saggysamurai
2022
The strengths of this game have been talked to death about so i wanted to be a bit more critical.
Its a terrific experience for sure but after letting it sit with me for a while and after afew replays, some cracks in the experience begin to appear, i think my main issue with the game is the power scaling issues that can become very apparent in the late game and the late game in general. Late game areas are nowhere near as enjoyable and as deep as early game ones, like low-key i kinda think the game peaks at its middle section when you get to leyndell. I think bloodborne and sekiro were more enjoyable for me, the core gameplay is stronger in both of those games and i dont think the general story writing is as interesting as its previously been in this series, the world is super intriguing but i dont think it is as believable or as immersive as say, Yharnam or Lordran.
Its a terrific experience for sure but after letting it sit with me for a while and after afew replays, some cracks in the experience begin to appear, i think my main issue with the game is the power scaling issues that can become very apparent in the late game and the late game in general. Late game areas are nowhere near as enjoyable and as deep as early game ones, like low-key i kinda think the game peaks at its middle section when you get to leyndell. I think bloodborne and sekiro were more enjoyable for me, the core gameplay is stronger in both of those games and i dont think the general story writing is as interesting as its previously been in this series, the world is super intriguing but i dont think it is as believable or as immersive as say, Yharnam or Lordran.
2008
Great Game, terrific atmosphere and art direction. It only took me 8hrs to complete and and i was still waiting for it to end at times, meaning the pacing can get pretty bad, especially later on in the game. The opening chapters are masterful tho.
2022
This review contains spoilers
I have adored most of my time with this game for sure. I think the story has some issues that didn’t quite sit right with me, especially regarding the ending but overall, this is a one of a kind, blockbuster type of game that everyone should experience. The previous game and this one especially have a habit of constantly giving a really cinematic, large scale, professional feel which i can’t quite describe properly.
it’s truly unique in how epic and well done it can feel for a video game that even if something feels slightly off, it sticks out like a sore thumb and thankfully, there isn’t a lot of that at all in this game.
It kind of feels like what the MCU should be (weird comparison coming) Just this big epic blockbuster with great action, music and a great band of characters going on an amazing adventure but also kinda feels PG in a weird way? Like the game is actually funny but it’s also really really emotional and heartwarming and it doesn’t break the tone, it’s just perfectly balanced man, so well done. The cutscenes in general just feel like scenes from a film, the first few hours of the game especially i was so impressed by the artistry of this game, the one take camera continues to work beautifully, in slower dialogue scenes as well as in intense action scenes which are fucking beautiful to watch btw, the animation and just the choreography of the action is so well done, you can feel the weight in kratos’ attacks with a perfect use of audio and shifting the camera in closer or further away to just nail that feeling of power, just the storyboarding of these sequences is so impressive and memorable, these elements are unlike anything else in the industry right now, there is clearly some very talented people working at santa monica and they set a new bar.
Combat for one, feels so much better. they somehow made the weapons even more satisfying and fun to use, the finisher animations add a nice gory flavour to the combat and the small tweaks to traversal and the parrying mechanics make combat so much more satisfying. The parrying system is so much better now, much more comparable to parrying in sekiro and you can combine attacks more to build stun damage. The changes seem small at first but the feel of combat is just so much smoother.
this is also helped by the MASSIVE amount of enemy variety in this game, i was seriously finding new enemy types, 35 hours into the game and they can all have distinct moves and ways of dealing damage, the asgardian warriors being my personal favourites to fight, who can utilise bifrost energy to drain ur health away. Along with this comes a much larger amount of unique bosses, including mini bosses and big story fights and some of these fights are seriously fucking cool, not just because of the story significance but also the mechanics of the fights, they really took the model of what made the valkyrie queen boss fight in 2018 so good and applied that philosophy to every boss, just so good man. It seriously makes the last games combat look like child’s play.
