PS Now. Beat on normal & give me god of war. 102 hours across both playthroughs.
The combat isn't bad by any means and is very fun with combat effects that go past just visuals but I can't help but feel like the game builds tension in combat by shoving the camera up your ass. At times it does feel like constanty turning the camera, moving, evading and attacking can be very hectic in the middle of combat at least until you get to a high enough level. It's made even worse with the valkyries that constantly jump off screen right in front of you.
There are only a few stats in the game but only a few are worth it (strength, cooldown and runic), luck is useless because you earn far too many hacksilver, xp and you can sell old gear to earn hacksilver, while defense and vitality was negligible. High level combat boils down to managing and repeatedly using your runic attacks, which look great, but gets repetitive because you're only allowed to equip two at a time and need to go back to the menu to change which ones you want, it constantly has a slow-mo effect everytime you use it, and you have to wait between use. Too many enchantments are relatively the same thing with just a higher power level and stat increase (level 5 enchantment with 6 Runic vs level 7 enchantment with 11 runic).
Unfortunately, once you reach a decent level you start steamrolling all enemies, even the actual final boss. They really can't do much damage to Kratos and die easily.
The Valkyries are the most difficult bosses because they're like enemies from a different type of game. Very quick animations, quick flying, repeatedly getting off screen, etc.
If I were to improve the game, I'd pull the camera back much farther, reduce the amount of troll boss fights/bosses that use troll animations or just turn them to regular enemies like ogres, rework the rpg mechanics for how leveling works and remove the useless stats and enhancements, less emphasis on upgrading gear, removing enemies like revenants and ancients, and a few other things.
Valkyries and Muspelheim are the hardest part of the game. Sigrun, Olrun and Gondul are the hardest Valkyries especially on Give me God of War.
There are lots of flaws with the combat that is exemplified in the valkyrie fights especially on give me god of war.
Camera is really really bad. It's far too close to Kratos, which adds difficulty to simple tasks that shouldn't be there. You can't see directly behind him at all, and if the screen gets filled up with too many effects then many times you can't even see the enemy indicator telling you an enemy is directly behind you.
The lock-on breaks far too easily especially for all the fast enemies like Valkyries, Revenants, Baldur and the dual wielding Draugr.
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Give me god of war specific problems
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All of the Valkyrie health bars are significantly boosted to the point that they make the battles last longer than they should.
Disappointingly, Spartan Rage does very little damage now regardless of what level you are in comparison to your enemies. It is to the point that you can't even kill regular enemies at times with a full rage bar which in turn means you can't regain much health with spartan rage either. Spartan Rage and all the other cinematic moves should've had invincibility frames after their deactivation. There are far too many times where attacks that linger after you run out of spartan rage and attack kills you because Kratos stops moving for a half a second when he finishes spartan rage.
Atreus is the second thing that's severely nerfed in give me god of war. His arrows and runic attacks now do significantly less damage. They will no longer harm Valkyries or most bosses, and he can no longer knock out Valkyries in the air with arrows, Kratos has to throw his axe at them now.
At first the weapon switching animation doesn't seem to be a problem until you fight a valkyrie who does her flying insta-kill move that can't be blocked nor dodged nor can it be stopped by Atreus arrows and you're standing too far from her. Your only choice is to use a long range runic attack or throw your axe, if your runic attacks are still on cooldown then you're fucked because switching your weapons can at times take too long, before you then have to manually aim and then throw your axe which the insta-kill attack would've already happened by then.
This is more of a general criticism. There are far too many effects on screen at a time. When using Atreus' runic attacks, arrows, Kratos' runic attacks, etc. at once, you get far too many effects on the screen making it nearly impossible to tell what is actually happening on the screen. Worst of all, is when you're fighting an enemy like a valkyrie which will sometimes completely ignore all the stun-effect these attacks do and then attack you when the screen is filled with effects and you can't tell which attack they actually did.
The assisted movement when you glide towards enemies can be really really annoying sometimes when fighting in groups, because the game itself will choose which one of them you will attack, especially when they bunch up and then start moving apart. The game will draw you to one of them without your choosing.
Slow-mo for runic attacks and parrying should've been an toggle in the options menu.
Another really annoying thing is the way that the game limits exploration in NG+. There are elevators and ladders to areas you've previously visited or will visit that you can't use and the game will give you a message that you must progress far enough in the story.
By this point, all the slow scripted climbing & jumping, really long animated fast travel, and large amounts of door opening animations and animations for dropping on the ground but the inability to jump up >30 feet even though Kratos does it all the time in cutscenes started to get to me.
For some odd reason, the freezing then shattering mechanic stopped working altogether, even though I'm two levels above enemies.
