Horizon Forbidden West Complete Edition PC Review – The Perfect Port

What if every port or remake was like the Horizon Forbidden West Complete Edition? A port that feels like a game that was made for PC. The Horizon Forbidden West Complete Edition runs smoothly, has a plethora of options to tweak for your system, and runs amazingly well on older systems with lower graphics. The Horizon Forbidden West Complete Edition port is a true next-gen console game that runs amazingly on older PC systems and looks simply stunning on current systems.

TL;DR

Nixxes Software and Guerilla Games turned Horizon Forbidden West Complete Edition into a true PC game, they didn’t skimp on features and settings. They made an amazingly optimized game that we wish was the standard for older and newer games in the industry.

The Horizon Forbidden West PC port is just perfect.

Horizon Forbidden West Complete Edition – Welcome to the PC Master Race

The Horizon Forbidden West Complete Edition encompasses the base game of Horizon Forbidden West and the Burning Shores expansion. On top of that the Horizon Forbidden West Complete Edition features a plethora of features for PC. Horizon Forbidden West is a port of the PS5 release, so that this review won’t cover the details of the story or gameplay mechanics. We covered those extensively in our Horizon Forbidden West PS5 review and Horizon Forbidden West Burning Shores review. This review focuses on the differences, features, and, most of all, performance on our system and Steam Deck.

Going Above and Beyond the PS5 Version

Horizon Forbidden West Complete Edition features several added features to please the wide range of PC users and their own unique systems. The most notable added features are Ultra-wide and Super Ultra-wide support and even 48:9 triple monitor support. Until we win the lottery and get a rig to test on Ultra-wide or Super Ultra-wide we sadly cannot share our experiences with this.

In order to get Horizon Forbidden West Complete Edition running as smoothly as possible it also features DLSS 3 upscaling and frame generation, frame generation if you have an Nvidia  40- series card, though. Image enhancing Nvidia DLAA and Nvidia Reflex to smooth things out. AMD FSR and Intel XeSS are also supported, but it seems like someone struck a small deal with Nvidia.

These options are all optional, we tested with and without the Nvidia features and tinkered around to what was our perfect personal setting. And we just loved that there is so much versatility in a port of a PS5 game. Most developers forget that a part of the PC community is obsessed with tweaking their system and games to a degree of perfection.

Make it Better, For You

This brings us to the settings menu, we were ecstatic when the menu opened and had the option to tinker around. The biggest and best upgrade is unlocking your frames and letting your GPU turn into a small heater as it unlocks all its power to render the most astonishing and beautiful version of Horizon Forbidden West. Still feeling nostalgic towards the PS5 console? Plug in your dual sense controller and enjoy all the fancy features that come with it, haptic triggers, enhanced vibrations, and in-built speakers.

Although Windows always thinks the Dual Sense controller is a speaker first, we had a good laugh when suddenly all audio was going through the controller. This was more Windows doing its thing than a wrong feature in the Horizon Forbidden West Complete Edition though.

Won’t run your Samsung Smart Fridge

The optimization of the Horizon Forbidden West Complete Edition is simply supreme but has its limits. Our test right for Horizon Forbidden West Complete Edition is an Intel I5 10600K with an RTX3080 and 32GB of RAM, running the game on a Samsung EVO Plus NVMe SSD. Right out of the box the game ran perfectly, no tweaking done or needed.

But the starting area of Horizon Forbidden West gives a false impression. As we expected, the load on your system isn’t that high in that small tutorial bit. After entering the open world and first open-world city, you will hit that performance dip.

We started off at maximum settings with only bloom and depth of field turned off because we hate those settings with a passion. When hitting the open world of Horizon Forbidden West, everything still ran well enough, but we lost about 40% of our frames and had the occasional stutter. Especially when entering cutscenes Horizon Forbidden West Complete Edition would drop below thirty frames and make for an uneasy experience. After that, we decided to dive into the settings and tweak everything to perfection. After that, our GPU ran at a nice range between 90 and 100 percent load, and the CPU was doing its CPU things.

Horizon Forbidden Deck

As for the Steam Deck performance, it works. If you are willing to sacrifice a lot of the beauty Horizon Forbidden West Complete Edition has to offer. Like a whole of sacrifices on the visual front. Depending on your own tweaks to your deck, playing with a headset, rumble, brightness or even volume.  Your battery life might last for one and a half hours to two hours. Our tests were done on the original Steam Deck, and we didn’t have access to the more recent OLED Deck.

Even after sacrificing all the beauty of the world, characters, monster design, and phenomenal armor aesthetics, you are still going to get frequent dips below thirty frames and even going as low as twenty in the bigger scripted fights. This is a situation where you technically can, but we wouldn’t recommend it.

Those Minor Icks

Some small and one major thing bothered us. The small things are really those personal things that we, as a dedicated team of gamers and reviewers, might stumble over. But you never might even have a problem with it.

When playing with the Dual Sense controller from the PS5, it felt like there was a small delay in aiming, and sensitivity was hard to get to that sweet spot. The only game where we had this occurrence was Cyberpunk, and even then, the opinion was spread on whether it was a gaming-related issue or a personal one. In the end, the mouse and keyboard were the preferred way to play, it made targeting and aiming for the weak spots and resource drops during fights much easier and snappier.

The climbing felt off when using the mouse and keyboard at times. Pressing a certain direction towards something would have Alloy lean in the correct direction, but when pressing the prompt to jump over, she would decide to plunge to her death in the other direction.

Data is the New Gold

Like we said, really minor things that caught our eye. The major one, though, at the start of the game, you are asked if you want to share data. Like many companies, they want to collect data on your hardware, usage, game length, etc. While most games allow you to opt out fully, Horizon Forbidden West Complete Edition has no such option. You can share some data or all the data.

The data you provide is just too valuable for you to give away for free. There are companies making billions on the data we all provide for free. Yes, your data is used to improve the things you love, but it is also used against you to play on your weak and blind spots. That’s why I (not we at BGeek but I the writer) see the option to not opt out of data sharing as a major gripe. If you absolutely do not care about this, that is not a problem at all. But it is for me, and it will be for some.

Horizon Forbidden West Complete Edition – Conclusion

Horizon Forbidden West Complete Edition is a prime example of a port and what any company should deliver on release for any game. Whether it is a port or a PC-exclusive game, just make sure it works and delivers what is promised. The price tag is reminiscent of the console price, a whopping €60 but do mind that this is the Complete Edition and comes with the Burning Shores expansion. So the price tag is worth it for the hours of content you will get. 

Thank you, PlayStation Greece, for providing us with a key for the absolutely excellent Horizon Forbidden West Complete Edition. The PC community welcomes you with open arms after the recent successes.