The only complaint i have is that we are not given 4 weapons, you get 3 and you have one place left on the D pad for one more and i was so convinced we would be able to get thor’s hammer or some shit because why tf wouldn’t you do that??????? Feels like a missed opportunity definitely, it’s not like you even have to be worthy to pick up the hammer like in marvel, it’s literally just heavy, why wouldn’t you do this man???? I’m guessing time and resources and it sucks cuz this gonna lead to the fucking spear getting so much hate because it’s the only new weapon even tho it’s fucking awesome, i really like it btw, it’s a lot of fun to use. But again it’s weird that we have gone through this entire saga and haven’t been able to wield a single one of the norse mythology weapons. Feels like a massive wasted opportunity.
And this combat is also made even more enjoyable with the fucking score of this game. This will honestly be such an underrated part of this game but the score by Bear mcreary ( awesome name btw ) is genuinely brilliant and makes the game just feel that much more cinematic and emotional, seriously take the music away from half of the scenes in this game and it’s just not the same. It’s so so good. Movie level good.
Now onto the writing and the story. I do like it, most of it and maybe i’m looking at the game the wrong way because of marketing or miscommunication but personally my main problem first of all is the ending. This game is supposed to be the last in the saga, Ragnarok, the end of it all. But personally i wasn’t too satisfied with how it ended, so many loose threads, so many stories still left unfinished, the finale feels slightly rushed. After you kill heimdall i feel like everything after just happens a little too quickly, throughout the whole of the final battle i kept thinking, no way this is it, the music was all sad throughout and i was convinced odin had some master plan but it never really happened, Kratos just kinda walks into asgard and kills everyone no problem lol. The whole plot with the mask and infinite knowledge feels a little wasted, i was convinced time travel would have a big role in this game but no lol. I feel like this was a result of this game being basically two games mushed into 1, as this norse saga was supposed to be a trilogy originally and that hurts the pacing at times, it’s either going too fast or it grinds to a halt and i think that is the main problem with the story, it’s pacing. Some of the atreus sections can go on for a long, long time and the game picks ups immediately after these are over and i think the ending is just tooo fast for the amount of brilliantly executed build up that takes place in both games. I think the first game has a much tighter and better executed story which i think is a result of the change of game director, which is in my opinion, super dumb. I know cory said that it took everything out of him to direct the first game but i wish that he did stay on, because it’s feels clear that the story would have benefitted from it. Cory is a much better story director than eric, but eric is a better gameplay, combat design director. So we get a masterful combat system in this game but the story is slightly sacrificed.
These were my main issues with game so it’s all uphill from here. Other than than the bits i’ve mentioned, there is some great writing in this story, some great character moments and twists that i did not see coming, kratos and atreus are the heart and soul of this game, they keep the game together even when it gets messy and seriously both of their character arcs are perfect and the acting and mocap done for them is fucking excellent. Kratos’s role in the story and how he changes throughout is actually just brilliant. He’s come so far from who he once was and it feels so earned and real, its moving stuff. He is a fantastic character. Mimir is back and he’s great ofc, he gets a little more to do and you can tell how close the main trio are when they are all together, he’s like a brother to kratos and an uncle to atreus, love their dynamics.
Freya is back and she has a great character arc. The villains are great, Thor is brutal and depressed and so much more than just his hammer, it’s honestly kinda sad with the parallels you can get between him and kratos. They are very comparable characters but thor deals with his struggles very differently. Odin is the real villain of the story The guy is evil asf, would have liked to see him be a little more evil, we are told more about him than we are shown which may be purposely done to portray what odin is trying to convince atreus with throughout, would have liked more of him and atreus together and i assume that if this was a 3 part story, we would have got more of that but alas. I do enjoy how they handled tyr and the twists they took with him but at the same time, it’s kinda fucking weird that through this entire sagas main story we didn’t actually meet him, like, there was so much buildup for him in 2018 and the game does that a lot. minimises things that have been built up for ages. Jormungander as well for example, barely plays any part and his big time travel moment is like not even in a cutscene. it happens during gameplay while ur doing something else, again kinda weird to build that up for so long and barely even see it.
The more i think about things like this, the more i’m frustrated at this game, because it’s definitely an amazing game but for everything that’s been built up to the last 4 years, it’s kinda disappointing? sort of, maybe my expectations were way too high, it’s still awesome and i loved it but it’s so close to being even more than it is that it feels dissatisfying, it’s amazing but it’s so close to being a masterclass that it makes the game suffer for not quite being there. Very difficult to explain. like imagine if you were in a race and you come first but you also just miss out on breaking a record, you would feel pissed at how close you were even tho you did great. That’s how i feel about this game. It’s great but it suffers from being so close to breaking records that it’s annoying.
