The gameplay loop of Horizon: Forbidden West is incredible and each difficulty setting brings something new to it. This is why it is not a bad idea to have a sound understanding of what each difficulty option in the game does before making a decision. In this Horizon: Forbidden West guide, we have provided a rundown of all the difficulty options and help people choose the best one.
Horizon: Forbidden West Difficulty Options
There are a total of 5 difficulty options to choose from in Horizon: Forbidden West. These are outlined below:
- Story: Story difficulty setting eases the combat experience, allowing you to focus on exploration and narrative.
- Easy: Easy difficulty offers a light combat experience while exploring the world and story.
- Normal: Normal difficulty provides a balanced experience of exploration, story, and combat.
- Hard: Hard difficulty allows for a challenging combat experience throughout the journey.
- Very Hard: Very Hard difficulty offers a tough and demanding combat experience for those looking to test their skills.
Right off the bat, unless someone is really struggling with the game, we do not recommend Story or Easy options. Combat is easily one of the shining points of the game and playing on Story or Easy trivializes a lot of mechanics. However, it is all about having fun at the end of the day and not get frustrated because there is seemingly no way to get past a boss battle.
Normal is what we would recommend to a lot of people. Hard is unquestionably manageable but it can get a little frustrating from time-to-time. As for Very Hard, this is something we recommend to people who are on the second or third playthrough – think of it as playing GoW on Give Me God of War on the initial playthrough.
Lastly, do note that since there are no Trophies tied to difficulty, there should be no problems in decreasing or increasing the difficulty depending on the situation. Also, in addition to these predetermined difficulty options, Horizon: Forbidden West also allows the player to make a custom difficulty setting by changing things like Concentration, HP, damage dealt, auto-heal, etc.
This is all we have got in which difficulty to choose in Horizon: Forbidden West. For more helpful tips and tricks, feel free to check out our detailed Horizon: Forbidden West wiki page.