LEGO Horizon Adventures is the action game equivalent of watching a movie adaptation of a book you love. It hits the major plot points, takes some liberties with characters and events, and wraps everything up with a shiny bow in a more condensed form. Like many Hollywood adaptations, it handles the source material well but never quite reaches the same heights. After spending 21 hours achieving 100% completion, I enjoyed nearly everything about its beautiful world and rich customization options. However, predictable level design and a lack of extra activities beyond the well-paced campaign made it feel like I was building a LEGO set with a few pages missing from the instruction manual.

LEGO Horizon Adventures is a playful reimagining of Horizon Zero Dawn, packaged as a typical LEGO co-op action game. While it doesn’t dive as deep into the story, world, or Aloy’s origins, it captures the essence of the key moments and characters in a way that’s both entertaining for fans and accessible to newcomers.

The 12-hour campaign took me across familiar regions like the foliage-filled Sacred Lands, the frigid Snowchant Mountains, and the scorching Sunfall Desert. Each mission was filled with machines and cultists to defeat, chests full of studs (LEGO currency) to collect, objects to build or break, and plenty of charming character moments. Though brief, many of these moments had me laughing from start to finish.

Throughout her journey, Aloy is joined by a quirky cast of playable allies: Rost, her mentor and father figure; Varl, a young hunter eager to prove himself; Tirsa, the witty village elder; and Erend, a lovable brute with a big hammer. It’s great that the original voice actors—Ashly Burch, John Hopkins, and John McMillan—reprise their roles, and the light-hearted tone of the game allows them to bring a new energy to characters that I already knew well.

The one unfortunate exception is Silence. He’s still part of the story, now portrayed as a DJ assisting Aloy and her friends from afar. However, after the tragic passing of Lance Reddick, Silence is voiced by Tim Russ, and his performance can often feel flat, clashing with the playful energy of the other characters. That said, the decision to make Silence a DJ adds a quirky touch that fits the game’s tone, even if it doesn’t fully capture the sharp wit of the original character.

The world of Horizon looks fantastic in LEGO form. Each level is filled with charm, constructed with smart recreations of familiar structures like dilapidated buildings to climb or destroyed sections of road, with some amusing LEGO-inspired additions like a traditional LEGO police station. While these additions can sometimes detract from the Horizon aesthetic, they don’t undermine the overall experience, as the environments still capture the look and feel of the original world.

The soundtrack is another highlight, blending some of Horizon Zero Dawn’s iconic tracks with new EDM and pop-inspired music. One standout track, Post-Apocalyptic Dance Party, would feel right at home alongside Everything is Awesome from The LEGO Movie.

Unfortunately, the level design itself becomes repetitive. The gameplay often follows a familiar pattern: linear exploration sections that hide a few chests, arenas to battle machines and cultists, and platforming segments with simple jumps and climbing. Special Cauldron levels can offer slightly more challenging platforming sections, requiring players to use specific shock items or weapons to interact with the environment, but the overall structure becomes predictable after just a few hours.

There’s also a noticeable lack of activities beyond combat and platforming. The game doesn’t feature the puzzles or hidden secrets that LEGO games are typically known for. For example, red bricks, which in other LEGO games unlock cheats or modifiers, are instead used only for unlocking costumes and customization items, which is a bit of a letdown compared to the usual array of unlockable cheats like stud multipliers or music modifiers. While this shift isn’t necessarily a bad thing, it’s hard not to feel like something is missing.

Customization helps fill the gap, and it was one of my favorite elements of LEGO Horizon Adventures. There are over a hundred gold and red bricks to collect, unlocking items like costumes and town alterations. A small portion of these bricks can be earned by completing levels, but most are unlocked by completing tasks on the community board in the hub area, Mother’s Heart. The community board encourages you to change your outfits regularly and challenges you to do things like dress as various Ninjago characters before defeating enemies with specific elemental attacks or build certain items in town, like a fishing rod or a fetch toy for a dog.

You can also radically change the look of Mother’s Heart, adding things like hot dog carts, dropping dragons onto rooftops, or dressing all the townspeople in ice cream cone costumes. Beyond cosmetics, there are two simple but useful skill trees: one general tree that benefits your entire team, and another for character-specific abilities. These trees unlock bonuses such as increased experience, extra healing, and extended elemental effects for your entire team, while the character trees offer perks like higher health, weapon damage, and unique combat bonuses.

In LEGO Horizon Adventures, dying sends you back to your last checkpoint, rather than just losing studs and respawning. This adds a bit of challenge, as you might have to retrace your steps after a death, but at least experience points and progress from community board challenges are retained, so it’s not overly punishing. For players who find this frustrating, the game offers five difficulty settings, ranging from easy, where enemies deal minimal damage, to hard, where Corruptors can take you down in just a few hits.