Onto more positive notes tho, the final line before the credits roll is so so good on retrospect. It’s like reading the last few lines in a great book.
Mimir: “A hole.”
Kratos: “What?”
Mimir: “Gets bigger the more you take away.”
….fade to black
Like omfg, what a callback, poetry man, ik they had that line planned for a while.
Also i really like a lot of the side content in this game, most of the regions have large notable side missions that are completely unique and feel just like the main story missions with unique bosses, interesting storylines and spectacle. In alfheim there’s freeing the hafgufas, which are beautiful, in svartelheim there’s freeing the giant creature in the lake, which becomes its own level, in vanaheim there’s a couple, but one gives you access to a whole new huge area which was unexpected. There’s also the new berserker boss fights spread throughout the realms, which are the replacement for the valkyrie bosses from 2018 and some of them are fucking haaaaarrrrdddd but usually in a fair way, it’s extremely satisfying to knock ‘em down. Very fun fights. Then there’s the 2 challenge realms, musphelheim and niflheim which are fun distractions that i haven’t delved into too much yet
it’s truly unique in how epic and well done it can feel for a video game that even if something feels slightly off, it sticks out like a sore thumb and thankfully, there isn’t a lot of that at all in this game.
It kind of feels like what the MCU should be (weird comparison coming) Just this big epic blockbuster with great action, music and a great band of characters going on an amazing adventure but also kinda feels PG in a weird way? Like the game is actually funny but it’s also really really emotional and heartwarming and it doesn’t break the tone, it’s just perfectly balanced man, so well done. The cutscenes in general just feel like scenes from a film, the first few hours of the game especially i was so impressed by the artistry of this game, the one take camera continues to work beautifully, in slower dialogue scenes as well as in intense action scenes which are fucking beautiful to watch btw, the animation and just the choreography of the action is so well done, you can feel the weight in kratos’ attacks with a perfect use of audio and shifting the camera in closer or further away to just nail that feeling of power, just the storyboarding of these sequences is so impressive and memorable, these elements are unlike anything else in the industry right now, there is clearly some very talented people working at santa monica and they set a new bar.
Combat for one, feels so much better. they somehow made the weapons even more satisfying and fun to use, the finisher animations add a nice gory flavour to the combat and the small tweaks to traversal and the parrying mechanics make combat so much more satisfying. The parrying system is so much better now, much more comparable to parrying in sekiro and you can combine attacks more to build stun damage. The changes seem small at first but the feel of combat is just so much smoother.
this is also helped by the MASSIVE amount of enemy variety in this game, i was seriously finding new enemy types, 35 hours into the game and they can all have distinct moves and ways of dealing damage, the asgardian warriors being my personal favourites to fight, who can utilise bifrost energy to drain ur health away. Along with this comes a much larger amount of unique bosses, including mini bosses and big story fights and some of these fights are seriously fucking cool, not just because of the story significance but also the mechanics of the fights, they really took the model of what made the valkyrie queen boss fight in 2018 so good and applied that philosophy to every boss, just so good man. It seriously makes the last games combat look like child’s play.
The only complaint i have is that we are not given 4 weapons, you get 3 and you have one place left on the D pad for one more and i was so convinced we would be able to get thor’s hammer or some shit because why tf wouldn’t you do that??????? Feels like a missed opportunity definitely, it’s not like you even have to be worthy to pick up the hammer like in marvel, it’s literally just heavy, why wouldn’t you do this man???? I’m guessing time and resources and it sucks cuz this gonna lead to the fucking spear getting so much hate because it’s the only new weapon even tho it’s fucking awesome, i really like it btw, it’s a lot of fun to use. But again it’s weird that we have gone through this entire saga and haven’t been able to wield a single one of the norse mythology weapons. Feels like a massive wasted opportunity.
