After ripping Ni No Kuni a new one (unofficial score is 3/10), I decided to move on to the next game to rip on, and that game was suppoed to be Batman: Arkham Origins. However, that game turned it up to 11 and kicked major balls around the second half of the game. Then, God of War Ascension came along.
Before I begin, let me give a brief opinion on the previous GoW games. God of War 1, 2 and Ghost of Sparta are 9.0 games for me, God of War 3 is a 7.0, and Chain of Olympus is a 5.0. The first game probably has the best story and possibly the only good representation of Kratos; the second has the best gameplay while Ghost of Sparta combines the best from both those game, and the fact that it was a portable game makes it even more impressive. God of War 3 had a solid opening, but goes downhill after the Poseidon fight and has the worst Kratos of them all. I wanted him to die a slow, painful death in this game. The gameplay was good, but narrative suffered a lot. Chain of Olympus is forgettable; incredibly short campaign, low replay vaue, unmemorable story, but the graphics and gameplay were good at least. The level designs or boss battles didn't live up to its console counterparts unlike Ghost of Sparta.
With that out of the way, let's begin. Like the Ni No Kuni review, I'll bold the main points for the lazy.
Good:
Presentation - I'm talking about the graphics and performance. The God of War games are some of the best looking games on their respective system, and Ascension is no exception. It's both technically and visually impressive; the fact that it's able to run smoothly and beautifully with all the things going on in the background is amazing.
Solid Opening - Like God of War 3, Ascension starts off at 11 which is something Ni No Kuni should have done. Ha, 13 hours into that game, and it still could't grasp me. The only thing I enjoyed from playing that POS was that five minute puzzle. Man, what a horrible JRPG. Oh, I'm getting out of subject here. Anyways, I don't want to give out too much on what happens at the beginning for those who haven't played it yet, but this is how it should be done. A great boss battle with a lot of nice set-pieces. However, just like God of War 3, the game couldn't keep the momentum going and goes downhill after this.
New gadgets - One thing God of War really needs is change; the series has seen five titles and two HD releases prior to this, so after seeing so many God of War games in a short amount of time, its gameplay quickly became stagnant and is somewhat overstaying its welcome. Ascension, however, tries to make a few small changes in the gameplay department by adding secondary weapons and some new gadgets.
Secondary weapons can be found throughout the game and discarded at anytime. These include a sword, sling, club, spear and shield. The majority of them were useless (except for the spear which is kind of needed for one boss battle), but they did add some variety to the combat. My favorite secondary weapon was the club and swinging it makes the enemies fly around all over the room. Alongside the secondary weapons, the amulets also play a role on the combat. You can freeze or duplicate yourself, and I found this incredibly helpful during the Trial of Archimedes section. While the core combat still remain relatively the same, adding these weapons was a step in the right direction as it added variety and helped keep the combat a little fresh.
Elemental fighting style - In the previous God of War games, you had different elemental magic attacks. However, in Ascension, that magic is now combined with your blade of chaos: fire, ice, thunder and dark. A combo usually ends with an elemental attack which sort of gives you four different fighting styles. The dark elemental ends with a long arm from underground slamming on the ground which is good for enemies far away from you while thunder can electrify multiple enemies. This kind of encourages you between switching magic. It's small stuff like this that keeps God of War's combat a little fresh.
Locked magic - Unlike the previous games, magic isn't given automatically after receiving the God's power. You need to level up that element first before finally unlocking the magic attack. This encourages you to smartly conserve and distribute your red orbs appropriately. Also, it makes the game a little more challenging as you can't really rely on your magic attacks early on in the game.
Bad:
Story - Story is the last thing I look for in a hack-n-slash game; actually I don't really care about it that much. But during the inevitable God of War 3 vs Bayonetta, God of War fans were claiming 3 to be superior that Bayonetta solely because of the story. It wasn't until this time that I started putting more focus of God of War's story and little did they know that God of War 3 contained one of the worst stories in the series, and the main character ended up being a complete douche. **SPOILERS**If Kratos wasn't such a pussy and accepted death from the start, his family would've still been alive and none of this would have happened to him.**SPOILERS**
Ascension's story has three major problems: (1) Where's the story? (2) Too many time-shifts and (3) Recycled story.
1) After the first three hours of the game, I stopped and questioned myself, "Why am I doing this? Why am I riding a snake?" It was just randomly going from one place to another with no reason or motivation whatsoever. There was no clear focus on my objectives. 2) After a few more hours, I realized I was playing in the past. After progressing in the present, the story takes me to the past again. Then present then past and finally present. This makes the story a little confusing and overall a mess. 3) It's a recycled theme from the previous games: Kratos wants his memory erased from the events when he was under the God's control. After so many God of War games using this storyline, it becomes boring and predictable. They need to work on a new storyline.
Kratos lacks personality - They removed his terrible God of War 3's personality which is great; however, they forgot to put in something in that shell. Kratos in this game can best be described as Dante from Devil May Cry 2. Sure he gets angry a few times, but overall, you don't get a clear sense of his character.
Boss battles - Aside from the opening, Castor and closing boss battle, the boss battles didn't do a good job differentiating itself from ordinary battles. They felt like normal battles for me. Also, even the good boss battles lacked the suspense or intensity the previous games had. Maybe that's because of the checkpoints Ascension has. Yes, there are checkpoints during boss battles, so this makes getting through the game and finishing boss battles much easier. I kept hack and slashing away in the last boss fight without any worries because my progress would be saved.
Gameplay needs more changes - Yes it did add some new tricks up its sleeves, but the core gameplay needs some tweaking. After five titles to its resume, the God of War combat is showing its wear. Box, box, triangle is still your best friend. Perhaps adding a second, completely different fighting style could do the trick.
God of Uncharted - At times, I had no idea if I was playing God of War or Uncharted. There's too many platforming/climbing sections, most of which are boring to do. Fortunately, these sections are brief, but are scattered throughout the game. Speaking of Uncharted, the puzzles are reminiscent of Uncharted as they are easy to solve. It feels like a waste of time having to do a puzzle which requires no effort whatsoever.
Too many big updates - When I first popped the disc into the PS3, I was prompted with 9 updates, and most of them were over half a GB. Why so many big updates? It took me over an hour or so downloading and installing these updates. I heard they patched the Trial of Archimedes section (which I'm glad they did since I started on hard) which is why I wanted to download the updates.
Nothing really memorable - There really isn't much that makes an impact in this game. The sisters pail in comparison to Zeus, Ares, Poseidon and all the other big named Gods, Kratos is a complete shell, and the level designs & set-pieces aren't that great compared to the other God of War console games. Hell, even that PSP game, Ghost of Sparta, had more memorable events than this game. The quality is not on-par with what we're usually used to.
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Despite a promising opening, Ascension couldn't keep the momentum going. The gameplay is good and does an acceptable job keeping its stagant combat fresh by adding new weapons & tweaks. However, a weak narrative, boring characters and the fact that its set-pieces & level designs don't match the quality of the previous games makes this the worst console entry of the series.
Score: 6.0/10
Tune in next month for the next review. This time, I'll let you choose the game; I have a bunch of Square-Enix games unfinished, and to celebrate the FFX/X-2 HD release, I'm going to review a SE game.
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And speaking of 6s, today marks my 6th year anniversary with VGC! Here's a kawaii gif for the occassion.
