Far Horizon Review: Flora The Explorer

Oh dear. As I was weaning myself off Once Human, along came Far Horizon. Have you heard of it? Me neither, but you might want to take a mental note if you like third-person action RPGs chockful of resource collecting, item crafting, and face-shooting within a sci-fi environment.

First thoughts were of Mass Effect without all the drama. There are so many of these games that it's difficult to make any other comparison outside BioWare's benchmark and challenging for developers to trap you into that XP loop so many of us are shackled to. Beacham Games pushed aside the competition with its animated intro - one of the best narratives of 2024 - a year full to the brim of excellent titles and one of the best for gaming.

Far Horizon sets the scene: you're launched into space into unknown territories, and like Snake Eyes meets Sam Beckett, you have to survive (in style) and get back home while being resourceful. Now that you've crash-landed in the tutorial territory, it's time to find some ore. But how do I actually make a thing? Some of the mechanics aren't so intuitive, and the controls for accessing the menu opt for various hotkeys rather than the go-to Esc or Tab. Everything else is classic; easy movement, E for interactions, and natural combat make it an extension of your thoughts. We need to stay away from over-complex controls. Otherwise, there are plenty of other titles out there from the pool.

My game time started on a mid-range desktop, and I was pleasantly surprised by how crisp the visuals were. Like, crisp. There was something slightly missing, though. The graphics are brilliant, but the movement is rigid, and the enemy sounds somewhat generic. A portion of the game feels a tad Early Access as there's some... je ne sais quoi about it. However, your accompanying A.I. is beneficial - peeing all over Peter Dinkage's attempts in Destiny. But you don't care about A.I. voiceovers; what about the gameplay?!

A decent rogue-like needs a replay loop, and an open-world crafting world needs to be immersive - even the most monotonous task feels meaningful, like shifting debris in Castle Flipper. While unknown alien entities were chasing me down, I was more keen on grabbing a shovel and digging up an exotic pineapple thingy. It's just a shame that the beast A.I. isn't on par with the rest as I'd lured them to some droids, and for some discriminatory reason or another, they didn't attack each other but chased me everywhere. Ultimately, I had to return to my ship to escape them. For a little context, Muggins here thought it'd be a good idea to store away his ammo without having a melee attack. Yeah...

Far Horizon reeled me in within, I'd say, about four minutes. That provided enough time to start wandering, accumulate minimal yet highly incentivised XP, and blast droids with critical hits. They got me - hook, line and sinker. Something about that crispness again makes the game feel like a bit of a showcase for a new graphics card or monitor. Naturally, it looked better on my better-equipped laptop, but I can't stop complimenting how cool this looks—especially the various armours. The U.I., while crisp (full of c-words!), was a little ugly at times and confusing as gameplay is mostly minimalist - any sort of objective or equipment required to craft something new feels cumbersome at first.

Fast-forwarding, Far Horizon is a big game - more so if you're a hoarder like me. And, like Once Human, I can bring you more thoughtful insights the more time I spend with it. Alas(?), there have been a lot of decent games lately, and only so much time to juggle them all, so I haven't finished this yet. However, you haven't spent any money on this review, nor am I telling you it's an X out of 10 - I couldn't tell you. What I can tell you is if you like 'this sort of thing', then it has that certain catnip of getting yourself lost, in a good way, exploring, crafting and upgrading. Did I also mention how cool it looks yet?