The final boss in MGR is one of the easiest bosses in MGR his attack windows are use and his tells are obvious. The only difficult part about him in learning his attack strings at the start and that catches people off guard. It wasn't even learning the game it was just nasic patern memorization. Not sure why you'd use him as a goalpost. Now Monsoon, there is an actually difficult boss.
All the MGR tells are obvious, because they want you to parry it. Monsoon is no different.
And it was definitely "learning the game". The final boss of MGR tests your skills at pretty much ever major mechanic of the game, from Zandetsu, to parrying, to dodging. If you weren't ready, you got your ass kicked again and again. See: everybody in the MGR thread getting owned by the diagonal Zanetsu throwing section.
I can see why the reviews mentioned this trial to be frustrating. It's like a big difficulty spike that came out of nowhere with (short) unskippable cutscenes between each part and no checkpoints. I liked the challenge provided by the optional trials in the previous games but I think having this to be a part of the main campaign breaks the flow and will definitely not be to everyone's tastes.
found Archimedes dead body before I had to go to sleep for school
and I'll give my impressions thus far. Note: I have not played any of the demos, I have not seen any trailers for the game, pure media blackout for me, everything here for me is fresh and I never seen any of it before outside of the E3 demo. 2nd time posting in this thread but I haven't read anything here at all, so I don't know whats unique to me or whats a common problem.
Packaging: Disappointing, no manual and the in-lay cover art is the CONTROLLER? Early access to the last of us demo in 80 days...thanks...
Start up: This most likely may just be me but the main menu not being Kratos' face kinda bummed me out, as well as the 'creating profile' thing, what the hell is all that about? I later find out that there are no more save points, WHY???????? Why is everything fucking auto save now? I die, come back with full health, try the section again, I can't save right before every boss fight like I used to...does the chapter select take you right to the bosses?
Story: I'm fighting a what? A hecontonkawhat?? The fuck is that, what the hell are these furies things(I know the intro introduced them but if the first thing I'm doing is punching the shit out of one, it's not much of a introduction) Why am I chained up? WHAT IS GOING ON? I basically had this mindset all the way to...basically where I am at now, I have no clue what my goal is. I have to get rid of my nightmares...right? Get rid of the 'illusions(?)'...right? The narrative is non-existant. This has to be the longest time in a god of war game between someone talking and action/platforming to be hours apart. They spoke of some lantern, then of some eyes, what the hell are they talking about? Will this be explained as I get farther in the game? 3 weeks earlier, 2 weeks later, 1 week earlier, what's the point of this?
Combat/Boss fights: Combat has taken a huge noise dive. I can't mash square and then end it with a triangle like I've been doing since 2005, even after I upgrade my weapons. It's all hidden behind this stupid rage meter which rarely gets full because Kratos is weak as shit and these goat men eat your attacks and then knock you across the arena. You fight bugs for like the first 3 hours which take one grapple to kill but 5 regular hits to kill. Hades, Zeus, Poseidon, Ares, embue the blades of chaos with the power of these gods to do....NOTHING! They don't seem to do any damage to the enemies, Fire is good when your rage is full so the good ol s-s-t attack makes an explosion but that's about it, attacks seem to take too long to come out because there's always some goat asshole ready to jump on you and bring your rage down to 0. I use only ice because it's the only thing that breaks their guard, which makes me jelly because I might as well not have a block button. I seem to block but I get knocked down, I roll away but still get hit by attacks that landed a mile away, either I suck at god of war all of sudden despite playing through all 5 games earlier in the month or there's something really wrong with the combat. Why is it all I'm fighting is goat people? Then I'll get an occasional electric siren thing which takes a million years to kill because they dodge all your powerful attacks. Square Square roll away Square x 3 then turn around towards the enemies and finish the combo because attacking them head on is stupid and finishing a combo seems to never happen. Throwing them does massive damage and even kills them depending on your location but if I have to do this every single fight then that's no fun at all. I've beaten every game on God/Titan/Chaos whatever the names are and I'm getting my ass kicked here! Why am I so weak!?
