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Rttp: God of War, or how a game can really sour on your second playthrough
- Thread starter Wamb0wneD
- Start date
I just watched the video, and you are right.
It's just, the gamingbolt article came out 7 months earlier than the Noclip interview and I never trusted that site.
Submerging the viewer/player in the experience, with the lesser number possible of artifices, in order to reinforce continuity and avoid disruption. That's the most common, dramatic purpose (others use it in symbolic ways, to differentiate reality from dreams, like Chinese director Gan Bi). From Children of Men to Goodfellas, it's cinematography at the service of putting us right in the middle of the action.
On the second point, God of War's camera moves wherever the characters go. There's enough activity behind it to replace standard editing, for efficient camera work. A long take or sequence shot wouldn't be of much value if framing, tracking and positioning weren't all noteworthy. Dead Space 2 tried a similar approach, but the outcome is barely mentioned, because it was less inventive, agile and informative. God of War's merit is not only technical, it was also an appropiate method to bring to life the script. It might be different for the sequel, yet it's hard to imagine the original under any other form.
God of War is the only game I platinumed on the first play through. Thoroughly enjoyed it but I suspect I will have to give it a couple of years before a second look.
I sort of call bullshit on this, even though I prefer your explanation for it.
The thing is, God of War isn't uninterrupted. It's full of interruptions because it's a game that insists on a cinematic experience, and pushes for some Hollywood-like emotion and drama of characters, and it has hours of non-interactive cutscenes and a ton of intrusive micro-moments where the camera has to show what you're supposed to be concerned with rather than intuitively guiding the player using just mechanics or something else.
I don't think this is a submerged experience. I thought it was a distant and largely faux formula for success, and it's only going to be trendy for future games to do the same things.
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Yeah lol, I couldn't believe it either. That person had a lot of weird takes tho.
What in the sweet name of Christ
The faster you upgrade the lightning arrows from Atreus, the easier large crowds get. Large crowds were always a bit strange, because most juggle combos and all these neat little long lasting spins you can do with your axe were useless when someone always hit you out of it.
I agree that the story gets better with a scond playthrough, everything else not so much though. Also agreed on the balancing, well put.
I beat them on hard and I though the skill trees are suplerfluous... now what? I never said the combat lacks depth, the base mechanics and the axe carry the combat from beginning to end.
That's cool, may I ask why though? How are the realms not undercooked, especially Nifel and Muspelheim? How is the flying boat scene in Helheim not way, way too padded out? How do things like menus and death screens not run contrary to the intent of immersion of the oneshot camera? How are most of the bosses not super lacking? What did you find enticing about the dragon fight?
Good thing I barely compared them then and there's a lot of points I made that have nothing to do with the comparison at all that you could all engage with and make counter arguments then.
I've played it three times and it got better each time. There's so much to appreciate in it.
Actually what's getting tiring is people reacting this way when Souls is compared even a little bit to a game they like. There was no swooning over Souls in the OP. No tear down as the game in favor of the latter.
I see people compare all kinds of games to each other but only see a reaction when it's Souls. I don't see people expressing the same fatigue over BOTW or Witcher 3 comparisons to other open world games. No one calls the "boner" for those. What is the problem? It's getting tired and is starting to come across as "bitcheatingcrackers" more than anything.
Mostly agree with OP, I also thought that the game was too long and I was highly disappointed with the worlds. Most of them were nothing but a few corridors and all areas felt gamey, just arenas with ennemies to kill. A very good game, but not the masterpiece some would like the game to be IMO.
I think matthewmatosis had some pretty solid poonts in his case study
One of the biggest is how the enviroment is so preoccupied with trying to look pretty that it sometimes fails to be a arena where you can use moves and expect them to work everytime
One of the biggest is how the enviroment is so preoccupied with trying to look pretty that it sometimes fails to be a arena where you can use moves and expect them to work everytime
This game has far more soul than the previous ones. The characters are far more fleshed out and have motivations beyond just revenge. I'd say it's also trickier and feels less accessible to casual audiences too.
I played through the game two times and I enjoyed the second time even more, since I understood all the mechanics even better. It's imo a near perfect game and it deserves the universal critical acclaim and showering of awards it received.
