Horizon Forbidden West: Burning Shores — Review
Guerrilla's PS5-exclusive expansion is the most technically ambitious thing the studio has shipped. Here's the review on its own terms — and why it's the right closing chapter for the Forbidden West arc.
Burning Shores is the expansion that made Forbidden West feel like a complete sentence. Judged on its own, it's also Guerrilla's most technically ambitious release.
What Burning Shores Is
A PS5-exclusive standalone region picking up after the base game, with a tighter cast, a single arc, and a noticeably more confident handling of Aloy as a character. The Los Angeles ruins setting is the strongest piece of environment design the series has produced — dense, layered, and built for vertical play in a way Forbidden West's mainland never was.
How It Plays
Aerial traversal is finally treated as a first-class system. New machine types push the encounter-design envelope harder than anything in the base game. The map is small by design — and that's the point. Burning Shores trades scale for density, and every quest hub is the better for it.
What Stands Out
The visual fidelity. The character writing. The willingness to stage the final encounter at a scale the base game wouldn't have attempted. The romance subplot — handled with more nuance than first-party exclusives usually permit — is the kind of writing that justifies the PS5-only restriction.
What Holds It Back
Some side-content padding still leans on Forbidden West's legacy systems. A few traversal beats feel like they're showing off the engine more than serving the moment.
Who It's For
Anyone who finished Forbidden West and stopped there. Anyone wanting a clean argument for what a PS5-only Horizon could look like next. Anyone interested in where Guerrilla goes after this arc closes.
The Verdict
The best-looking thing on PS5, and a sharper, more confident piece of writing than the base game's epilogue. The right closing chapter for the Forbidden West arc — and the strongest case the franchise has made for what comes next.
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Guerrilla Games' post-post-apocalyptic action RPG series — Aloy, the machines, and the slow uncovering of what really happened to the old world.
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