Bosses so far though, have been the opposite, they've been a lot of fun and creative.
the boss fight in the tower of Delphi was awesome
Technical side: Sound is fucked in every way shape or form. No oomph, no sound effects, too loud, too quiet, it fucking sucks. I am shocked the game was shipped this way, was this in the demo? I remember reading the demo was a more finished build, how the hell did this slip past? Framerate is terrible, GoW3 was not like this at all, this game goes from 40-50 fps to 15-20 in a split second. UGH THE FUCKING LOADING. Everytime I enter a new area, I sit there with the game frozen with the Omega symbol in the corner for 15 seconds before I can proceed. The graphics are more colourful this time around, but the textures never load, ever. Even when I upgrade my weapons, the icons are pixelated then they clear up if I sit there for 30 seconds, wtf? I understand they love to use scale, but I can't see Kratos because he just blends in,
I'm on a giant riding snake, it zooms waaaayyyyyyy the fuck back and there are more goat assholes attacking me then I die and I have no clue what the fuck happened
. The camera glitches out on me sometimes, the swinging sections will cause me to die because kratos doesn't want to fucking swing or hook onto the green point...so far the only thing that made me say wow was the beginning boss fight, but I'll even go as far and say the E3 demo looked more polished, the game just looks and gives off this unfinished feel. Jaggies everywhere, horrible horrible shadows...It's more consistent then 3 though, I haven't encountered anything that was as fucking ugly as Hera's maze.
Environment/puzzles: It took them 10 years but finally the series has good puzzles, they are creative and take some thought without being too confusing, all set within beautiful places. From the paintings on the wall in Delphi to the Meaty Prison of the beginning of the game, it gives off a very god of war 2 feel which is a huge positive.
Multiplayer: Haven't tried it yet, but I played the shit out of the Beta, I hope I won't have to rip it apart because they seemed to have been ignoring a lot of the bigger issues in the beta.
TL;DR The game is a disappointment. I'm having some fun with it because it's god of war but so far the story is just...missing, combat is a chore, graphics are good, environments and puzzles are good. Kratos just doesn't seem to be there, neither are any of the characters, I feel like I'm just playing a adventure game where the goal is just to finish the game.
found Archimedes dead body before I had to go to sleep for school
and I'll give my impressions thus far. Note: I have not played any of the demos, I have not seen any trailers for the game, pure media blackout for me, everything here for me is fresh and I never seen any of it before outside of the E3 demo. 2nd time posting in this thread but I haven't read anything here at all, so I don't know whats unique to me or whats a common problem.
Packaging: Disappointing, no manual and the in-lay cover art is the CONTROLLER? Early access to the last of us demo in 80 days...thanks...
Start up: This most likely may just be me but the main menu not being Kratos' face kinda bummed me out, as well as the 'creating profile' thing, what the hell is all that about? I later find out that there are no more save points, WHY???????? Why is everything fucking auto save now? I die, come back with full health, try the section again, I can't save right before every boss fight like I used to...does the chapter select take you right to the bosses?
Story: I'm fighting a what? A hecontonkawhat?? The fuck is that, what the hell are these furies things(I know the intro introduced them but if the first thing I'm doing is punching the shit out of one, it's not much of a introduction) Why am I chained up? WHAT IS GOING ON? I basically had this mindset all the way to...basically where I am at now, I have no clue what my goal is. I have to get rid of my nightmares...right? Get rid of the 'illusions(?)'...right? The narrative is non-existant. This has to be the longest time in a god of war game between someone talking and action/platforming to be hours apart. They spoke of some lantern, then of some eyes, what the hell are they talking about? Will this be explained as I get farther in the game? 3 weeks earlier, 2 weeks later, 1 week earlier, what's the point of this?
