I like how in Horizon Zero Dawn, you can just make a wrong turn from the low-level watchers... little raptor things, and around the hillside you always pass will be GIANT DINOSAUR ROBOTS waiting to wreck your low-level life. If you went a different way at the fork a few hundred steps back, that thing would be seeing you right at that same moment. I like how the game will take you just barely past these places during the main quest. You get used to wandering around in the embrace during the whole proving arc and a little after. There are a few tough monsters but with sound strategy, you can net a good bit of stuff very easily. So I meander along the paths, loop around nearby alt paths, drifting into packs of monsters as I pass and then exploring around where they are. You can sweep the whole area like this - knock out all of the quests, round up materials, even buy a weapon or two and upgrade a lot of carry slots.
And then you leave the embrace and you try to do that and get eaten by something that considers you a snack in the sense that you or I might consider one lone gummy bear a snack: so, barely. And the thing is... you can yolo the random high-level challenges dotted across the world beyond the gates. It's not about stats in this game - you aren't going to magically take many more hits or deal much more damage 10 levels later. Sure, maybe you get the right armor with some mods on it, or a weapon with better capabilities. But you can get those things any time. You'll just have lower HP and fewer perks to back you up. You can still win by sizing up the enemy's behavior and weak points, and then use whatever situational means you have to gain the upper hand. The fights are generally lock and key. Certain keys are kept from you until you progress, but there are different ways of 'picking' the locks when you don't have the exact right tool. Use distance and rolls, use evasion to isolate enemies and then use whatever you can use to reduce attack or defense. Approach quietly and roll them through traps. Hell, if you can, place them around the outskirts of the arena as places to retreat to. When you stop to heal after evading a melee attack, they're gonna be ready to jump and you to roll. Hence placing traps where you want to be retreating. Use the blast sling to pull off chunks of hp and armor while moving, exposing weak areas to set up an elemental as well as cause knockback to buy the time. Good for keeping mob enemies back, too. All sorts of little tricks, depending on the enemy and what is around it.
Obviously, that is still tense and burns tons of supplies if you aren't careful. But it's really gratifying when you drop a level 27 behemoth of a monster at level 17. All because you found yourself in the wrong place at the wrong time. I swear, the map markers encourage this intentionally. They're always at least somewhat off from where the markers suggest they will be.
That stuff is all timing and planning, and being opportunistic with your kit and ways of using it. You have temporary invincibility in your dodges. The trade off is that you can get in and out of situations with enemies that can one-shot you. Many enemies can one or two shot you as it is. Aloy's strength is in the ways she knows to turn a situation around. All of this stuff is supposed to be impossible, but Aloy is different, being one of few people in the world actually being forced to comb through the reality of her world alone, without primitive religious dogma (or deep politics and history) dominating her entire understanding of the whole situation - to actually have to look at the world on a fundamental level and try to really figure things out. To her these things aren't monsters, not a curse - they're machines. If humans could make them, she could figure them out. That's what you're doing in the combat.
If you grind a bit and then move on to Meridian, you can pretty easily get some invaluable shadow weapons. The shadow sharpshooter and hunting bows can easily be gotten a little while before going there, even. The hunting bow is great for the beefed-up arrows only it gives you. They don't seem like much but the balanced tear and ballistic damage with handling makes it the AR of fighting animal-like people-eater robots. Those arrows are way cheaper to make than sharpshooter arrows (the wire is a killer to farm - you never get enough back for the kills,) and you get way faster firing with better handling. Takes down groups of watchers before anything can happen past all-eyes-on-you - quick shots to the eyes as they approach. Stack 3 arrows and focus on headshots for sniping. They're quicker and easier to put on specific parts of bosses, too. The handling is just so much better, and the arrows are ready twice as fast. Just make sure the circle closes before focusing. The ropecaster is really helpful, as it pins weaker monsters in one shot and most others in two shots less than the plain one. The shadow war bow gives you corruption arrows, versatile - turn larger monsters on the mobs and pick them off while they weaken the big one. Or get a good condition on the big one to accelerate the damage you'll do when you go for the weak parts. The tripcaster's fire traps devastate a few large enemies with tanks tucked below their bellies, doing big damage and making them vulnerable to flat damage. The explosion might kill nearby enemies.