There's imo just one bigger flaw that I would like to see improved in the sequel: Please make Midgard or whatever realm or realms you concentrate on in the next game bigger and wider. The game world as it is now is beautiful, but feels often artificial and restricted. Too many corridors, too many dead ends, too many invisible walls. I was so often disappointed that I was barred from discovering more of the gorgeous places I visited. Instead of being fully immersed I was again and again reminded that this was just a video game. :(
Get off your high horse, seriously.
There's imo just one bigger flaw that I would like to see improved in the sequel: Please make Midgard or whatever realm or realms you concentrate on in the next game bigger and wider. The game world as it is now is beautiful, but feels often artificial and restricted. Too many corridors, too many dead ends, too many invisible walls. I was so often disappointed that I was barred from discovering more of the gorgeous places I visited. Instead of being fully immersed I was again and again reminded that this was just a video game. :(
Get off your high horse, seriously.
You know if they had done that, Sony or Barlog would have issued a clarification given how much traction that story got, right?
This "fake news" rhetoric is eye roll inducing.
Oh yeah, that was an actual take on here lol.
What in the sweet name of Christ
There were two scenes in the game that made the one-shot camera worth it for me. One was when the camera was spinning around Kratos, while he was alone on the boat, and the other was when he was falling out of the sky. I don't think these scenes would have been designed to play out like this if it hadn't been for the one-shot.
But that's more of a byproduct from this approach and I can't say that having a game be this way has any merit in and of itself.
But yeah, it's probably not a game I would want to replay. I also didn't do all the trophies, since that would have probably turned my enjoyment into exhaustion. The game was long enough as it is.
But that's more of a byproduct from this approach and I can't say that having a game be this way has any merit in and of itself.
But yeah, it's probably not a game I would want to replay. I also didn't do all the trophies, since that would have probably turned my enjoyment into exhaustion. The game was long enough as it is.
I agree that some of the recolored bosses got repetitive and some parts of the maps were a chore to travel around. I found this quite apparent when I was revisiting locations during my Platinum trophy hunt. But overall, the experience was amazing and memorable. I'm not sure when I'll ever replay it again.
In short, this is a debate of intention vs perception: the creator attemps to achieve a result, but it's the audience who interprets the effort, and individually decides, if that choice worked for him/her or not. Some of the most celebrated long takes in film history, like the ones I mentioned before, have also received, throughout the years, its considerable share of criticism. As a form of narrative language, the shot sequence has its admirers, and its detractors.
Creators aiming for the long take try their best to have the least number of interruptions. As I'm sure you know, it's quite usual to link multiple long takes and mask them through editing, as if they were one. That's because, most important than how good or impressive, your long takes are, is the combined result of your film, or in this case, your video game. Any interruption in God of War, as the at times mentioned Menu, or the Game Over screen, I think it's a concession in order to create the most balanced experience for the player.
It's meaningful of how focused they were on creating a game with some story, and not the opposite, that they went as far as to break the illusion of continuity, when and where it could benefit the player. To me that has to be a virtue, not a defect. They didn't compromise how the game plays, just because they wanted to use long takes for sequences. I think both parts are tied together and complement each other with success.
I'm not sure what moments did you find intrusive, or uncomfortable beyond what's standard already for the whole industry: you go through a location, and from time to time, the developer appears to guide you in the right way. It's what modern Zelda does, for example, with long aerial pans, showing us where's the goal or an element of interest. That would exist in the game, whether it had long takes or not. As for the formula, well, it's not like long takes are the secret to rapid success. It's a very complicated process, they did it because they wanted, it mostly worked, but I think it's just another reason why the game was applauded. Again, others did it before and the impact was tepid in comparison (The Phantom Pain, in 2015). It's all a matter of execution, personally I liked it a lot here.
This is just a difference in priority. From Soft has less time and budget, but prioritize gameplay above anything else. Games like GoW, Horizon, Uncharted, Days Gone, etc. need to look good at the first place and then play decent as well.
Even the graphics, visual effects, sound effects and story in From Soft games are all serving the gameplay in the end. While at Sony first party games (and most other Western AAA games) these things are seperate entities brought together in the mix in the end.