Combat/Boss fights: Combat has taken a huge noise dive. I can't mash square and then end it with a triangle like I've been doing since 2005, even after I upgrade my weapons. It's all hidden behind this stupid rage meter which rarely gets full because Kratos is weak as shit and these goat men eat your attacks and then knock you across the arena. You fight bugs for like the first 3 hours which take one grapple to kill but 5 regular hits to kill. Hades, Zeus, Poseidon, Ares, embue the blades of chaos with the power of these gods to do....NOTHING! They don't seem to do any damage to the enemies, Fire is good when your rage is full so the good ol s-s-t attack makes an explosion but that's about it, attacks seem to take too long to come out because there's always some goat asshole ready to jump on you and bring your rage down to 0. I use only ice because it's the only thing that breaks their guard, which makes me jelly because I might as well not have a block button. I seem to block but I get knocked down, I roll away but still get hit by attacks that landed a mile away, either I suck at god of war all of sudden despite playing through all 5 games earlier in the month or there's something really wrong with the combat. Why is it all I'm fighting is goat people? Then I'll get an occasional electric siren thing which takes a million years to kill because they dodge all your powerful attacks. Square Square roll away Square x 3 then turn around towards the enemies and finish the combo because attacking them head on is stupid and finishing a combo seems to never happen. Throwing them does massive damage and even kills them depending on your location but if I have to do this every single fight then that's no fun at all. I've beaten every game on God/Titan/Chaos whatever the names are and I'm getting my ass kicked here! Why am I so weak!?
Bosses so far though, have been the opposite, they've been a lot of fun and creative.
the boss fight in the tower of Delphi was awesome
Technical side: Sound is fucked in every way shape or form. No oomph, no sound effects, too loud, too quiet, it fucking sucks. I am shocked the game was shipped this way, was this in the demo? I remember reading the demo was a more finished build, how the hell did this slip past? Framerate is terrible, GoW3 was not like this at all, this game goes from 40-50 fps to 15-20 in a split second. UGH THE FUCKING LOADING. Everytime I enter a new area, I sit there with the game frozen with the Omega symbol in the corner for 15 seconds before I can proceed. The graphics are more colourful this time around, but the textures never load, ever. Even when I upgrade my weapons, the icons are pixelated then they clear up if I sit there for 30 seconds, wtf? I understand they love to use scale, but I can't see Kratos because he just blends in,
I'm on a giant riding snake, it zooms waaaayyyyyyy the fuck back and there are more goat assholes attacking me then I die and I have no clue what the fuck happened
. The camera glitches out on me sometimes, the swinging sections will cause me to die because kratos doesn't want to fucking swing or hook onto the green point...so far the only thing that made me say wow was the beginning boss fight, but I'll even go as far and say the E3 demo looked more polished, the game just looks and gives off this unfinished feel. Jaggies everywhere, horrible horrible shadows...It's more consistent then 3 though, I haven't encountered anything that was as fucking ugly as Hera's maze.
Environment/puzzles: It took them 10 years but finally the series has good puzzles, they are creative and take some thought without being too confusing, all set within beautiful places. From the paintings on the wall in Delphi to the Meaty Prison of the beginning of the game, it gives off a very god of war 2 feel which is a huge positive.
Multiplayer: Haven't tried it yet, but I played the shit out of the Beta, I hope I won't have to rip it apart because they seemed to have been ignoring a lot of the bigger issues in the beta.
TL;DR The game is a disappointment. I'm having some fun with it because it's god of war but so far the story is just...missing, combat is a chore, graphics are good, environments and puzzles are good. Kratos just doesn't seem to be there, neither are any of the characters, I feel like I'm just playing a adventure game where the goal is just to finish the game.
I agree with most of your post but I still find the game to be pretty fun. I'm about 6 hours in and I don't think Kratos has said more than 5 lines of dialog the whole game. The story really leaves something to be desired.
Exactly. It's just flat out frustrating and unsatisfying. Fighting the fucking cerebus (who takes a million hits), while fighting super harpies, while fighting those polearm bitches was one of the most frustrating battles in the game. Then the "Trial" happened.....and I've yet to beat the game because I was about to break my fucking controller. I have NEVER been so frustrated with a GOW before. For those who played the shit of all GOW games, just to give you an idea of this "Trial", imagine playing the section in GOW 1 right before you get Pandora's box and they have the spinning wheels that do damage, archers and fucking dive bomb harpies galore; now imagine that you have to beat sirens, and super medusa's at the same time THEN have to fight dive bomb harpies and satyr's....all in an even more narrow space that spits fire.....Fucking genius design SSM
Hearing these impressions of the combat changes immediately strikes me as "guy on the dev team finally got his way with this game and made the changes HE always wanted to make to the franchise".