The combat isn't bad by any means and is very fun with combat effects that go past just visuals but I can't help but feel like the game builds tension in combat by shoving the camera up your ass. At times it does feel like constanty turning the camera, moving, evading and attacking can be very hectic in the middle of combat at least until you get to a high enough level. It's made even worse with the valkyries that constantly jump off screen right in front of you.
There are only a few stats in the game but only a few are worth it (strength, cooldown and runic), luck is useless because you earn far too many hacksilver, xp and you can sell old gear to earn hacksilver, while defense and vitality was negligible. High level combat boils down to managing and repeatedly using your runic attacks, which look great, but gets repetitive because you're only allowed to equip two at a time and need to go back to the menu to change which ones you want, it constantly has a slow-mo effect everytime you use it, and you have to wait between use. Too many enchantments are relatively the same thing with just a higher power level and stat increase (level 5 enchantment with 6 Runic vs level 7 enchantment with 11 runic).
Unfortunately, once you reach a decent level you start steamrolling all enemies, even the actual final boss. They really can't do much damage to Kratos and die easily.
The Valkyries are the most difficult bosses because they're like enemies from a different type of game. Very quick animations, quick flying, repeatedly getting off screen, etc.
If I were to improve the game, I'd pull the camera back much farther, reduce the amount of troll boss fights/bosses that use troll animations or just turn them to regular enemies like ogres, rework the rpg mechanics for how leveling works and remove the useless stats and enhancements, less emphasis on upgrading gear, removing enemies like revenants and ancients, and a few other things.
Valkyries and Muspelheim are the hardest part of the game. Sigrun, Olrun and Gondul are the hardest Valkyries especially on Give me God of War.
There are lots of flaws with the combat that is exemplified in the valkyrie fights especially on give me god of war.
Camera is really really bad. It's far too close to Kratos, which adds difficulty to simple tasks that shouldn't be there. You can't see directly behind him at all, and if the screen gets filled up with too many effects then many times you can't even see the enemy indicator telling you an enemy is directly behind you.
The lock-on breaks far too easily especially for all the fast enemies like Valkyries, Revenants, Baldur and the dual wielding Draugr.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Give me god of war specific problems
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
All of the Valkyrie health bars are significantly boosted to the point that they make the battles last longer than they should.
Disappointingly, Spartan Rage does very little damage now regardless of what level you are in comparison to your enemies. It is to the point that you can't even kill regular enemies at times with a full rage bar which in turn means you can't regain much health with spartan rage either. Spartan Rage and all the other cinematic moves should've had invincibility frames after their deactivation. There are far too many times where attacks that linger after you run out of spartan rage and attack kills you because Kratos stops moving for a half a second when he finishes spartan rage.
Atreus is the second thing that's severely nerfed in give me god of war. His arrows and runic attacks now do significantly less damage. They will no longer harm Valkyries or most bosses, and he can no longer knock out Valkyries in the air with arrows, Kratos has to throw his axe at them now.
At first the weapon switching animation doesn't seem to be a problem until you fight a valkyrie who does her flying insta-kill move that can't be blocked nor dodged nor can it be stopped by Atreus arrows and you're standing too far from her. Your only choice is to use a long range runic attack or throw your axe, if your runic attacks are still on cooldown then you're fucked because switching your weapons can at times take too long, before you then have to manually aim and then throw your axe which the insta-kill attack would've already happened by then.
This is more of a general criticism. There are far too many effects on screen at a time. When using Atreus' runic attacks, arrows, Kratos' runic attacks, etc. at once, you get far too many effects on the screen making it nearly impossible to tell what is actually happening on the screen. Worst of all, is when you're fighting an enemy like a valkyrie which will sometimes completely ignore all the stun-effect these attacks do and then attack you when the screen is filled with effects and you can't tell which attack they actually did.
The assisted movement when you glide towards enemies can be really really annoying sometimes when fighting in groups, because the game itself will choose which one of them you will attack, especially when they bunch up and then start moving apart. The game will draw you to one of them without your choosing.
Slow-mo for runic attacks and parrying should've been an toggle in the options menu.
Another really annoying thing is the way that the game limits exploration in NG+. There are elevators and ladders to areas you've previously visited or will visit that you can't use and the game will give you a message that you must progress far enough in the story.
By this point, all the slow scripted climbing & jumping, really long animated fast travel, and large amounts of door opening animations and animations for dropping on the ground but the inability to jump up >30 feet even though Kratos does it all the time in cutscenes started to get to me.
For some odd reason, the freezing then shattering mechanic stopped working altogether, even though I'm two levels above enemies.