What did they spend their time and budget on when creating God of War? Mostly lots of graphical features and art, motion capture, making a single camera shot work and let's not forget a year of development time for just an E3 demo. Priorities.
The game still ended up great, though.
I mean there have to be menues in some way? How should it work otherwise? Do you want lengthy ingame-animations for every gear change/crafting? That would certainly suck.
I don't see how the boss fights are lacking in any way. The combat system is simply stellar with lots of impact and great hit feedback and the bosses are well designed. Everything is spectacular and epic. That first boss alone is better than anything else I have seen in this generation. After that fight I had no doubt that I will love the game and that they didn't abandon what made GoW great in the first place. The flying boat scene was so awesome and escalated with the enemy hordes. There was no padding at all. Too bad you didn't like it though. But maybe you are looking for other things in games. In the end it's all a matter of personal taste.
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I don't know? Dead Space did a good job for example. Maybe have the fast travel map etched on a bigger stone gate instead of bringing up a map that ruins the immersion the camera works so hard to build up. I don't get the logic behind a camera cut being immersion breaking but menus aren't, even though you spend more time in them. I don't have a solution for death screens outside of what they tried with the resurrecting mechanic.The first boss fight is the best in the game and a true highlight, yes. But even then, what was outstanding there was the camera, the overall direction of the fight. In the end it's still quciktime events, and the parts where you actually fight him are nothing to write home about. After that fight I had really high expecations for the rest of the game, sadly nothing even came close to that fight except maybe the last one. The fight with the dragon had so little dynamic going on, the whole explosive crystal stuff in the bossfight didn't fit the combat mechanics of the game at all.
The flying boat fight went on for like 30 minutes (I just checked, it's 20-30 minutes according to the videos for the fight). It was a great idea to have a fight in that setting and to build urgency while fighting, but it went on for way, way too long. I've never seen someone defend a combat scenario where you are at the same place and kill hordes over and over again for literal 20 minutes or more. It's padding, you can't really call it anything else.
If you read the very first paragraph in the OP you can read I actually liked it, so much so I'm currently replaying it, but I don't need to think it's gods gift to mankind to like the game, or praise obvious flaws.
If you're wondering which games get a large number of LTTP threads relative to their initial popularity, I imagine Prey (2017) probably comes out on top.
Im not saying it doesnt focus on combat. Im saying this version didnt focus nearly as much on bosses as previous installments. They focused way more on telling a story. I agree that the enemy and boss selection wasnt the greatest. Im just saying that they were clearly prioritizing different things unlike dark souls where the bosses are an integral part of the game. The next god of war doesnt need to put in the
Which part? Graphically god of war beats any entry from fromsoftware, cinematics again is easily god of war and story again is god of war. I never said anything about kevel design either
Dead Space doesn't have as many slots and stats as GoW has. GoW is RPG light and that comes with menues. There is no reasonable way around it. I didn't find it immersion breaking. It's like saying "pausing" the game is immersion breaking.
I can call it whatever I want. It's a combat focused game. And it is it's biggest strength that it didn't scale back on the fighting like for example Uncharted 4 did. I play these games mainly for the action and spectacle. And a 20-30 minutes nonstop-fighting sequence in a fantastic setpiece is a HUGE plus in my book. You are free to dislike and call it padding. But for me it didn't feel like padding at all.
Your points of criticism aren't flaws for me. That's why I disagreed with your whole post in my first reply. Really, there is no need to discuss this any further. Different strokes for different folks.
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If the whole point of a one shot camera is to build immersion, then yes, things that run contrary to that are immersion breaking. You can't tell me they didn't use camera cuts to deepen the experience because they thought camera cuts would hinder that, but then pause menus don't do the same thing. Also glad we agree the actual fight against Baldur, the parts where you had full control, weren't that great.
There is well paced action and then there's whatever that boat scene was. Other games get shit on for doing this stuff for 5 minutes, yet here 20-30 minutes suddenly is good game design.
Ok.
