What are you talking about? There’s no multiplayer in GoW2.
Ah, that’s why there’s no rush. It made sense in my head.
Should I get the original GoW first? Or does this one stand okay alone?
I say play the first God of War, uh, well first. Not because the sequel is so different or anything, but because it’s so good you don’t want to miss out on any of it. Not sure if you could really go back to the first after playing the new one.
Play the original.
Also because Kratos’ situation in GoW2 is a direct result of the events of GoW1. It’s a straight up sequel and playing the first helps a lot in terms of knowing why Kratos is such an angry man. Also, yeah, it’s a great game. I’m playing through the first currently before jumping into the new one, and it really hasn’t aged a day.
GoW was an amazing game, but I do have one pet peeve. Did anyone else find the last boss fight to be ridiculously difficult relative to all the other bosses in the game? That’s the only place I had to actually turn down the skill level out of sheer frustration. I hate cheesing my way through the ending after getting that far… so that stung.
Still, GoW was awesome and I highly recommend it. Looking forward to picking up the sequel soon!
You mean the part where they took everything you’d earned thus far away from you and forced you to fight the most difficult enemy using a control and combat scheme completely unprecedented in the rest of the game?
Yeah, I yelled a bit. GoW1 does actually end on a pretty sour note because of that fight.
Well, not completely unprecedented. You did get a sword in the early mid-game, which controlled just like the sword at the end…but yeah, nobody actually used the thing. I know I didn’t.
I didn’t turn down the skill level, mostly because I had no idea you could. I almost never finished it, instead I kept trying till I was ready to punch a hole in the TV, somehow I actually beat it. Going to be very pissed if they pull the same crap again.
GoW1 had issues with it’s difficulty curve and segments which were just boring. I probably would have enjoyed the game more if there weren’t any rotating bladed pillars to climb and the wall climbing sequences offered more gameplay. Also more bosses like the hydra, well more bosses period!
How did you turn down the difficulty?
But yea, the endbosses were a spike in difficulty, but mostly because the other two bosses were extremely easy with simple patterns. On the hardest difficulty, you pretty much -have- to rely on spamming Rage of the Gods and magic for the first two battles(the “Kratos” fight has almost more to do with luck as it does skill). The final battle is a bit more reflexive, but also draws from luck given how you react to what the AI chooses to do, especially when some of them are instant kills. They are quite different from the pattern-ey ‘stick and move’ approach of the other bosses.
And yea, the first game still holds up remarkably well. Some of the subtle visual effects and sheer scope of the environments are just as remarkable to gawk at two years later.
An option pops up to turn down the difficulty if you die X number of times in a row, I recall. Which was mostly irritating, because it was something I never saw aside from some of the instadeath jumping-type puzzles, which the difficulty setting is irrelevant for. Although I never did see the final boss battle–I got distracted by shiny things shortly after getting out of the Pandora’s Temple sequence, then ended up losing my memory card with the save.
But this release is a good reason to start from scratch prior to gameflying #2.
It’s also kind of a shame, but the bonus epilogue videos you are rewarded for beating God mode in GoW1 are extremely cool little nuggets of backstory that most fans will miss out on. Maybe they are up on youtube, and I’m sure touched upon in the sequel, but any fan deserves to check them out somehow.
There were a few enemies that were FAR easier to take down with the big-ass sword that wasn’t on chains. The end boss wasn’t one of them. :P
The final boss fight of Gow1 on god mode was horrible, I spend 2 days just trying to do the kratos fight. Some parts of Gow were always easy, and some were always hard . The bonus videos were a nice touch, for gow2 are there any level commentary like they did with the hydra demo?
I’m surprised you guys would choose the last battle to bitch about. What about Hades, which felt a whole lot like hell to me, or the damn spinning pole climb, which probably took about 10% of my total playtime to complete.
I think everyone agrees that was just stupid design, not really a hard part.
Honestily I found most of Hades to be easy, even the climbing spike wall section. It may have stopped me a few times, but it was those anubi (dog things with staves) that got on my nerves the most.
The other part of gow that I had trouble with was the room before you find pandora’s box. The one with the archers on the belts that moved you into steam I think, that was near instant death on god mode.
Yea, the dog warriors were very irritating on God mode. Taking them on solo wasn’t bad(grab and spam triangle slams), but in groups they were crazy hard.
That final conveyer belt room did take me several tries as well. The flood of harpies never seemed to let up. Not too bad if the harpies refuse to use their firebomb strike…which is just devastating to your health.
The rotating blade wall climb pissed me off, but there is a definite pattern to discern when climbing each section. Not bad at all once you figure them out. Still, there is nothing like getting to the top and then having a blade hitbox clip Kratos so he rebounds all the way back down with a sliver of health. :sigh:
Not sure if I found the Kratos clones more annoying than the final Ares fight, both were pretty lame and cheap on God mode. Even better, the game froze after I finally beat it and had to reset the console and do all three endboss fights again. That was awesome!