Horizon Forbidden West Difficulty modes explained

Which difficulty level should you choose and is it easy to change between them?

Paul McNally

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If you are just about to set out on a new game of Horizon Forbidden West and have been confronted with a choice between the different Difficulty settings, now is a good time to understand how each might affect your game and progress in the coming hours. Let’s have a look at what the game offers up and how good you need to be before you start thinking about cranking the levels up.

How to change difficulty in Horizon Forbidden West

One of the cool things about Horizon Forbidden West is you can flip the difficulty about whenever you like. We always prefer this feature because not all players are created equal and occasionally, one enemy that most people can beat might just be an issue for somebody else and we don’t believe that that should result in them giving up on the game. So the option to tone down the difficulty level, even if it is just while you beat a certain boss, before ratcheting it back up again is always a welcome one.

To change the Difficulty setting in Horizon Forbidden West simply do the following:

• Choose Options from your controller
• Select Settings
• Select GAME tab
• Move down to Difficulty and flip between the levels using the analogue stick (moving left and right).

What are the Difficulty Levels on Horizon Forbidden West?

The game provides us with a nice broad spectrum of difficulties for all tastes, for those who want to experience the story with minimal complications, all the way to those who like dying a lot.

There is even a Custom mode so you can mix and match your preferences.

The five pre-programmed settings are:

• Story: Story difficulty eases the combat experience, allowing you to focus on exploration and narrative.
• Easy: Easy difficulty offers a light combat experience while exploring the world and story.
• Normal: Normal difficulty provides a balanced experience of exploration, story, and combat.
• Hard: Hard difficulty allows for a challenging combat experience throughout the journey.
• Very Hard: Very Hard difficulty offers a tough and demanding combat experience for those looking to test their skills.

If you are looking for the best balance of seeing the story and an actual gaming challenge we would suggest starting with Normal and seeing how that fits your playstyle. It is also where we would choose to begin if you had experience with Horizon Zero Dawn.

Don’t forget you can easily chop and change if the going gets tough or you are finding things a bit too easy and want to slow down your progression a little.