This stuff is way more important than the outfits. You can get all of it by around level 20. Save the rest of the chips for making ammo and expanding carry capacity. Hunt lots of animals for the parts and meat to make the upgrades. I just grabbed some of the cheaper weapons for strategic purposes, and unlocking ammo capacity upgrading. I got a mid stealth outfit equipped with a rare stealth + melee mod and a mid melee outfit buffed with a rare melee mod, for when I expect to get charged. Everything else is generally manageable till then.
I think it's worth doing this way. At level 20ish I can really go anywhere and I haven't even unlocked half of the map. I can focus on getting outfits that make different situations easier as I go. Start gathering overrides from the cauldrons. Bots who fight for you are great lead-ins. They can do some wicked damage when they are suicidally set on attacking. It actually makes them more likely to win against their own kind.
That mid melee outfit I have gives you two or three extra hits with ~38 defense on it. Saves on the healing pouch and pulls you through those tense final moments spearing a boss. Pairs well with the spear knockdown and low health damage perk. It's one of the few games where I use the 'gravely injured' condition... Paper Mario being the other, oddly enough. It works well in this game for similar reasons to that. Health is in such short supply constantly so you generally aren't tanking hit anyway. Operating at low health is both common and viable as a temporary buff. The armor spares you from death by ramming from a smaller enemy in that vital 10-15 seconds when you're do-or-die with a big guy. I didn't believe until I got the perk and it just started saving me. If you can score a knockdown after getting wailed and nab the easy boosted crit, a large-ish enemy can go from half-health to pile immediately. Being able to quickly stop the attacks of the big monster makes it all so much easier and ultimately saves healing that would've been lost if you had to evade and drag out the fight. Many more chances to need healing and die.
Stealth gear is self-explanatory. Buffed-up, it lets you get close and stealth kill more alert herds. More easily pick them off with arrows, too.
I am pretty much free to save/farm for the heavy elemental armor now. It completely changes the tides of fights with big enemies that blast ranged elemental attacks. The damage they take out of those fights isn't trivial. Each blast can easily kill normally, but you'll take well over half a dozen with strong armor. Being that they're generally countable on one or under very special circumstances, two hands, you can think of a hit as a turn. Each extra turn you have buys you a move you can do, which may indeed be the move that defines the skirmish.
Everything about this game is little strategic things. You learn the importance of different things by playing. It's like a dance where you dress certain ways for certain dances, which come with different moves and effects for different stages and partners. It's hard to really do it mindlessly, no matter how good you are. It has that same zing that Control has, where you have to be flowing across these different combat strategies, making on the fly decisions that depend entirely on your ability to use your tools of perception and form a fairly exact set of tasks that pull it all together. The tasks in the set can vary, so long as you can see the scope of the situation/nature of what you're dealing with and curate/sequence a set of moves that fit. You don't get that free RPG hit as you play, where the same thing just gets better damage, or you have a better defensive option... or some basic status-inflicting thing. You instead get different things, and learn to grow your damage and capitalize on tougher battles more easily, with your character never getting much stronger outside of swapping niche defense options and putting some upgrades on weapons. I like the balance they have between RPG adventure and action adventure because it allows for interesting problems and solutions to appear.
It's a bit a like a typical boss fight, but more dynamic and free-form. There are ways both simple and elaborate, but no 'supposed to' about it. That's the whole game, really. You can always just keep a flow of doing stuff going across different loops that you organically fall in and out of. It's still divided up nicely but everything is rather decentralized.
'that and I don't have proper muscle memory with the controller since I rarely use it'
/s
