I am playing Horizon Zero Dawn and haven’t gotten to the first main event, but it gives me this feeling like if I upgrade all my equipment now it might be for nothing. I know that is not the case, I looked it up, but what are some games that are the worst offenders? One I can think of is Aerith in the original FF7.
It’s an amazing game that I highly recommend! Definitely worth it!
Having played through the whole game and it’s sequel & DLCs, I’m not really sure what OP is talking about. You don’t lose progress or lose gear. Some early game gear might not be as good as you progress the story and you will need to upgrade, but that’s fairly normal with open world games like Horizon.