Horizon Forbidden West: Burning Shores Review - New Islands, New Friends, New Toys

Horizon Forbidden West is one of those open world games with so much density and care that even if you’ve easily clocked over 50 hours on the game, you’ll probably still want more of this post-apocalyptic world filled with mechanical beasts. Over a year later, Guerilla Games is giving us just that with the Burning Shores DLC, an epilogue chapter of sorts that adds a bit more to an already meaty title with new additions, a satisfying final boss fight, and a sizable new area to explore. 

A DLC for players that finished the base game

Burning Shores isn’t a side DLC embedded into the base game, as this is meant for players who have completed Horizon Forbidden West’s main story, so if you haven’t done so, it’s best to play the main game first before anything else. Don’t worry though, this review will be spoiler-free, regardless.

After the events of the main game, Aloy finds a new lead from Silas that could help them face an oncoming threat, a lead that takes her to the Burning Shores, a place formerly known as Los Angeles. The scale of the new area is sizable, and you can spend close to 15 hours exploring every inch of ruined LA. This isn’t one massive land mass, but a series of small islands altered by volcanic ash and brimming with machine wildlife that’s striving to be close to water. Guerrilla Games took note of Aloy’s ability to take to the skies, as the DLC encourages you to explore the new area either through Sunwing or the Skiff, a Quen boat that operates like a speedboat. I didn’t use my land mount once as Burning Shores has you hopping from one island to another, helping the Quen that settled in the area.

Aloy is accompanied by a Quen named Seyka for the DLC’s main story. Quen’s a marine who slowly grows to bond with Aloy as the story progresses. Their dynamic represents something Guerilla has never explored, as Aloy has always been too focused on the task at hand for relationships, so it was great to see this side of Aloy as she’s come a long way since the events of Horizon Zero Dawn.

A villain with the right tropes

But the real surprise is the antagonist Aloy chases all throughout the DLC, Walter Londra, who was portrayed by Sam Witwer (Days Gone). It was a brief but stellar performance from Witwer as his villainy tropes were so well-realized that I would greatly prefer him over the antagonists we got in the base game. He can come off as one-dimensional, but it all pays off thanks to how well the character was implemented. You want to hate him, and they did a good job at slowly unveiling his master plan that eventually leads to one of the best boss battles in the entire game. 

The journey is long by DLC standards, as there are new side quests and ruins to uncover. While most of them are similar to the base game’s side activities, the quality of these distractions remains consistent as there’s a bit more depth with a start, middle, and end to close out these minor character’s stories and struggles. Unearthing the new area's secrets plays similar to the base game, with minor puzzles requiring you to figure out how to get that climbable crate to the other side or read notes to figure out the still working terminal that requires a passcode.

Same combat, more toys 

Combat remains the same as the Burning Shores DLC simply gives the player more tools to play with as you go through the new content. Your previous equipment will do just fine with the new machines added to the game as at this point you are likely geared to win multiple wars on your own. I didn’t find much of a challenge at this point in the game, so instead, I played around with the new legendary items and armor, trying out new skills added in the skill trees, and experimenting to see what I could do. While the new Zenith Gauntlets (a unique futuristic weapon type Aloy earns midway through) are a blast to use and rip apart any machine before me, you can never go wrong with using the different elemental types to give you an advantage in combat. 

Whether exploring Burning Shores’ main story or side activities, the game still looks visually amazing as this biome is a nice mix of tropical shores and dense forests added in with some volcanic lava flowing down a mountain trail. The Burning Shores reminded me how gorgeous the game looks, as I still consider this one of the most visually stunning open world games available on the PlayStation 5, with no FPS drops during my time with the DLC. But there is something that caught my eye – the DLC’s draw distance. 

As you are up in the sky on a Sunwing, heading to a nearby island, I can see that the landscape in front of me isn’t fully loaded, which took me off guard, as this happened a couple of times when playing the DLC. This is new, as I didn’t experience this in the base game, which is just as dense and wide when you fly around the open world. It breaks the immersion just slightly, as all of a sudden you’ll see certain parts of an island on the horizon incomplete with a machine floating on nothing.

The Burning Shores DLC is an epilogue add-on that’s filled with rich content that felt completed, as opposed to, say, a jumble of leftover parts. Though it only adds just a little more context to the base game’s conclusion, it’s still worth taking the ride if you want more of Horizon Forbidden West.

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8/10 (BUY)

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PROS

• Burning Shores is visually stunning and is a treat to explore either on water or in the skies

• Walter Londra is a solid villain with all the right tropes

• New Legendary weapons, armors, and skills to play around with

CONS

• Poor draw distance while in flight for certain parts of the DLC

What I’ve Played

• Completed the main story of Burning Shores

• Reached the new max level of 60 and unlocked most of the new skills added

• Did most of the new side quests

*This review is based on a PS5 copy of the DLC provided by the publisher*

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