Only problem is the previous games were all wildly successful for a reason. You don't "fix" what isn't broken.
Hearing these impressions of the combat changes immediately strikes me as "guy on the dev team finally got his way with this game and made the changes HE always wanted to make to the franchise".
Only problem is the previous games were all wildly successful for a reason. You don't "fix" what isn't broken.
Exactly. It's just flat out frustrating and unsatisfying. Fighting the fucking cerebus (who takes a million hits), while fighting super harpies, while fighting those polearm bitches was one of the most frustrating battles in the game. Then the "Trial" happened.....and I've yet to beat the game because I was about to break my fucking controller. I have NEVER been so frustrated with a GOW before. For those who played the shit of all GOW games, just to give you an idea of this "Trial", imagine playing the section in GOW 1 right before you get Pandora's box and they have the spinning wheels that do damage, archers and fucking dive bomb harpies galore; now imagine that you have to beat sirens, and super medusa's at the same time THEN have to fight dive bomb harpies and satyr's....all in an even more narrow space that spits fire.....Fucking genius design SSM
My point was you never saw God of War reviews stating "these games would be great, IF ONLY they changed the combat system". Yet somehow someone on the dev team won an argument, and it happened, and now a lot of people aren't happy.
Exactly. It's just flat out frustrating and unsatisfying. Fighting the fucking cerebus (who takes a million hits), while fighting super harpies, while fighting those polearm bitches was one of the most frustrating battles in the game. Then the "Trial" happened.....and I've yet to beat the game because I was about to break my fucking controller. I have NEVER been so frustrated with a GOW before. For those who played the shit of all GOW games, just to give you an idea of this "Trial", imagine playing the section in GOW 1 right before you get Pandora's box and they have the spinning wheels that do damage, archers and fucking dive bomb harpies galore; now imagine that you have to beat sirens, and super medusa's at the same time THEN have to fight dive bomb harpies and satyr's....all in an even more narrow space that spits fire.....Fucking genius design SSM
Totally agree and from what I can tell I can't change the difficulty of the game mid game. If this is true, I'm about to turn around and trade the game in. I've never struggled on a nonboss encounter for more than 2 hours and I just want to progress.
My point was you never saw God of War reviews stating "these games would be great, IF ONLY they changed the combat system". Yet somehow someone on the dev team won an argument, and it happened, and now a lot of people aren't happy.
Hearing these impressions of the combat changes immediately strikes me as "guy on the dev team finally got his way with this game and made the changes HE always wanted to make to the franchise".
Only problem is the previous games were all wildly successful for a reason. You don't "fix" what isn't broken.
Well that's kind of exactly what happened. Todd Pappy is a combat design guy. The thing is, they added some cool elements to what Kratos can do but the simultaneously nerfed him. Then on top of that their enemy combinations and difficultly scaling is just shit. Enemies take WAY too many fucking hits to die and they get in way too many hits as well. Blocking and rolling becomes fucking usesless. It's damn near impossible to create cool-looking combos since all your combos are CONSTANTLY interrupted. Also there is NO FUCKING COUNTER ATTACK! HOW THE FUCK CAN YOU NOT HAVE A BLOCK COUNTER! If I time my blocks perfectly, like in previous GOW games (and I'm not talking about the fucking fleece, I'm talking GOW 1 block counter), you'd be able to clear out enemies easily so you can gather yourself. Enemies in this game are fucking relentless and not in a good way.
Totally agree and from what I can tell I can't change the difficulty of the game mid game. If this is true, I'm about to turn around and trade the game in. I've never struggled on a nonboss encounter for more than 2 hours and I just want to progress.
After 2 hours of struggling on that section I just said fuck it and watched the youtube video to see the end of the game since I knew I was close. Thing is, I now want to beat the game because the last battle seems so fucking cool I just don't think I'll be able to get passed this Trial bullshit.
Thing is Squirrel, there are 4 waves of the shit so even if you manage to get through the first 2, you'll likely be fucked on the last waves anyway. I made it to the second to last wave and died because I grapples a harpy and Kratos glitched off the cliff....I haven't played the game again since...