I think there can be room to argue the xp system. Personally, I found it contrived for how many nodes there were. Some abilities were worthless and some useful, but I also see the point. It's to not make this game inaccessible like P* games with 50 moves from minute 1. You get to both learn a smaller set of moves and feel like you're progressing towards something at once.
But I'd be hard-pressed to agree with anyone that the other realms were well done. My hype was immeasurable when they said that each realm mirrors each other, as I expected a similar sized world in every realm. Instead, only Alfheim comes close, and it's mostly an indoors affair. Muspelheim and Niflheim are glorified side quests, and Helheim was not a fun romp imo. To say I was deflated is an understatement.
I'm not a fan of the Souls boss comparison. The two games are obviously doing different things. GoW is mainly about those setpiece fights, which explains the Baldur and dragon fights. If I wanted to critique Souls bosses, I'd talk about how their AI is pretty rudimentary and all the challenge comes from their individual moves, rather than how they combo you, pressure you, etc. But comparisons aside, yes, GoW's boss fights are lacking. The ones that exist (the copy paste trolls don't count) are great, but there did need to be more. They made such a big deal about the side quest dragons for them to then just be puzzle rewards. When I think GoW bosses, I immediately think of all the great setpieces from 3 -- Poseidon right in the opening, Hades, Cronos, etc. This one could've done more. Alternatively, make more Souls-y bosses like the Valkyries. Those were great fights, but after doing them all, the theme was starting to wear thin.
All in all, you can tell which areas of the game got some neglect because everything is a tradeoff when it comes to development. And that's the kind of stuff that can rub people the wrong way on a second playthrough. The spectacle no longer distracts us from the detractions. I hope this lopsidedness doesn't show up in the next one, and despite all that I wrote, I still really really love this game.
But I'd be hard-pressed to agree with anyone that the other realms were well done. My hype was immeasurable when they said that each realm mirrors each other, as I expected a similar sized world in every realm. Instead, only Alfheim comes close, and it's mostly an indoors affair. Muspelheim and Niflheim are glorified side quests, and Helheim was not a fun romp imo. To say I was deflated is an understatement.
I'm not a fan of the Souls boss comparison. The two games are obviously doing different things. GoW is mainly about those setpiece fights, which explains the Baldur and dragon fights. If I wanted to critique Souls bosses, I'd talk about how their AI is pretty rudimentary and all the challenge comes from their individual moves, rather than how they combo you, pressure you, etc. But comparisons aside, yes, GoW's boss fights are lacking. The ones that exist (the copy paste trolls don't count) are great, but there did need to be more. They made such a big deal about the side quest dragons for them to then just be puzzle rewards. When I think GoW bosses, I immediately think of all the great setpieces from 3 -- Poseidon right in the opening, Hades, Cronos, etc. This one could've done more. Alternatively, make more Souls-y bosses like the Valkyries. Those were great fights, but after doing them all, the theme was starting to wear thin.
All in all, you can tell which areas of the game got some neglect because everything is a tradeoff when it comes to development. And that's the kind of stuff that can rub people the wrong way on a second playthrough. The spectacle no longer distracts us from the detractions. I hope this lopsidedness doesn't show up in the next one, and despite all that I wrote, I still really really love this game.
The boat was essentially a way to hear Mimir talk, like the walk-slowly sections in Gears, but more interesting. A bigger issue for me was that it took so long before fast travel was unlocked. I don't understand why this is a thing, FH4 did that too, RDR2 as well. If someone wants to skip ahead faster because their window of opportunity for gaming is limited then they should be allowed to do that. Doesn't mean that I think the gameworld is boring, I just don't have time for that type of padding these days.
The RPG elements were placed in to appeal to gamers today(casuals)... Also they changed Kratos for the soft social climate today. It is not trickier... you just have to have the right gear. If anything the nemean cestus felt way better than that dumb ass axe.
He killed all of the Greek gods and stabbed himself and the best thing they could come up with is that this story was many years after?
The bosses were laughable and enemies were barely varied. Norse mythology will never match Greek or even Egyptian. How the hell is spreading ashes a better motivator than the gods just made me kill my own family?
