Lego Horizon Adventures Review: Short-Term Fun

With its upbeat presentation, classic slapstick humor, and surprisingly in-depth combat,  Lego Horizon Adventures cements itself as a worthy 15-20-hour experience for any Horizon or Lego fan. 

It’s not perfect, however. Its simplistic level design can make moment-to-moment gameplay slightly sluggish, especially in the final stretch. Its seamless co-op experience can become chaotic and confusing in the most intense encounters.  

However, none of those issues are prominent enough to rob the absolute joy of chugging along this light-hearted retelling of Aloy’s coming-of-age story in Lego Horizon Adventures.

Lego Horizon Adventures is a part action-adventure title and part city-building game. Completing story missions will grant Lego Bricks, which opens up more building opportunities in Mother’s Heart, the game’s base of operations. 

The narrative follows the events of Zero Dawn, minus the tragedies, and focuses primarily on building Aloy’s relationship with her companions. Erend, Rost, Varl, Teersa, and DJ Sylens (yes, you read that correctly) are back and may have gobbled a bottle of truth serum or two along the way. 

The party banter between Aloy and her friends is undoubtedly the highlight of Lego Horizon Adventures and makes up for some of the silliest moments ever in a Lego game. 

All four companions are playable, with each having a unique playstyle and abilities at their disposal. With the exception of Rost, once you have unlocked all party members, you’re free to bring one of them along on a mission as a second player. You can also swap them with Aloy to make them do all her busy work. 

Lego Horizon Adventures features both online and couch co-op, with the latter being one of the most seamless I have seen in a modern video game. You simply need to plug in another controller, and the game will detect another player.

What’s more, there’s no split screen, so you will share the same screen. This doesn’t prove to be an issue unless one of you wanders off the camera’s line of sight or there are too many enemies on the screen.

There were many instances, especially later in the game, where multiple human and robot enemies had appeared on-screen, and I couldn’t locate my character. My friend who was playing with me via local co-op struggled with this issue as well, which unnecessarily broke our immersion and sometimes led to unexpected deaths. 

Thankfully, the combat itself is pretty fun and layered. Each character has a unique playstyle, ranging from melee to ranged, and can pick up various random abilities in every mission to amp up their damage output. 

Erend is the team’s tank who uses his hammer to deal a ton of damage irrespective of the enemy’s weak point. One of his abilities, like the Earthquake Hammer, is especially effective for taking down groups of human and robot enemies. 

Likewise, Varl can throw his Spear to deal ranged precision damage. One of his pick-up abilities can turn his Spear into a boomerang, which can hit friends and foes along the way to deal a ton of damage. Aloy, on the other hand, has access to elemental and shotgun bows like in the original game. 

In addition to unique abilities, each character can pick up gadgets like the Blast Boosts, which allow them to double jump and deal fire damage to enemies, or Gravity Bomb, which creates a vortex and sucks all enemies towards it to deal AOE damage. 

Swapping between characters and trying out different abilities keeps the combat fresh until the credits roll. There are also optional challenges via Hunting Ground missions if you want to test your combat efficiency. 

What isn’t exciting, however, is navigating the game’s various levels. Lego Horizon is a pretty game which painstakingly recreates Zero Dawn’s vibrant and varied landscape, but its levels lack complexity which makes exploration fairly repetitive. 

Going off the beaten path will usually lead you to a treasure chest, though there’s no real challenge to reaching it. As a result, the rewards don’t really feel rewarding. The Cauldron levels, however, are exceptions, with relatively challenging platforming sections that require you to pay attention. 

Each story mission in Lego Horizon Adventures doesn’t take longer than 15-20 minutes to finish, so it’s great for short-term play sessions. That said, you won’t encounter any checkpoints during missions, so if you quit it halfway, you will have to start all over again. 

When you're not hunting robot dinosaurs or pursuing Aloy’s origin story, you can spend time rebuilding Mother’s Heart. While it’s completely optional, there are plenty of customization options available to make the building aspect of the game quite fun and engaging. 

From tweaking your character’s appearance to putting out various outposts, there are plenty of ways to make Mother’s Heart and your Lego Horizon experience different from everybody else’s. 

As you collect more Lego Bricks, you will unlock more plots to build in the area. You can build a Popcorn stall or a Theme park; there are plenty of exciting options available to choose from. Building plots is a great way to passively earn more coins, which in turn will let you unlock more customization options.

Overall, every aspect of Lego Horizon Adventures, whether it's story, combat, or building, has enough nuances to keep you engaged for 15-20 hours.