Horizon Forbidden West players aren't impressed by nerfs to legendary weapons

The latest Horizon Forbidden West update nerfs a number of powerful weapons, and fans aren't entirely thrilled about balance changes in their single-player game.

Horizon Forbidden West update 1.09 released earlier this week. Among a number of fixes to quests and other world activities, one note reads that developer Guerilla Games had "rebalanced several combat mechanics." According to community manager Chanté Goodman, that included a lowering of base stats for legendary weapons and armor that would bring them closer in-line with other weapons.

That change quickly proved unpopular. In a post yesterday, Reddit user ignimbrite said that nerfing the base level of the legendary weapons was "mildly irritating," but far more frustrating was the decision to limit the stats of even the upgraded versions of those weapons. They complained that they'd had to grind dozens of resources for the upgrade, but that now it was barely better than standard gear, asking "literally why, it's a freaking single player game ya dorks."

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Similar sentiments were put forward in another post, where user CommanderCuesta called on Guerilla to lower the weapons' upgrade costs if the studio was set on limiting their damage: "Although we love fighting huge difficult machines and having the satisfaction when toppling them, having to kill dozens of them for a single weapon (that were just nerfed, mind you) takes and otherwise thrilling activity and transforms it into two painful choices we as players must make."

The front page of the game's subreddit currently features a number of similar posts. One user complains that after grinding for their powerful weapons, they had access to them for just 24 hours before the nerf. Another title claims that "legendary weapons are seriously not worth the upgrade time."

Guerilla hasn't explained the reason why it's decided to nerf weapons in a single-player game. While Elden Ring, for example, has limited the impact of weapons its players may have enjoyed, its multiplayer components meant that some of those had to be kept in line, but that's not the case here. Given the community backlash, it'll be interesting to see whether any of these changes are walked back in the coming weeks.