Its definitely not a good second playthrough game. Not soon after beating it the first time anyway. I tried when the ng+ came out, but couldnt get very far before losing interest
Yes, this is anything ever in gaming.
"I didn't think Mario was good because I hate jumping, and I think it serves no purpose." etc.
It's also sort of a way to throw off the argument imo. I'm judging GoW's camera design on its own merits, and to me the style was just somewhat intrusive to the intended effect of "immersion", because to me the sense of constant movement and panning creates unintended emotional connotations at times, sometimes it's padding to cover asset streaming, sometimes it's masking for "There's no gameplay right now, and let's pretend the cutscene is still part of the same player-experience that combat and exploration is", and sometimes it also works really well, due to good cinematography in cutscenes or visceralness during gameplay. It's the "one-shot" approach and the way it transitions between things that I felt were pretentious.
Yeah I was really puzzled by how many people were clamoring for NG+ and loving the combat. The strength lies in the ways the game surprises you, the characters and the plot beats. The crazy setpieces. It's just not deep enough to be like.......... Devil May Cry
I have two major issues with the game that disqualified it from my 2018 GotY list.
Issue #1: The story never feels as though it is working toward a satisfying conclusion and the twist at the end of the game made me wish I was playing THAT game rather than the one I'd just finished.
Issue #2: The boss battles peaked with the first (albeit amazing) fight against The Stranger. Nothing else reached that height of spectacle or stress.
That being said: the game is still an impressive achievement in that it humanized & helped me care for a video game character I had never connected with before (Kratos). I'll be interested to see what happens next.
Issue #1: The story never feels as though it is working toward a satisfying conclusion and the twist at the end of the game made me wish I was playing THAT game rather than the one I'd just finished.
Issue #2: The boss battles peaked with the first (albeit amazing) fight against The Stranger. Nothing else reached that height of spectacle or stress.
That being said: the game is still an impressive achievement in that it humanized & helped me care for a video game character I had never connected with before (Kratos). I'll be interested to see what happens next.
God of War was so fun the first time because of the writing, characters, music, and visuals leading to very impactful moments, which won't hit nearly as hard on subsequent playthroughs. I think it's still a very good game, but it will age pretty drastically, and there's a ton they can improve on in the sequel in regards to the combat, the RPG mechanics, the level design, gameplay variety, and general world-building. The game became way more fun for me once I had all the weapons and abilities, so I hope the sequel starts there, rather than making me slog through hours of boring combat before getting to the more interesting stuff again. I also hope they build off of the art and assets they have already and don't try to get absolutely crazy with the graphical prowess on the PS5, which I don't feel is really worth the trade-offs when it already looks so good.
I never understood why people made a huge deal out of the one-shot camera when most games work that way. In most games the camera usually only cuts when pausing the game (which is still the case here), loading screens (which are just very poorly masked and all over the place in this game, probably due to the ridiculous graphics), and during cutscenes. To this game's credit, the cutscenes are edited extremely well and the game flows in and out of them very organically because of the camera, but I feel like the camera hype can be overblown.
I never understood why people made a huge deal out of the one-shot camera when most games work that way. In most games the camera usually only cuts when pausing the game (which is still the case here), loading screens (which are just very poorly masked and all over the place in this game, probably due to the ridiculous graphics), and during cutscenes. To this game's credit, the cutscenes are edited extremely well and the game flows in and out of them very organically because of the camera, but I feel like the camera hype can be overblown.
I didn't make it far into my ng+ playthrough before stopping and moving on. I'll give it another shot when I go through my yearly playthrough of the original trilogy and GoS.
It's simply a false statement. I never felt the fight was that long on give me god of war difficulty and according to the this video, the actual horde fight starts at 6:07 and ends at 17:30. It is only 11 min and even if you count the whole scene it's less than 20 minutes.
It's very common for individuals not enjoying certain/ certain parts of highly acclaimed games, but stating them as flaws won't yield any productive discussion at all.