Well that's kind of exactly what happened. Todd Pappy is a combat design guy. The thing is, they added some cool elements to what Kratos can do but the simultaneously nerfed him. Then on top of that their enemy combinations and difficultly scaling is just shit. Enemies take WAY too many fucking hits to die and they get in way too many hits as well. Blocking and rolling becomes fucking usesless. It's damn near impossible to create cool-looking combos since all your combos are CONSTANTLY interrupted. Also there is NO FUCKING COUNTER ATTACK! HOW THE FUCK CAN YOU NOT HAVE A BLOCK COUNTER! If I time my blocks perfectly, like in previous GOW games (and I'm not talking about the fucking fleece, I'm talking GOW 1 block counter), you'd be able to clear out enemies easily so you can gather yourself. Enemies in this game are fucking relentless and not in a good way.
Is there really no counter attack? If true, then that is quite the design bungle for such a game with crowds of enemies. It was always a staple of the combat.
Agreed with everything. I just got inside the temple after the bossfight you mentioned -- which has been the only thing to impress me so far -- and everything feels so... unfun.
The devs constantly screaming "LOOK HOW EPIC OUR THINGS ARE!" with massive camera pans/zooms to the point where Kratos is 2 pixels tall is really fucking grating. They worked before because while Kratos was still controllable during those segment (Steeds of Time), there WASN'T A DOZEN FUCKING ENEMIES HITTING FROM ALL SIDES AT THE SAME TIME!
I had to actually sit 2ft from my TV during the Hecatonchires head fight because I couldn't see a goddamned thing!
What the fuck happened? Stretched too thin because of the MP? Smaller/different team? Tighter schedule?
GOW3 wasn't my favorite but I never once thought to myself (or rather screamed in a fucking blood-rage) "How the fuck does something like this get approved?!"
To go from the best combat in the series (3) to this?... it's a mountain of disappointment larger than Olympus.
I can see why the reviews mentioned this trial to be frustrating. It's like a big difficulty spike that came out of nowhere with (short) unskippable cutscenes between each part and no checkpoints. I liked the challenge provided by the optional trials in the previous games but I think having this to be a part of the main campaign breaks the flow and will definitely not be to everyone's tastes.
Regarding those; after watching the catch unhook for the 100th time, it started to irritate me that the wheel starts turning in the opposite direction from the one the catch was stopping it from moving in.
Is there really no counter attack? If true, then that is quite the design bungle for such a game with crowds of enemies. It was always a staple of the combat.
No counter, parry is awkward as hell to use because L1+X is not intuitive or quick, and enemies have too much reach to make rolling useful. The combat is growing on me but I'm having a lot of trouble since it feels like Kratos doesn't have enough defense.
Is there really no counter attack? If true, then that is quite the design bungle for such a game with crowds of enemies. It was always a staple of the combat.
Yes, there is no block counter attack. They have this move where you have to press "X and R1" I believe but it's not even close to being the same. Also the block button doesn't working right out of a roll. There is a half of second delay so don't think you can roll away from a Medusa (who's tail whips covers more than half the screen) and not get hit unless you were blocking to begin with instead of rolling; oh wait you can't just do that because you have another medusa trying to freeze you and a lighting siren that had unblockable lighting attacks so you go ahead and make a choice to take the damage up the ass or in the face.
No counter, parry is awkward as hell to use because L1+X is not intuitive or quick, and enemies have too much reach to make rolling useful. The combat is growing on me but I'm having a lot of trouble since it feels like Kratos doesn't have enough defense.
Don't get me wrong, I like the game a lot but the combat changes are weird. I'm only a few hours in so I'm hoping it'll click as I go. I'm also coming off of MGR which has the most intuitive and effective block/parry system ever.
I haven't played the MP/co-op yet but depending on how that turns out I may just give this game back. I never thought I would EVER say that about any GOW game. And this is coming from a guy who bought GOW 1 and 2 on PS2, bought GOWCOO on PSP, GOW 3 on PS3, GOWGOS on PSP, then GOW collection on PS3, then GOW origins collection on PS3, then GOW SAGA...so I've paid full retail twice to have the same experience because I love the series...This one.....sigh.....
