By MaJ — Gaming systems analyst with 18+ years of industry experience. Full bio
The Horizon series occupies a distinctive position in the open-world action genre: a first-party Sony franchise that launched alongside the PlayStation 4’s late lifecycle and expanded into one of the platform’s most commercially successful properties. Horizon Forbidden West, released in 2022 for PlayStation with a PC port following in 2024, represents Guerrilla Games’ refinement of the machine combat systems that defined the original, while significantly increasing the density of interconnected gameplay systems.
The franchise has sold remarkably well across both titles, making it one of Sony’s most successful first-party launches. But sales numbers don’t explain why the machine combat feels distinctive, or why the override system has enough hidden variables to reward systematic analysis. The answer lies in how Guerrilla layered multiple progression systems-mount overrides, combat ally overrides, elemental matching, weapon coils, and Valor Surges-into a coherent combat experience.
The machine combat system is where Forbidden West distinguishes itself. There are dozens of distinct machine types across multiple classes, and each machine carries multiple component hit zones.
Machine Override: More Than Meets the Eye
Here’s what the game tells you about overrides: you complete a Cauldron dungeon, you unlock the ability to override a machine type, and then you can either ride it as a mount or have it fight alongside you in combat.
Here’s what the game doesn’t tell you: override duration varies based on whether it’s a mount or combat ally. Mounted overrides last indefinitely. Combat ally overrides last a limited time that can be extended through skill upgrades. Different machine types have different AI behaviors when overridden. The Sunwing flying mount, unlocked relatively late in the main story, accounts for a disproportionate amount of override usage because it eliminates vertical terrain constraints.
But you don’t get the flying mount until you’ve played through most of the story. The majority of the game must be played on ground mounts, navigating terrain that was clearly designed to reward vertical traversal (but withholds the best tool for that traversal until late).
It’s a pacing decision that makes sense from a narrative standpoint but can be frustrating from a gameplay standpoint. Guerrilla wants you to experience the landscape on foot and on ground mounts before handing you the keys to the sky.
From a tactical perspective, certain overrides are vastly more valuable than others. The Riptide skill, which allows Aloy to override machines at greater range and with reduced resource costs, is considered one of the best skill investments in the entire game because it fundamentally changes how often you can use overrides in combat. Among overridable machines, the Clawstrider offers exceptional combat value due to its high damage output and aggressive AI, while the Charger remains the most practical mount for general exploration because of its balanced speed and stamina. The game never explicitly guides you toward these optimizations, leaving players to discover through experimentation that some overrides are essentially must-haves while others are novelty options you’ll rarely use.
Component Destruction and Elemental Matching
The machine combat system is where Forbidden West really shines. There are dozens of distinct machine types across multiple classes, and each machine carries multiple component hit zones.
Blaze Canisters respond to fire damage. Power Cells respond to shock. Chillwater Modules respond to frost. Hit a component with matching elemental damage, and it triggers instant destruction with area-of-effect damage, bypassing the machine’s main health pool.
The game teaches you this through encounter design. Early machines are forgiving-you can experiment with different elemental combinations and see what works. Late-game Apex machines complicate the equation by layering elemental resistances that reduce weak point damage significantly.
There’s a learning gradient here that’s genuinely well-designed. The game doesn’t spell it out in text, but by the time you’re fighting Apex variants, you’ve internalized that matching elements to components is essential.
Weapon Coils and the Optimal Build Problem
Weapon coils are socketable mods that provide elemental damage bonuses, handling improvements, or raw damage increases. Each weapon has multiple coil slots, and coil bonuses stack.
The game’s tutorial guidance emphasizes matching elemental damage to component types. And that works. But it’s not necessarily optimal in terms of damage-per-second.
Testing different coil configurations reveals that a hybrid approach-mixing raw damage coils with elemental coils-often achieves higher DPS while maintaining reasonable component destruction rates. But the game’s tutorial tells you to match elements. Following the tutorial gives you a suboptimal build.
This is a recurring tension in Forbidden West’s systems: the game provides clear guidance on how to play, and then the systems themselves reward players who deviate from that guidance. It’s not a flaw, exactly, but it does mean that players who trust the tutorials exclusively will have a harder time than players who experiment.
Valor Surges and Build Variety
The skill tree is divided into multiple branches, each containing nodes that provide passive bonuses or unlock Valor Surges-activated abilities with cooldowns that provide enhanced combat capability.
What’s smart about the Valor Surge design is that Guerrilla normalized their efficiency. Different Valor Surges have different cooldown durations and different effects, but their damage-per-second output converges to a similar range.
This means there’s no mathematically”correct” Valor Surge choice. A player who prefers frequent, lower-impact bursts of damage has options that are just as viable as a player who prefers infrequent, high-impact surges.
It’s excellent systems design because it creates genuine choice without a dominant strategy.
Machine Strike: The One That Got Away
I should mention Machine Strike, the in-game board game. It’s a genuinely interesting minigame with unique machine pieces and tactical positioning. But it has a problem: higher-tier pieces win a disproportionate percentage of matches, with the advantage being large enough that tactical positioning matters less than piece quality.
It’s a missed opportunity for a system that had the potential to be a genuinely competitive minigame. The tier system converts what could be a chess-like exercise into a collection upgrade path with a board game attached.
That said, it’s still entertaining, it’s completable, and it has more depth than it initially appears. Just. maybe don’t go in expecting competitive balance.
The Open World Structure: How Guerilla Designs Space
Forbidden West’s map is divided into five main regions, each with distinct biome challenges that force you to engage with the game’s traversal systems. The Daunt serves as the gateway, a narrow canyon that introduces vertical climbing and environmental hazards. The Tenakth territories in the west feature dense forests and heavy rainfall that reduce visibility and complicate ranged combat. The Desert Frontier presents heat exposure as a genuine survival mechanic-stay out too long without cooling gear and Aloy’s health deteriorates. The highlands to the north add freezing temperatures and high-altitude wind that affects arrow ballistics. And the Burning Shores DLC expands into volcanic terrain with acidic fog that damages gear durability.
What’s remarkable is how Guerrilla handled the “open world checklist” problem that plagues games like Assassin’s Creed or Far Cry. Forbidden West has its share of map markers-relics to collect, signal towers to climb, camps to clear-but the game spaces them intelligently and ties them to meaningful progression. The waypoints and survey banners (which reveal map sections) could easily have been “Ubisoft towers,” but they’re positioned so that reaching them requires genuine traversal problem-solving rather than just following a path. You’re not clearing markers to clear markers; you’re climbing that ridge because the view from the top will help you plan your next route through the terrain.
The tribal settlement system reinforces this. Each major settlement-the Tenakth fortress, the Utaru villages, the Quen outposts-feels like a real place with political tensions and resource constraints. The side quests in these settlements aren’t filler; they’re world-building that explains why the region looks the way it does. When you’re collecting artifacts or clearing rebel camps, you’re doing it because those activities meaningfully connect to the settlement’s survival. It’s a subtle distinction, but it’s the difference between “content” and “world.”