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Hero-of-Time

God of War (PS4)

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I can't pick this one up yet, but I'm wondering about the mixture of combat and puzzle solving/exploration in this game.

 

What I loved about the original games is how well they combined the combat with light puzzle solving and exploration.  They were more like linear Zelda games than DMC style Stylish Action games.  All the footage that Sony have put out though has been pretty much entierly focused on combat though, so... How combat heavy would you say the game is so far? Is it more or less combat focused than the original trilogy?

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Puzzles still play a part in the game, even more so than in previous entries, I'd say. In past games the chests for upgrades were easily found but now you have to figure out small puzzles for each of them. 

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15 hours ago, Julius Caesar said:

May I ask where you’re finding it at that price? It’s £46 on Amazon at the moment.

Oh I mean the digital copy, I'm not in the country at the moment and physical copies are going to be hard to come by at the moment.

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The game opened up a little just now. However, there are a lot of enemies in certain areas that kill me in one hit, so I'll avoid these for now. Need more Hacksilver for better equipment.

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3 hours ago, Hero-of-Time said:

Puzzles still play a part in the game, even more so than in previous entries, I'd say. In past games the chests for upgrades were easily found but now you have to figure out small puzzles for each of them. 

I tend to put extra effort into hunting around for equipment and armour chests. I'm trying not to buy any of those from the shop. Seems a waste of money if you're constantly finding stuff in the wild 

Are you enjoying it more than you were at the start? Didn't you say you weren't feeling it?

Edited by Ronnie

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4 minutes ago, Ronnie said:

Are you enjoying it more than you were at the start? Didn't you say you weren't feeling it?

Nah, not really. I'm not a fan of how open they've made the game, the story doesn't seem to be going anywhere and I much prefer the Greek gods setting over the Norse mythology. 

The older games more focused and the story in each of them  flowed nicely and gave you the urge to keep pushing forward to see how things were going to play out. In this it's much more about the exploration, which I'm never really bothered about in open world games.

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The story has just MASSIVELY kicked in and has done for the past hour I've been playing. Not gonna spoil anything but if you played and enjoyed the other games in the series then you're gonna love what's ahead.

No kidding I have tears of joy in my eyes right now. This is me at this moment :bouncy::bouncy::bouncy:

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26 minutes ago, Hero-of-Time said:

The story has just MASSIVELY kicked in and has done for the past hour I've been playing. Not gonna spoil anything but if you played and enjoyed the other games in the series then you're gonna love what's ahead.

No kidding I have tears of joy in my eyes right now. This is me at this moment :bouncy::bouncy::bouncy:

Ahh the difference 2.5 hours can make. 

I’m not feeling the combat personally at the moment. I really enjoy the unarmed moveset, but the current enemies are kinda dicks with a zero windup time unblockable (or I’m just bad) combo breaker. I’m mostly not feeling the moveset for the Ax much. The gameplay is much less hack and slash than before and has more methodology behind it that I have to get used to. Slow down on bludgeoning my way through everything. 

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Wow what a 180!

Do you mean the 

Spoiler

Ability to travel to different realms? Or after that.

im more than halfway through the first realm you visit and still not come across any sidequests  

 

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2 minutes ago, Nolan said:

Ahh the difference 2.5 hours can make. 

I’m not feeling the combat personally at the moment. I really enjoy the unarmed moveset, but the current enemies are kinda dicks with a zero windup time unblockable (or I’m just bad) combo breaker. I’m mostly not feeling the moveset for the Ax much. The gameplay is much less hack and slash than before and has more methodology behind it that I have to get used to. Slow down on bludgeoning my way through everything. 

Can't say I'm enamoured with the combat either. Starting to veer into button mashing for me. 

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You people should ramp up the difficulty.

Mindlessly using combos and bashing enemies is a no-go. There's quite a bit of strategy involved. I'm currently getting my ass kicked by a combination of enemies...

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I’m not mindlessly bashing buttons already on regular. I’m just bad. I already know I need to slow myself down in how I play. More Hellblade, less God of War.

I cheesed the fight a bit though, R2 throw plus immediately recalling and throwing semi stun locks them while doing decent damage. 

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8 minutes ago, Nolan said:

I cheesed the fight a bit though, R2 throw plus immediately recalling and throwing semi stun locks them while doing decent damage. 

Oh, how I wish that was true for me :laughing: The damage is negligible once an enemy powers up. The stun lock helps but it's highly situational.

Edit: Just learned that buying better equipment is vital. The difference it made after I'd bought wrist and waist armor was quite substantial.

Edited by drahkon

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10 minutes ago, Ronnie said:

Wow what a 180!

Do you mean the 

  World traversal (Hide contents)

Ability to travel to different realms? Or after that.

im more than halfway through the first realm you visit and still not come across any sidequests  

 

Nah. The moment I spoke about is well beyond that. If you haven't played the other games then it will probably be a little flat for you. :p 

All the side quests I've come across are in the main hub world, Midgar.

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Denizens of the PS4pro, resolution or performance? I played Horizon all with resolution as I could see the difference there. I just switched on this and don’t see a huge detail lose but the jump in FPS is absolutely huge. This is what I want from the next generation. The 4K fidelity and the smoothness of this game at 1080. 

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13 minutes ago, Nolan said:

Denizens of the PS4pro, resolution or performance?

Performance all the way. The FPS gains are pretty good.

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Just a small PSA for anyone not already playing subtitles (with subtitle speaker turned on) May give small spoilers in regards to names. 

