I mean it makes sense, although I feel it's actually not that hard if you stick to it. Eventually the game will click, for me sometime in the second biome and then it's just amazing. The art design, the audio, the story.. it's all just so well crafted and anyone who appreciates art, even a little bit, will fall in love with it I think.
Regarding horizon, to me personally that was a good change. In the first game I was hyped about the many ways to kill a machine, that were announced before launch. I was almost at the end of the game I realized that I was basically only using the bow, if it wasn't a Sidequest that required a different weapon. It slayed everything in its way.
In the forbidden West, I actually had to get to know the machines and their weakpoints. Use elemental effects, tear specific parts off to remove attacks. The gameplay finally got diverse to me. I've also heard this complaint from friends, that the enemies are quite the sponges but really as soon as you hit them with the right effects, they're going down much better. Also the spikethrower. Those drilling spikes were just incredible, I loved throwing every one I threw (which where a lot lol)
And thanks for the tip regarding AW! I think I would've missed that haha
The opposite for me.
When there was the anniversary sale or something in July I decided to upgrade my remaining like 450 day for idk, 35€? Simply because I wanted to play humanity, which cost 30€ already and the new ratchet and clank, which was also like 40€. So it was basically a no-brainer. I also knew it had Alan Wake which I wanted to play, the newer assassin's creed games, namely origins and Odyssey I always wanted to play but haven't done yet. Now on sale they are quite cheap anyways but really, this was a nice deal already.
When I found out what else there was to play on there, I was blown away. Death stranding, ghost of Tsushima, even miles morales. I also wanted to buy and play death stranding at some point, the other 2 weren't really of much interest before; but having them for free, I might as well try them.
This far I only finished r&c and am playing Alan Wake and death stranding, while I uninstalled MP games, to focus myself on actually finishing all the games on my backlog.
Also this month this moving out game was added which I played with friends and it was absolutely hilarious.
Personally, I think I might just get 12months on top while it's still the old price so I have some time left.
But the increase is steep indeed and it's wild they're doing that without any service change. Like 'hey in return we're promising an AAA game in every monthly catalog update and a AAA game in every second month of essential free games'
You still get the Russian roulette of maybe 1-2 actually good high quality games a year, 3-4 fun indies and the rest being mid af. For this price? It's tough..
I've seen a post yesterday also about ps5 prices falling in a region, idk what it was anymore and honestly this sounded like a good strategy, business wise. Sell consoles cheaper again, but increase the membership prices to make up for it. Easier to get in for lots of people because they will think the console is cheap, to then be playing high yearly fees basically