As for new game plus, I came to it mainly for combat and it didn't disappoint me. One salient feature is that you can refine some armor set bonus / talisman effects into enhancements, meaning you can have enhanced perfect parry, time slow-down when dodging, activating time slow-down, etc. at the same time. This makes the Kratos feels super godly (lol he's not that godly compared to previous installments) and the gameplay hell of fun. I struggled at Sigrun on GMGOW for like good 3 hours in the first place through, but after I fully upgraded my character in NG+, I melted her in 3 minutes. If you can stick with your new playthough, I hope you can have more fun as well.
Also not defending the Muspelheim design, but you play the series you know there will be combat arena trials for the game. Muspelheim serves it well plus the rewards aren't bad either.
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The audio interview file is up on our YouTube in its entirety, so unless we hired a person who sounds exactly like Cory Barlog, I don't see how we could have faked it.
Well, I apologize for everything I have said about GamingBolt and accept any ban I deserve for my inconsiderate words in this thread.
You're on point Wamb0wneD
Loved this game last year when I first played. Almost unabashedly so. Replayed it a year later in April, I found myself with similar complaints as you, although I had always felt the difficulty options were an unbalanced mess and the RPG stuff just lend itself to annoying-as-hell inventory management. But now, a second time around, they were somehow worse.
Something you didn't touch on is the combat, which seems half-baked. So many moves in this game are utterly pointless, including those hunter killer moves and especially all those "stance change" combos, which don't seem to serve any purpose whatsoever. On my second time around (a fresh run, not NG+), I didn't bother buying any of this shit and it felt like I hadn't lost anything. Also, the axe is way OP. I understand the blades were a somewhat last minute addition, and it feels. The axe is good at close range and long range, so what purpose do the blades serve, mechanically? They aren't even good for crowd control. And sometimes the way some combat scenarios are structured it feels like the developers just want to get you to rage out, as a sort of crutch to deal with their potentially borked difficulty.
An another thing that was massively frustrating was the camera during combat. Just garbage. I'm sorry for any developers reading this. I don't know how I gave it a pass a year ago. That little radar you gave Kratos is barely useful, if at all. This game asks way too much camera babysitting of you, considering it's a moderately fast-paced action game.
For me, the game's strengths lie in its narrative and audiovisual presentation. And everything else I got misgivings about.
Loved this game last year when I first played. Almost unabashedly so. Replayed it a year later in April, I found myself with similar complaints as you, although I had always felt the difficulty options were an unbalanced mess and the RPG stuff just lend itself to annoying-as-hell inventory management. But now, a second time around, they were somehow worse.
Something you didn't touch on is the combat, which seems half-baked. So many moves in this game are utterly pointless, including those hunter killer moves and especially all those "stance change" combos, which don't seem to serve any purpose whatsoever. On my second time around (a fresh run, not NG+), I didn't bother buying any of this shit and it felt like I hadn't lost anything. Also, the axe is way OP. I understand the blades were a somewhat last minute addition, and it feels. The axe is good at close range and long range, so what purpose do the blades serve, mechanically? They aren't even good for crowd control. And sometimes the way some combat scenarios are structured it feels like the developers just want to get you to rage out, as a sort of crutch to deal with their potentially borked difficulty.
An another thing that was massively frustrating was the camera during combat. Just garbage. I'm sorry for any developers reading this. I don't know how I gave it a pass a year ago. That little radar you gave Kratos is barely useful, if at all. This game asks way too much camera babysitting of you, considering it's a moderately fast-paced action game.
For me, the game's strengths lie in its narrative and audiovisual presentation. And everything else I got misgivings about.
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I think you are missing the point of the one shot. It's not about realism or immersion it's about visual storytelling which is rare in gaming, often when done is very poor and film school 101 basics, this was actually well delivered adding to the narrative. It's also a very very hard thing to actually do, never mind do it well. It's nowhere near as good as a long take in film but it hopefully opened the door for more developers to start looking at the art of the camera beyond just framing gameplay, this has started to become more popular in AAA games this gen but most just go for a push-pull reveal on enemies which is just boring. (Behind character isn't necessary for a one shot that's a gameplay choice similar to why it was used in games like RE4).
The game the more you play does show its faults big time.
The game the more you play does show its faults big time.
