Peaked with a challenge for Zero Dawn. Apologies for the essay I’ve written. It’s somewhat worth it
So I finished with ultra hard new game + on FW now doing ultra hard on a normal new game for FW. Do not recommend it, you get absolutely demolished by literally everything it’s like a souls game.
However a few months ago I wanted to challenge myself. I’ve always preferred the simplicity of HZD’s melee combat style as much as there’s less to it, it always felt more satisfying landing the knockdowns as well as it feeling more effective at times. So I wanted to challenge myself and go for a spear only challenge. Now I looked this up to see if it was possible but I’ve seen some videos of single machines, mainly deathbringers, and some no bow challenges but I didn’t see purely spear only.
I allowed myself heavy weapons as it helped with thunderjaw shard farming if you restart from save while holding a disc launcher when at a campfire.
It also turns out that you cannot beat the final fight without the ravager cannon so I’m glad I allowed that rule. I did play on normal mode which yeah is pretty easy but I wasn’t even sure if it was possible due to enemies being on unreachable vantage points so I didn’t wanna have to risk dying frequently while getting destroyed and this challenge was more of a “is it possible” rather than being a difficult challenge. To make it more fun I also sold my bow as to not have any risk of accidental use or using it when I felt like it wasn’t doable, I HAD to find a way.
For the most part it was a breeze and deathbringers weren’t actually too problematic as you can jump on the legs and onto the platform meaning it only slams which can be avoided with a well timed dodge. The only issue i really faced was the final fight which requires a perfect ravager cannon damage output missing so many as 5 shots forces a restart due to the time restriction.
The only other blip was the zero dawn lab in the shadow carja city. Which for one section has 3 carja on top of a walkway that is not accessible until you kill them and then go to the next room which has stairs leading up to the walkway. But this is the only section in the entire game with a section that is not accessible. Or so I thought because after an hour of jump spamming I was able to climb a pillar like area. Now while this was all well and good I still wasn’t able to make it close. So I tried all the other pillars until I was on the one to the right of the walkway which is the closest one. You get to the top and you have to do a sort of delayed jump to get onto the walkway which allows you to get on top. I’m not joking when I say the relief of finally figuring this out as there is NOTHING on any platform which goes over this as this is clearly not a challenge someone has documented. Holy shit it was so annoying I thought it was fully impossible for an hour until I finally completed.
Really recommend this challenge as it’s got a really good mix of puzzle solving as well as really satisfying fights. Medium machines along with the behemoth and deathbringer are all way more fun to fight, the stormbird fight I ran past as I would’ve been there genuinely for hours and you don’t actually have to fight it to progress. The use of heavy weapons also means you don’t have to melee a thunderjaw which is honestly awful to fight with a spear.
The only thing I recommend not doing is getting the storm weaver armour, I got it as early as possible which is after the proving. I’d maybe recommend it if you’re doing a higher difficulty run but it made the game trivially easy on normal. I think I died twice the whole run and one was fall damage and the other was my mount running headfirst into the shit before I got the armour.
But yeah, really fun challenge, really recommend it. And thank you yo anyone who’s read this whole thing!!!!!!