Alright, after invested quite some time in HZD, I decided using this review to answer some of the hottest discussions friends asked me a lot. In hope it will do to help you out for the purchase decisions.

Q: Is HZD poorly optimized?
A: I personally believe HZD currently is having some major issues across variety builds PCs however, DEFINITELY not high-end PCs like mine in this case. I don’t have any performance issues in game, all max-out settings on, the game looks just as amazing as I expected on a PC should be. However, I do have some issues with my Nintendo Switch Pro controller when in game, eg. Menu button doesn’t work, experiencing disconnection some times. But since NSP is not a major controller, and Sony doesn’t like it, decided to cast it out ╮(╯▽╰)╭ no surprise, while if you are using PS DS controller or Xbox controllers, you should be pretty good to go. Wait a bit longer to see what happens.

Q: How is the gameplay?
A: Triple A title standard no doubt. In case if you are not aware, Death Stranding shares the same engine as HZD, it is exact the reason why HZD is such a beautiful charming world when the graphic settings are right. It is also an enormous open world with tons of things to do in game: many different type of quests, collectibles(not solely for your hobby, you exchange them to the merchant for very rare equipment), vast area to explore, eye-open enemies to kill, hidden eastern eggs to discover, all apart from main objectives. In short, you will be very busy. Story is interesting, so far have no ideas how this is going to end. If you like game like Assassins’ Creed: Odyssey, you will like HZD for a similar fashion.

Q: Any annoying plug-ins?
A: No in game apps purchase, no multiple players mode meaning no skins tricks, as far as I know, no Denuvo(I very appreciate this one, this game is a masterpiece even solely for the collectibles purposes). All set, DLCs included.

Q: Your recommendations?
A: At least wait for Guerrilla fixing current performance issues, making HZD be able to run fairly OK on the average building machines, if you want to buy it without inside the risking range. I’d recommend to buy it when a big sale hits for reasons a) HZD itself might be a masterpiece of work, but the business behind it might make you think twice before supporting it. A 3-year game hits PC with price rose even twice in some regions, make it fairly too expensive to reach out for some gamers. All the sole purpose is to lure PC gamers to buy a PS5, not putting any heart or love to further support games meant to be played by the audiences as much as they can without limiting to a special platform. b)the idea of hunting machine isn’t HZD’s origin, there’s a game called Enslaved: Odyssey to the West, in case you’ve never heard of it, despite my long out-of-date review didn’t recommend it which isn’t correct now, EOTTW is a great game no less than HZD while bonding the similar concept for a lot earlier time, besides not an open world setting. But it’s cheaper, enjoyable, generally a good choice if you ask me while killing some time before HZD hits a sale or fixed performance issues.

Q: Last question, a sentence to sum the game?
A: Raised by the tribe thought myself was a barbarian, later found unidentified flying creatures soaring above my head, shocked. Can’t shoot them again, 2nd one stays in a white alien box, not going to PC on earth forever. A civilization is lost. Again.

Before I write about my own ‘view’ of this game, I’d like to state something very important to you all about this ‘Legacy of Thieves Collection’ first.
As the title describes, the game is a collection, there’re two different ‘projects’ under the same title in the game with different directors directing the stories. One’s called ‘ A Thief’s End’ which is an adventure of seeking legendary pirate’s treasure with Nathan Drake being the protagonist in the story. The other one is called’ The Lost Legacy’ which is based on Indian mythology, the protagonist in this journey is Chole Frazer. Despite ‘the Two’ have some certain casts appearing in both campaigns, the two protagonists: Nathan and Chole will never bump into each other because it’s not the same story with a different time. Moreover, the gameplay also differs, A Thief’s End is a linear campaign with 60% focusing on gunplay, hand-to hand combat, 40% with exploration the environment such as climbing, puzzle solving, item collecting, etc. The Lost Legacy is a mixture of open world and linear(point to point) adventure that giving you a chance to spend more time on exploring the world they’ve crafted with side missions, complex puzzles, collectibles etc. The gunplay and battles in the other hand, are less heavier, less often.

