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- 614
In the ongoing effort to clear my backlog of games, I decided to finish God of war: Ascension and I can safely say it is by far my least favorite in the series.
I don't know what they did to the combat but it felt so much worse than prior games. Enemies felt spongy, which combined with the lack of visual feedback, made combat feel tiresome. I was disappointed with the lack of weapons and magic too. Instead they had an element system (each element was connected to a god; Lightning for zeus, Fire for Ares, Frost for Poseidon and Death for Hades) with each element having a magic attack and rewarding different bonus orbs (Lighting gave blue, Fire gave gold, Ice gave red and Death gave green) along with five weapons that can be disarmed from enemies and discarded once you're done with them. At times it felt like the game thought "more enemies = harder challenge" but really it just made me annoyed especially when you're facing an already tough enemy whilst having to fend off grunts.
The level design was alright. The world and large set pieces is something God of War has always done great in my opinion, and that is no different here. My biggest issue with the levels is that some of the puzzles were vague as to what i was supposed to do. I'm not saying the puzzles need to be easy, I enjoy figuring them out, but if it takes me more than 30 minutes and an online guide to figure it out, maybe you're design is flawed.
I'm not going to comment on the story because I thought it was so uninteresting I found myself skipping cut-scenes and not paying attention when I couldn't skip them, which says something about both the story and my attention span.
In terms of what I liked about it though....There's really not much that I did like honestly. Aside from the world and set pieces, I guess the removal of the old save points system was nice but that would be about it.
Overall I thought it was an underwhelming slog of a game that I'm glad I'm done with. Would not recommend, instead get any other God of War.
Sidenote: It has a multiplayer mode, but I never tried it and I'm not sure if its servers are even still up, Regardless I have zero interest in trying it.
I don't know what they did to the combat but it felt so much worse than prior games. Enemies felt spongy, which combined with the lack of visual feedback, made combat feel tiresome. I was disappointed with the lack of weapons and magic too. Instead they had an element system (each element was connected to a god; Lightning for zeus, Fire for Ares, Frost for Poseidon and Death for Hades) with each element having a magic attack and rewarding different bonus orbs (Lighting gave blue, Fire gave gold, Ice gave red and Death gave green) along with five weapons that can be disarmed from enemies and discarded once you're done with them. At times it felt like the game thought "more enemies = harder challenge" but really it just made me annoyed especially when you're facing an already tough enemy whilst having to fend off grunts.
The level design was alright. The world and large set pieces is something God of War has always done great in my opinion, and that is no different here. My biggest issue with the levels is that some of the puzzles were vague as to what i was supposed to do. I'm not saying the puzzles need to be easy, I enjoy figuring them out, but if it takes me more than 30 minutes and an online guide to figure it out, maybe you're design is flawed.
I'm not going to comment on the story because I thought it was so uninteresting I found myself skipping cut-scenes and not paying attention when I couldn't skip them, which says something about both the story and my attention span.
In terms of what I liked about it though....There's really not much that I did like honestly. Aside from the world and set pieces, I guess the removal of the old save points system was nice but that would be about it.
Overall I thought it was an underwhelming slog of a game that I'm glad I'm done with. Would not recommend, instead get any other God of War.
Sidenote: It has a multiplayer mode, but I never tried it and I'm not sure if its servers are even still up, Regardless I have zero interest in trying it.