far as to say the quests themselves are uninspired. It's just "listen to this person talk", "go to this place", "fight some machines", "hit Y on some information", rinse, repeat. The quest design is seriously flat, and you add the "routine quests" like the drones, the rebel camps, or the artifact hunts on top of them. I think there are some fun puzzles in the game, but that is definitely not the focus here.
Whatever positives a person could say about the game are seriously and severely hampered by the terrible, terrible writing / dialogue / and acting. Aloy has become a sort of self-important "better than thou" figure in a world that literally makes no sense. Just disappointing.