Spoiler

The Stranger was still labeled as such but

Spoiler

The witch of the woods was labeled correctly....except if you re-enter her home after the initial meeting when leaving the home again her name is in the subtitles.

 

I don’t directly name anyone in those spoilers so if you’ve played past a certain point no fear is necessary. Hell personally I don’t really consider the info spoiler but err on the side of caution after being told it was a spoiler what the chronological order Dragon quest games are in. :indeed:

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So...this just happened:

Spoiler

I died, but Ididn't get a game over screen and Kratos decided to resurrect in a weird way...I couldn't move after that and the game just kept going in super slow-mo. :laughing:

 

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I've been up since 5am this morning playing this and the credits have finally rolled. The ending had me like this...

giphy.gif

followed by this...

giphy.gif

I can finally take a look at the trophies now ( i've still got plenty to do and unlock ) and go on YouTube without fear of seeing any spoilers. Phew! :D 

What Cory and his team have achieved here is nothing short of spectacular. The quality of the visuals, voice work, environments, music, set pieces and story are in a league of their own. The way they took an action based adventure game, that featured a protagonist that many hated, and turned it into a more open game with heart, is mind blowing. 

The game started a little slow for me due to how I was playing it. Once I ditched the exploring aspect and started playing how I like to play the story beats came a lot quicker and really drew me in. The moment I mentioned earlier was the point where the game completely had me locked in. The whole build up to that moment was perfectly executed and it goes down as one of my favourite moments in any game i've played. Looking at the Era spoiler thread now and it seems many feel the same way.

I lost count of the amount of times where the graphics blew me away in this game. Last year we had Horizon to drool over but these guys have raised the bar even further. It's not just the character models and facial expressions that are on another level but also the scenery. The colours used in certain places really bring the game to life. Many times I would just sit and gawk at what I was seeing on screen. There is also a great amount of variety in the scenery. While Naughty Dog many be able to pull off even better visuals with TLOU2, I doubt very much that we are going to see such locations and colours as we've seen in this game.

I've always loved these games and have really liked Kratos, despite him being disliked by many. I always thought there was a sadness to him that rarely got presented well in the older games. I think the PSP entries were able to handle this best, at least until now. The character of Kratos in this game is fantastic. The way he holds back and shows some reserve and tries to be an example to his son is something that is done so very well. Yeah, you get to unleash every now and then but if you look at what he was like in the original trilogy and take a look at what he's like now, the changes to him are like night and day.

I'm often skeptical when a game gets such high praise. A lot of the time I do feel that reviewers can get caught up in the hype and this translates into their reviews. However, I do think that this lives up to the high praise it has received. Not only do I think this is one of the must have games on the platform, i'd go as far as to say that this is easily one of the best games this generation has produced. The production values of the game simply cannot be matched by anything out at the moment. The team over at SSM have made something very special here and I look forward to seeing how the story will play out in future entries. 

 

 

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4 hours ago, Hero-of-Time said:

I lost count of the amount of times where the graphics blew me away in this game.

I've only just reached...

Spoiler

...Alfheim...

and it was not the first time my jaw dropped to the floor. So beautiful.

Come on Santa Monica Studio, release that photo mode.
Or...maybe not. My progress is still very slow, with a photo mode it would come to a halt :laughing:

Fights are getting a little easier. I always die at least once during first encounters - set pieces; not the occasional enemy you encounter in a corridor or something - but once I have a strategy down and win a battle I feel like...a God.

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I was about to lower the difficulty to story mode this morning after a frustrating late night dying at a couple of specific combat encounters, over and over (and over). Ended up telling myself I'd keep it on normal mode till I started getting frustrated again. Then I upgraded a couple of armors, spent 10k's worth of XP (oops) and the combat has finally clicked. I'm dispatching enemies with relative ease now and I'm even genuinely looking forward to enemy fights, always a good sign in a game.

There was a particular side quest that was a ton of fun, actually most of them have been tbf, but the...

Spoiler

one where you had to free the first dragon. Loved that one.

Really enjoying exploring every corner of the world and getting as much loot as possible.

So far this is absolutely justifying all those 10/10's, it's easily the most impressive games I've played from a production values POV if nothing else.

If I had a complaint thus far it would be that the world feels a bit empty, where are all the people?? A town or two wouldn't go amiss, but maybe I've yet to run into one. I get that there are story/lore reasons why, but still.

Currently...

Spoiler

I've just reached the second floor of the mountain. I assume (hope) there's plenty more game to get through.

 

Edited by Ronnie
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Don't worry @Ronnie you've got a long way to go yet.

I spent most of this evening tackling the trophies, which led me to 2 new places. No story spoilers or name of locations, just what you can do when you get there.

Spoiler

The first area has you doing trials, which is a welcome addition and one that GoW fans should be familiar with.

The second area is really interesting. It's a randomly generated maze that is covered in a poison mist. You have a certain amount of time to go in, kill enemies, loot chests and get back out again. If you die or run out of time them you lose all of your loot. It's here where you can get some cracking armour if you're willing to put the time in.

 

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@Hero-of-Time I'm interested in how much there's still for me to do (just story) :D

Spoiler

I brought the Bifröst to the mountain and am now inside.

Tell me! :p

Edited by drahkon

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2 minutes ago, drahkon said:

@Hero-of-Time I'm interested in how much there's still for me to do (just story) :D

  Where I'm at (Reveal hidden contents)

I brought the Bifröst to the mountain and am now inside.

Tell me! :p

Still a long way to go. Basically once you reach that moment I spoke of ( you'll know when you see it ) you'll be about halfway.

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