I really suck at parrying with Kratos, to the point I just ended up not using it at all. What's weird is it seemed to work just fine for me during the MP Beta, so I don't know what changes they made (or if they did not make any changes and it just happens to not work as well in SP). Its recovery time seems to be awfully long too, so if you miss a parry you'll end up getting punished hard. I'm definitely not a fan of the parry system in this game.
I'm not feeling as impressed with the graphics as I did with 3, but I've felt like that since the game was shown with that first demo. I think maybe because 3 was such a massive step forward and this game is more of a tiny step forward, with a lower overall framerate too.
But I haven't seen anything in this game that blew me away like that gif in 3 where Kratos is standing on that platform looking out in the distance where those storms are happening. That could just be better art direction too.
Really sucks about the audio issues but I play with headphones almost all the time so I'm not really affected. Sucks for everyone else that is effected.
As far as the game. I'm only an hour in and while the game def feels harder then the others, I'm actually enjoying that. It's keeping me from playing exactly the way I did in all the other GOW games. Yeah it can feel cheap at times, but it also keeps me on my toes. I welcome the challenge really! Bring it.
The game still doesn't allow you to change the difficulty mid-game after the patch? I ask because I just got the game, and I'm wondering whether to start it on easy, as I don't want to get stuck on normal, like in GoW3, without being able to change the setting on the fly, like in KZ2. It's unbeliavable if that option has now been removed for some reason.
The game still doesn't allow you to change the difficulty mid-game after the patch? I ask because I just got the game, and I'm wondering whether to start it on easy, as I don't want to get stuck on normal, like in GoW3, without being able to change the setting on the fly, like in KZ2. It's unbeliavable if that option has now been removed for some reason.
I haven't played the MP/co-op yet but depending on how that turns out I may just give this game back. I never thought I would EVER say that about any GOW game. And this is coming from a guy who bought GOW 1 and 2 on PS2, bought GOWCOO on PSP, GOW 3 on PS3, GOWGOS on PSP, then GOW collection on PS3, then GOW origins collection on PS3, then GOW SAGA...so I've paid full retail twice to have the same experience because I love the series...This one.....sigh.....
Yeah, I have been a fan since the first one on PS2 as well. That is why it is so troubling to hear someone who seems even more die-hard come away so disappointed.
agreed, its just awful. It forces the combat to function on two extremes, pure offensive and pure turtling. There were times in the game where i just held the block button for like a minute, whereas I was using the parry to create my offense in 3.
Basically, Kratos' moveset is gimped when you aren't maxed in rage. It would have been nice if he started with the basic moveset (from past games), and then got some really powerful temporary stuff when you max it out, but once again Santa Monica's extreme conservatism in evolving their combat system rears its head.
It makes you feel less powerful more of the time. The positive side is that it demands much more deliberate and skillful play... but the downside of that is the first time through the game, before you really learn about each enemy, you have a hard time even on normal maintaining max rage and full combat potential.
Agreed with everything. I just got inside the temple after the bossfight you mentioned -- which has been the only thing to impress me so far -- and everything feels so... unfun.
The devs constantly screaming "LOOK HOW EPIC OUR THINGS ARE!" with massive camera pans/zooms to the point where Kratos is 2 pixels tall is really fucking grating. They worked before because while Kratos was still controllable during those segment (Steeds of Time), there WASN'T A DOZEN FUCKING ENEMIES HITTING FROM ALL SIDES AT THE SAME TIME!
I had to actually sit 2ft from my TV during the Hecatonchires head fight because I couldn't see a goddamned thing!
I've only played the demo but I had this exact same issue. The camera pulls WAY too far back just to show you how much work the dev team put into the environments. They look great, but it doesn't matter at all to me when I can't fucking see Kratos and who I'm fighting.
If you could interrupt whatever you were doing more easily that would go a long way toward fixing it. A faster recovery would be good, too. The move is designed with multiplayer balance in mind, but it just makes it less fun and responsive in single player.
I just don't think I'll be able to get passed this Trial bullshit.
