I want to say yes, BUT, this game is overall pretty disappointing compared to the first. Running around and doing less consequential side missions is pretty chill and just fighting machines can be fun, but I don't like enough things about the deeper gameplay to recommend it to a new Horizon player. Play Zero Dawn and skip Forbidden West for now. I haven't gotten to the Burning Shores DLC yet, so I will update my review if I feel there is anything worth relaying from that. But seriously, Zero Dawn is gold. Go play that if you haven't.

Spoilers to follow:

The story is out of cadence and not geared towards an open world. I would clear an area and head back to base and have a ton of dialog to work through out of sync. It's almost like they expected you to play the main story through to a certain point and then go back and do all the side missions. This feels doubly so because of how they gatekeep tools you need to access areas like the grapple hook/flying/firegleam/deep diving.

Parts of the story are really lazy and phoned in. There are invisible walls. There is a cauldron that you can climb down but when you climb up it loads and you are just at the top. Like just design an ascent. The Ted Faro mission is extremely disappointing. He has stuffed himself into a reactor to stay alive for the last thousand years which turns him into some grotesque beasty, but you don't even get to see him before an NPC initiates his destruction and reactor meltdown that you have to flee. Like, this man is the sole reason that Aloy is inevitably created! It's almost insulting to the player that you don't get to even visually see the true antagonist of the world. The Zeniths are phony antagonists. Classic trope egotistical, narcissistic villains. They are boring. Nuance is nonexistent in their characters.

They removed agency from Aloy compared to the first game. She is supposed to be one of the baddest asses in gaming but she can't whistle anymore to attract machines? Why? She can now only place 3 traps (without upgrading to 4)? Why? That's not realistic. In reality if I had traps in my inventory, I could place them. Why can't Aloy? Also, Aloy is kind of a ♥♥♥♥ in this game. She is like Harry Potter in book 5, a self-important ass. She constantly is running away from friends and not letting them join her because she says its too dangerous, but then I can spend as much time as I want ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ around doing side missions? Doesn't really line up. I started this game really hoping for consistent companions, kind of like how they do in the Fallout games because that felt like a fresh way to spin this game that is really more of the same from the first game. Or they could do it like, say, Mass Effect, where they are in your group and you control their actions. They also added a huge knockdown delay onto Aloy. You will get knocked down and you go into a stand up animation that is so slow that by the time you are upright, the machine is plowing you over again. It's so frustrating. Or they have such range and speed that even running at full tilt away, you can't get away from them until they reach the edge of their coded range.

Speaking of companions: Like in the first game, you do have people come with you on a mission specific basis but they are a nuisance more than a help. They will constantly be running up to you and trying to give you ammo, which has two issues. One: they will drag any enemy that sees them right on top of you. Its so annoying for certain machines like thunderjaws. Two: Aloy can build ammo on the fly while running around in battle. I don't need my companion character running up to me trying to give me ammo I already have. Also, they just drop it on the ground. So if you are running around and dodging, chances are you will never even see that ammo anyway until you have finished the fight.
And the game has these weird area requirements. So if you step even a foot outside the "fighting area," your companion will stop fighting (sometimes they even leave the area completely) and it wont recognize that you are still doing that part of the mission even if you already activated that step. Like step one is go to area and step two is fight machine. Even though I am still fighting the machine and getting my ass handed to me, if I step outside that area, it will go back to return to area and the NPC will be like "Why are you leaving?!" and I'm like literally being flattened by the thing. No one left you dumb dumb game.

There isn't enough greenshine slab. I have played 153 hrs and I have only found like 8 pieces total. Considering that a lot of rare or legendary weapons/armor require greenshine slab to fully upgrade this makes it really hard to upgrade in the later game. I keep hoping to find a mine or a way to make it, but nothing so far. If you are like me and like to upgrade as you go, then this will affect you. There are certain things I upgraded earlier in the game with slab that I wouldn't have upgraded if I knew that I wasn't going to be finding more of that component. And even if you sell those upgraded pieces, you only get lower level components like machine muscle, which is very common. So there isn't even a way to recoup the loss. And I've not found a vendor that sells any of it from sliver to slab. Because I can't upgrade very easily due to a lack of slab, the salvage mission that makes you go to four different people in four different cities becomes superfluous. By the time I finally finished them all, the armor I already had was better than the prize armor for completing the mission.

The world is beautiful, and the details in the clothes are really good. I like the makeup addition and I like how you can set a different armors appearance from the one you are actually wearing. I do wish the outfits/body art/head pieces were all separate things you could mix and match. It's lame the only option you have is with or without head piece. I do really love the machines, because they are cool and I like the concept. I will say, the fireclaw is way OP. Which is extra annoying because fireclaw sac webbing is an upgrade resource that is so hard to get because it's so hard to kill a fireclaw without destroying it either on purpose or inadvertently. I like the tideripper because it reminds me of a lapras. I wish you could learn to ride it. That would be baller.

Finally, the climbing is pretty wonky. Lots of magic pixels. They added a bunch of grip points, but Aloy often jumps over them or doesn't recognize them. You have to have your camera placed just right or she will start climbing a different direction. And there are times where a surface looks so obviously climbable or there are NPCs climbing on it, but Aloy can't. What?

Full disclosure: I played this game on easy.