And this combat is also made even more enjoyable with the fucking score of this game. This will honestly be such an underrated part of this game but the score by Bear mcreary ( awesome name btw ) is genuinely brilliant and makes the game just feel that much more cinematic and emotional, seriously take the music away from half of the scenes in this game and it’s just not the same. It’s so so good. Movie level good.
Now onto the writing and the story. I do like it, most of it and maybe i’m looking at the game the wrong way because of marketing or miscommunication but personally my main problem first of all is the ending. This game is supposed to be the last in the saga, Ragnarok, the end of it all. But personally i wasn’t too satisfied with how it ended, so many loose threads, so many stories still left unfinished, the finale feels slightly rushed. After you kill heimdall i feel like everything after just happens a little too quickly, throughout the whole of the final battle i kept thinking, no way this is it, the music was all sad throughout and i was convinced odin had some master plan but it never really happened, Kratos just kinda walks into asgard and kills everyone no problem lol. The whole plot with the mask and infinite knowledge feels a little wasted, i was convinced time travel would have a big role in this game but no lol. I feel like this was a result of this game being basically two games mushed into 1, as this norse saga was supposed to be a trilogy originally and that hurts the pacing at times, it’s either going too fast or it grinds to a halt and i think that is the main problem with the story, it’s pacing. Some of the atreus sections can go on for a long, long time and the game picks ups immediately after these are over and i think the ending is just tooo fast for the amount of brilliantly executed build up that takes place in both games. I think the first game has a much tighter and better executed story which i think is a result of the change of game director, which is in my opinion, super dumb. I know cory said that it took everything out of him to direct the first game but i wish that he did stay on, because it’s feels clear that the story would have benefitted from it. Cory is a much better story director than eric, but eric is a better gameplay, combat design director. So we get a masterful combat system in this game but the story is slightly sacrificed.
These were my main issues with game so it’s all uphill from here. Other than than the bits i’ve mentioned, there is some great writing in this story, some great character moments and twists that i did not see coming, kratos and atreus are the heart and soul of this game, they keep the game together even when it gets messy and seriously both of their character arcs are perfect and the acting and mocap done for them is fucking excellent. Kratos’s role in the story and how he changes throughout is actually just brilliant. He’s come so far from who he once was and it feels so earned and real, its moving stuff. He is a fantastic character. Mimir is back and he’s great ofc, he gets a little more to do and you can tell how close the main trio are when they are all together, he’s like a brother to kratos and an uncle to atreus, love their dynamics.
Freya is back and she has a great character arc. The villains are great, Thor is brutal and depressed and so much more than just his hammer, it’s honestly kinda sad with the parallels you can get between him and kratos. They are very comparable characters but thor deals with his struggles very differently. Odin is the real villain of the story The guy is evil asf, would have liked to see him be a little more evil, we are told more about him than we are shown which may be purposely done to portray what odin is trying to convince atreus with throughout, would have liked more of him and atreus together and i assume that if this was a 3 part story, we would have got more of that but alas. I do enjoy how they handled tyr and the twists they took with him but at the same time, it’s kinda fucking weird that through this entire sagas main story we didn’t actually meet him, like, there was so much buildup for him in 2018 and the game does that a lot. minimises things that have been built up for ages. Jormungander as well for example, barely plays any part and his big time travel moment is like not even in a cutscene. it happens during gameplay while ur doing something else, again kinda weird to build that up for so long and barely even see it.
The more i think about things like this, the more i’m frustrated at this game, because it’s definitely an amazing game but for everything that’s been built up to the last 4 years, it’s kinda disappointing? sort of, maybe my expectations were way too high, it’s still awesome and i loved it but it’s so close to being even more than it is that it feels dissatisfying, it’s amazing but it’s so close to being a masterclass that it makes the game suffer for not quite being there. Very difficult to explain. like imagine if you were in a race and you come first but you also just miss out on breaking a record, you would feel pissed at how close you were even tho you did great. That’s how i feel about this game. It’s great but it suffers from being so close to breaking records that it’s annoying.
Onto more positive notes tho, the final line before the credits roll is so so good on retrospect. It’s like reading the last few lines in a great book.
Mimir: “A hole.”
Kratos: “What?”
