YMMV / Horizon

• Common Knowledge:
  • Everybody knows that Horizon is the series about a woman who hunts robot dinosaurs. Not quite: of the 24 species of wild machines encountered in the first game, exactly four are based on dinosaurs (the Watcher, the Tallneck, the Thunderjaw, and the Bellowback), putting them squarely in the minority. The second game adds eight more machines based on prehistoric animals, but only three, the Clawstrider, Plowhorn and Slaughterspine, are based on true dinosaurs. The vast majority are just giant robotic versions of modern animals, but the marketing focuses heavily on the dinosaur ones due to Cool vs. Awesome being a key part of the series' appeal.
  • Aloy is sometimes claimed to be "deliberately ugly" or "masculinized" based an a handful of unflattering screenshots of her face. This is nothing but a case of Hollywood Homely (and there is zero evidence the developers intentionally tried to make her look unattractive), and when her whole body is taken into account Aloy is definitely an Amazonian Beauty even if she's not a Ms. Fanservice. There are even multiple characters across the games who comment on her beauty, further discrediting the idea that she's supposed to be unappealing.
• Memetic Mutation: "Horizon has the worst luck with release dates"^ExplanationWith Horizon Zero Dawn coming out mere days before The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, and Horizon Forbidden West coming out a week before Elden Ring, it is popular to joke about the Horizon games being seemingly cursed to become Dueling Works with whatever the biggest release of the year is, leading to them inevitably being Overshadowed by Awesome.

---