I prefer playing on the hardest difficulty, but this is complicated by the lack of a dodge mechanic. You can use the Rush Boots gadget for short bursts of speed, but combat can still feel clunky at times. Another issue is the randomness of item drops. In Horizon Zero Dawn, you could equip elemental weapons to make difficult fights more manageable, but in LEGO Horizon Adventures, the rare weapons and gadgets you get from chests or enemies are mostly random. While some of the items are fun, like homing weapons and gravity bombs, it can be frustrating when you need a specific item to complete certain challenges.

There are ways to guarantee specific items, such as breaking parts off from machines or investing in skills that increase item drop rates, but it would have been nice to have more control over what you receive, especially when certain challenges require specific weapons.

Ultimately, LEGO Horizon Adventures reimagines Horizon Zero Dawn with a playful LEGO twist, simplifying the story while maintaining the heart of its key moments and characters. Combat is fun, and the difficulty options make the game accessible for all players, but the randomness of item drops can be annoying, especially when trying to complete certain challenges. The customization options are enjoyable, and the levels are visually impressive, but the predictable level design and lack of additional activities hold the game back from being truly exceptional. Despite these shortcomings, I had a lot of fun with it and would recommend it to fans of both Horizon Zero Dawn and LEGO games.

The general skill tree offers benefits like experience bonuses, extra healing, and extending the duration of effects such as freezing, shocking, or setting enemies on fire. Meanwhile, the character-specific trees provide advantages like increased maximum health, higher weapon damage, and other unique bonuses. These skills are unlocked simply by leveling up after earning experience from defeating enemies. Combat is a straightforward but satisfying exercise in targeting specific body parts of your machine foes.

By using Aloy’s Focus to target these body parts, you can alter the course of battles. For example, removing the horns of a Broadhead causes it to damage itself when it collides with objects in the environment. Skills can also be crucial for taking down bosses and tougher enemies, which offer more of a challenge than I initially expected from a LEGO game. Typically, dying in LEGO games costs you a handful of studs before respawning you immediately. However, in LEGO Horizon Adventures, death sends you back to the last checkpoint, which is often at the beginning of the area.

I’m torn on whether this system is an improvement over the original. On the one hand, I like that it leaves me with more money for customization, but on the other, it means I have to go back and collect chests or rebuild environmental objects when retracing my steps after a death. The good news is that experience points and progress on community board challenges are retained, so dying is usually just a minor setback. If the difficulty proves too frustrating, the game offers five difficulty settings.

The lowest setting has enemies dealing one heart or less of damage, and the difficulty scales well up to the highest level, where enemies like Corruptors can deal five or more hearts of damage per hit. I usually prefer playing on the hardest difficulty available, but there’s a catch here: the lack of a dodging mechanic. Occasionally, you can use the Rush Boots gadget for short bursts of speed, but this still doesn’t fully solve the problem of avoiding attacks.

Another issue is the unpredictability of item drops. In Horizon Zero Dawn, equipping elemental weapons can make tough fights much more manageable. LEGO Horizon Adventures adapts this idea with rare weapons and gadgets that have limited use, but which ones you get from chests or enemy drops is mostly random. Some of the rare items, like homing weapons or gravity bombs that pull enemies together before exploding, are fantastic. However, whether you get them is another story. Weaker machines like Broadheads and Grazers are vulnerable to one-hit elemental attacks, but it’s up to luck whether you have the right items for the job.

On the one hand, I appreciate the chaotic nature of using whatever I find in the heat of battle. On the other, it would have been nice to have a way to select specific rare weapons, especially since some challenges require certain weapon types to complete. At least there are ways to guarantee specific drops by breaking off parts from machines like Shellwalkers, but you never know what you’ll get or when they’ll appear. Thankfully, there are a few surefire methods to get special items, such as a merchant who appears halfway through each stage with three random chests, or by investing in skills that increase the drop rate of specific items. One skill even gives you a random rare weapon and gadget at the start of each level.

These options help, but they’re not perfect. While all of the rare weapons are powerful and fun to use, it can be difficult to thin out a crowd of enemies with a precise elemental attack when five or more enemies spawn in an ongoing battle.

Ultimately, LEGO Horizon Adventures reimagines Horizon Zero Dawn with a playful LEGO twist, simplifying the story while keeping the heart of its key moments and characters. Combat feels great and offers plenty of difficulty options for players of all skill levels, though the randomness of gadgets and rare weapons can be annoying, especially when trying to complete specific challenges. The chaotic, use-what-you-can nature of combat is fun, and there are plenty of customization options for characters and the hub town, which was one of my favorite aspects as I worked to make Mother’s Heart my own.

The levels are visually impressive and the soundtrack is excellent, but the predictable level design and lack of additional activities are disappointing. Despite these flaws, I found myself having a lot of fun with LEGO Horizon Adventures.