OK, now we’re clear about the different concepts of the campaigns, let’s talk about them with my own insights. I am being completely honest to say, when I did A Thief’s End, I wasn’t planning writing a review for it at all simply I wasn’t impressed. Why? Despite the game delivers stunning visuals, cinematic cut-scenes, they’re triple A standard, no question here. However, A Thief’s End, had a very disappointing story right from the start, ‘Seeking a pirate treasure’(I don’t go to the point beyond this, spoilers free review). Believe me, as a 30+ years old full-grown man, I’ve at least heard & watched & played more than couples of similar stuffs from radio programs to films and video games, though the details could be different, the idea itself isn’t original. It will be quite hard to impress me by this idea I’ve known pretty too well. I had my gut feeling at the start and it failed as I guessed. What’s worse? Compare to Chole Frazer, Nathan was pretty boring to me ( sorry boys) for the most of time. If this wasn’t enough, in his story, certain characters’ certain decisions and actions they’ve done, I found it’s difficult to acknowledge. Can’t go with the detail, in short, the story was a big letdown. The gameplay is linear, it wasn’t the problem bothering me, the real problem is: the game’s very repetitive aside from sightseeing, all you do is reaching to a place, found a clue, fighting some enemies in a frequent bases. Once short objective was reached, repeating the process in a different place. I’d only recommend this game (if it were A Thief’s End alone), to players who enjoying sightseeing(a beast rig is a must to achieve this goal), gun-fighting, cinematic visuals. Unfortunately, this is not my definition of a magnificent game should be. In quite the opposite, they can simply design a pixel graphic game with some original creative ideas with a well-written story that could easily win my recommendation, none triple A standard were required. On the contrary, all these eyes candies were bring together with a dull story is like talking to a beautiful woman with a boring soul, I don’t think she will keep my attention on her for long, so it was the same with Nathan’s adventure.

The ultimate fact that alternatively changed my mind to write a recommendation for Uncharted: Legacy of Thieves Collection is Chole Frazier’s story alone: The Lost Legacy. I must say, girls have done an excellent job this time than boys had. 1st, as I mentioned a little above, her campaign is based on Indian mythology with directors’ own visions of creativity. The idea itself is very original, I’ve never heard nor seen a sophisticate story of this in the first place. I’ve searched my memories, in Tomb Raider III, Lara Croft went to Indian jungle, but aside from some fights and minimum sightseeing, nothing deep down to the mythology or Indian culture itself, nothing in comparison. In TR Underworld, Lara went to Thailand, despite sharing some similar landscapes like South-East Asia mountains, jungles, Buddha(Shiva)statues, again, barely scratched anything under the surface of Buddhism or Indian mythology. The Lost Legacy however, have done it terrifically, not only with the excellent storytelling, but also the amazing landscape to travel around. 2nd, compare to Nathan Drake, Chole Frazer is a much more interesting protagonist to play with, I enjoyed her British accent which woke some good memories of my old days, with a sense of her dark humor, characteristic personality, she was nothing short of fun to tag along. Just as she said,’ no one is perfect’, the good and bad thing she had done, made her ‘a real person’ who walked into my heart in her own way. She reminds me of Catherine Zeta Jones’ performance in the film: Entrapment, though the subjects were not the same. When a game somehow managed to establish a link connecting my real life events, I would no longer treat it as if it were someone else’s story, it undoubtedly got my full attention now. 3rd, gameplay-wise speaking, unlike A Thief’s End, The Lost Legacy approached players by a different path: by encouraging players to explore the world with some clever design’s help, the game came together as a whole new world to adventure. For example, by completing some certain side missions which will reward you ‘an easy way’ to find all the missable treasures scattering across the land. While in ATE, all 100+ treasures have no hints, it’s impossible to find them all on your first run unless you have a guide at hand. E.g. Reducing repetitive combat which weren’t much creative room there to work with. Instead, focusing on well-crafted puzzles that take some serious time to study with then solve. These examples showed the development team does seem to take some time experimenting if they were players, what would be fun to do in the game? (When you design some hidden treasures in the game, you don’t want players eventually couldn’t find them, do you?) Little by little, this was what makes the difference in the end. 4th, I could even say, A Lost Legacy has done better than any piece of new Tomb Raider Trilogy had done. It’s a quite difficult compliment to earn. Especially comes from someone who have played TR first, not the other way around due to Sony’s delusion of what exclusives could have brought to them.

But one thing A Thief’s End did better than The Lost Legacy is: it has few crashing issues for the entire long game and none of them are game-breaking. TLL in the other hand, have some serious issues I have to mention here as a fare warning. It crashes to desktop so often, literally in the 2nd half of the game, every water scenarios, it would crash for unknown reason. Some of them are close to game- breaking because they did happen in the same spots multiple times in a row which almost stuck me from progressing the story. This is a red flag no kidding. I have a high-end PC, 4K unlimited FPS with Render Scale set to 180%, I have no idea what kind of advanced setting inside could have caused this, likely, the problem is not on my end. Look, I am not saying crash issues definitely will happen to you too, but just in case, there’s a potential risk here if you ended up purchasing this game right now. Just keep this in mind. Well, it doesn’t affect my purchase decision by now since I have already completed the game, but it will do for my future orders from Sony: e.g I won’t buy The Last of Us Part.1 in advance knowing full well from the same studio, I could experience the same issue which ultimately could break my game if I were not so lucky next time. I surely have no desire to take the risk.