Mimir: “Gets bigger the more you take away.”
….fade to black
Like omfg, what a callback, poetry man, ik they had that line planned for a while.
Also i really like a lot of the side content in this game, most of the regions have large notable side missions that are completely unique and feel just like the main story missions with unique bosses, interesting storylines and spectacle. In alfheim there’s freeing the hafgufas, which are beautiful, in svartelheim there’s freeing the giant creature in the lake, which becomes its own level, in vanaheim there’s a couple, but one gives you access to a whole new huge area which was unexpected. There’s also the new berserker boss fights spread throughout the realms, which are the replacement for the valkyrie bosses from 2018 and some of them are fucking haaaaarrrrdddd but usually in a fair way, it’s extremely satisfying to knock ‘em down. Very fun fights. Then there’s the 2 challenge realms, musphelheim and niflheim which are fun distractions that i haven’t delved into too much yet
2011
i think i like this about the same as the original, it’s a little more action heavy which i didn’t mind, i think they realised that the monsters stopped being scary pretty early into the last game so there’s less attempts to scare you although there are still unsettling moments and areas in the game. The gameplay is mostly exactly the same with just afew new enemies. These games are really nothing too special in my opinion.
2022
Played this for a while but then watched my brother play through most of the game and idc that humour is subjective or whatever, this wasn’t funny man, i laughed at 1 point where jack black appears but the rest is schlock.
The gameplay is essentially just a poor mans doom without the polish and without the innovative mechanics.
The gameplay is essentially just a poor mans doom without the polish and without the innovative mechanics.
Playing this again this year made me appreciate it way more, it still has an abundance of issues but the pros outweigh the cons by quite a considerable amount.
I’ll repeat some things i said in my previous review, the plot is basic and kinda whatever and the combat is pretty meh but these things don’t really take away from the game because i feel like it nails other things really hard.
This is one of the greatest open worlds in all of gaming, even though it still relies on an overly obstructive mini map and a billion assassins creed question marks all over the map, The world is extreme impressive, i think out of every open world game i’ve played, this beats out all the rest solely based on immersion, the visuals, the sound design and the music perfectly ground you, the player into a believable and atmospheric setting. Just strolling the region of kaer morhen and exploring the ruins of old witcher buildings is so damn engaging, like you really do feel like you’re right there with geralt. And this level of engagement that the game manages to create in the player makes the kind of average combat mechanics feel better because you are fucking Geralt of rivia, one of the coolest characters in gaming, fighting monsters and shit, planning your fights, oiling your blade, drinking and brewing potions and none of that is at all necessary, the game is way too easy to make any of these things be mechanically required, but i engage in the systems anyway because i’m just so goddamn immersed into the experience, you do it because that’s what Geralt would do and not alot of games can create such a connection with the player. That being said, if there were more mechanical based reasons to utilise all these systems of alchemy, crafting, preparing for battle then i think the game would genuinely be on another level. Even as someone who has 100s of hours in the game, has played through on death march difficulty multiple times, there is still barely a mechanical encouragement to engage in these systems, the games combat just isn’t really suited to it in my opinion, fights end way too quickly for there to be that extra bit of thought. And even when you do find an enemy that has a considerable amount of health it will be because they are wildly over your level and then you can’t really engage with them until they become too ezy, there were literally no duels in the game that felt properly tuned, apart from the first available olgeird fight in the hearts of stone dlc, which is easily the best boss in the game and it is a fight that i think a lot of players will miss which is a huge shame.
I’ll repeat some things i said in my previous review, the plot is basic and kinda whatever and the combat is pretty meh but these things don’t really take away from the game because i feel like it nails other things really hard.