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Yeah, I am glad more and more people are calling out the camera, which I have been doing since the game launched last year, and got piled on as a result. But the camera simply does not work—it's too zoomed in, and so incompatible with the pace of combat (any time you have to rely on a Quick Turn, your camera failed); the one shot cut is impressive, but ultimately absolutely unnecessary. Yes, it's great that it was done, and it's a marvellous technical achievement, and while we're at it, yes, it's so unique and novel for games, but the whole game being one shot was severely limiting to storytelling, thus curtailing the biggest strength the game had. You can't have flashbacks, flash-forwards, you can't have jump cuts, you can't have break POV, mechanics like quick travel are curtailed, and I need to point out that the fact that this is a game with a fail state (death), the fact that this is a game that cannot be completed in one sitting, the fact that you frequently have to go into menus, breaks the cut anyway. It's an utterly futile and self-defeating exercise, which works in terms of just how staggeringly impressive it is, but has no real utility. I hope that GOW2 goes the Uncharted route, where setpieces like the Madagascar chase are one cut, but the game has no inhibitions about breaking the cut any other time it needs to.
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Yeah the combat perks like the stances are included in my complaint about the unnecessary RPG elements and redundant xp sinks. I maxed these things out and barely used any of it, because in most cases you're just better off doing two light attacks or a strong attack before dodging or parrying the next incoming one. The whole juggling aspect fell way too short, too. You barely had a chance to do it because either 3 other enemies took a dump on you while you tried it or you couldn't juggle them to begin with. I love the weighty feel of the combat, though, and while the axe was definetly more useful than the blades, and I resorted on the axe for most of my playtrhough, I'm glad they tried to shake things up a little.
I'm not sure where here, but I complained about the camera and especially the marker for incoming attacks being suboptimal once, and got a shitstorm of like a dozen people piling on me how I don't know what I'm talking about so yeah, I thought I should leave it out this time lol.
Exactly my sentiments when it comes to the oneshot camera. It's constantly working against the game's own mechanics. They even have things like a resurrecting mechanic in there to seamlessly circumvent death fail states and keep the camera rolling, but at some point they probably thought it shouldn't always be available, like in Prince of Persia 2008 for example. I still don't get how they can craft an entire room to mask loadings for fast traveling so the camera doesn't cut, but have a menu that cuts away to select the destination right before it.
Wow, so much disagree in this post.
Wow, so following this logic, I beat a DMC game by smashing the slash button and I can conclude all other movesets an skills are pointless? Of course the stance change is trying to add depth to combat system. You can search on youtube and check out some videos how people use the movesets.
As for the blade, how did you fight the nightmares? Throwing the axe again and again instead of using blade to one shot them? And of course the blades are good for crowd control and gap closing, not to mention how dope the ultimate rune attach you purchase at Mulspellheim is. Plus if you play on high difficulty, switching weapons to use rune attacks is a must to effectively kill enemies.
Did you use the quick turn button? It is a gamer changer and I can't image how you avoid valkyrie's blinding attack without it.
I like the combat and adventure far more than the story. The game's personality developing is good, but the story just feels like a prologue for the assumed trilogy. Although this is just a matter of personal taste.
The difficulty is a bit unbalanced indeed, as you progress. But it is like a universal thing in RPGs, if you don't like the RPG lite shift, it is a personal taste thing, not a design prblem.
Wow, so following this logic, I beat a DMC game by smashing the slash button and I can conclude all other movesets an skills are pointless? Of course the stance change is trying to add depth to combat system. You can search on youtube and check out some videos how people use the movesets.
As for the blade, how did you fight the nightmares? Throwing the axe again and again instead of using blade to one shot them? And of course the blades are good for crowd control and gap closing, not to mention how dope the ultimate rune attach you purchase at Mulspellheim is. Plus if you play on high difficulty, switching weapons to use rune attacks is a must to effectively kill enemies.
Did you use the quick turn button? It is a gamer changer and I can't image how you avoid valkyrie's blinding attack without it.
I like the combat and adventure far more than the story. The game's personality developing is good, but the story just feels like a prologue for the assumed trilogy. Although this is just a matter of personal taste.
Great post, I had super similar thoughts during my one and only experience with the game. I'd like to replay it at some point to see if anything has changed.