This is one of the greatest open worlds in all of gaming, even though it still relies on an overly obstructive mini map and a billion assassins creed question marks all over the map, The world is extreme impressive, i think out of every open world game i’ve played, this beats out all the rest solely based on immersion, the visuals, the sound design and the music perfectly ground you, the player into a believable and atmospheric setting. Just strolling the region of kaer morhen and exploring the ruins of old witcher buildings is so damn engaging, like you really do feel like you’re right there with geralt. And this level of engagement that the game manages to create in the player makes the kind of average combat mechanics feel better because you are fucking Geralt of rivia, one of the coolest characters in gaming, fighting monsters and shit, planning your fights, oiling your blade, drinking and brewing potions and none of that is at all necessary, the game is way too easy to make any of these things be mechanically required, but i engage in the systems anyway because i’m just so goddamn immersed into the experience, you do it because that’s what Geralt would do and not alot of games can create such a connection with the player. That being said, if there were more mechanical based reasons to utilise all these systems of alchemy, crafting, preparing for battle then i think the game would genuinely be on another level. Even as someone who has 100s of hours in the game, has played through on death march difficulty multiple times, there is still barely a mechanical encouragement to engage in these systems, the games combat just isn’t really suited to it in my opinion, fights end way too quickly for there to be that extra bit of thought. And even when you do find an enemy that has a considerable amount of health it will be because they are wildly over your level and then you can’t really engage with them until they become too ezy, there were literally no duels in the game that felt properly tuned, apart from the first available olgeird fight in the hearts of stone dlc, which is easily the best boss in the game and it is a fight that i think a lot of players will miss which is a huge shame.
2005
This is one of the greatest character action games of all time, DMC5 can eat my ass, this was so much more fun.
Im genuinely shocked this game originally came out in 2004, its aged like the finest of wines, the visuals are obviously dated but the art design has that PS2 charm that im a sucker for.
But the real reason this game is still so good is because its nearly mechanically perfect. The combat is brilliant, the enemy variety and the level design are excellent. And a lot of the bosses have that sekiro feeling of getting to the point where you have mastered everything they can throw it you and you begin to dodge and punish everything perfectly, its extremely rewarding at times solely due to its mechanical depth.
The parkour elements are genuinely impressive, especially for this era, although they are slightly frustrating. This game is hard, really hard, im not sure where it ranks yet as far as hardest games ive played but its defo up there and i love it all the more for that. It wont be for everyone though, this game punishes the new player quite heavily and can initially be quite hard to get into as there really are a lot of early game walls that you can hit hard. Personally though i adore this type of game and its up there with some of my all time faves.
Im genuinely shocked this game originally came out in 2004, its aged like the finest of wines, the visuals are obviously dated but the art design has that PS2 charm that im a sucker for.
But the real reason this game is still so good is because its nearly mechanically perfect. The combat is brilliant, the enemy variety and the level design are excellent. And a lot of the bosses have that sekiro feeling of getting to the point where you have mastered everything they can throw it you and you begin to dodge and punish everything perfectly, its extremely rewarding at times solely due to its mechanical depth.
The parkour elements are genuinely impressive, especially for this era, although they are slightly frustrating. This game is hard, really hard, im not sure where it ranks yet as far as hardest games ive played but its defo up there and i love it all the more for that. It wont be for everyone though, this game punishes the new player quite heavily and can initially be quite hard to get into as there really are a lot of early game walls that you can hit hard. Personally though i adore this type of game and its up there with some of my all time faves.
2015
the gameplay fucking sucks but this has gotta be one of the best stories gaming has produced, this is a truly excellent use of the medium to tell a unique story
2008
this game was hilarious
2010
Far and away biowares greatest achievement, best game in the series and one of the greatest RPGs. the final mission to this day has still not been matched by any other game, extremely ambitious and improves on the original in just about every way you would imagine.
2008
the funny ninja crack game
Even in this updated version of the game, it just feels so generic, the soul of the ninja gaiden series is just not present here and it really hurts the experience, it actually bored me into not playing it, it became a chore. It just feels like a very hollow attempt at trying to turn the series into a cinematic story game, like a god of war 2018 gone wrong and it doesnt work. Whoever in particular got Troy Baker to voice Ryu should be fired immediately, its soooo bad.
2018
playing this straight after ninja gaiden 2 was a little jarring
The first like 2-3 missions of this game are halo peak but the rest can genuinely be awful, so many times when I wasn't sure if I was going the right way, endless corridors and rooms that all looked exactly the same, if I wasn't playing with a friend I would have died of boredom through the midsection, mind-numbing stuff.
2016
It’s animal crossing but fun and good