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Finished God of War 2.
I liked the intro part, the first couple of locations (the Steeds of Time), the lore about the titans, and the battle with the first two Sisters of Fate. Some puzzles were pretty good too, I guess. But as the time it took me to beat it (2 months) suggests, all in all, I didn't enjoy this game very much. In the middle parts, starting with the swamp area, I would play it for an hour and leave it for a week or two. I was just not having fun.
And it's not 100% the game's fault, definitely. I could have enjoyed it more if I returned to it a couple years later after beating GoW1, have a break between them. With that said, I'll point out things I can confidently say my enjoyment was hindered by.
- I wasn't invested in this story. I shared my thoughts on the premise earlier: it didn't make a lot of sense to me - Kratos essentially gets killed for doing his job a little too well. The revenge plot against Zeus didn't move me forward as much as revenge against Ares in the first game did. Whereas the first game was building up the rage, the sequel didn't motivate me at all. The characters you meet didn't help either:
Spoilerthe lead-ups to fights with Perceus and Icarus in particular are some of the stupidest cutscenes I've ever seen. You meet them -> they act like brainless morons -> the fight starts. Athena would've been an interesting boss, she's one of the only more or less prominent characters that has a complicated relationship with Kratos. Instead, she dies in a cutscene. Very quickly and suddenly.
- I feel like a lot of gameplay situations were designed to be annoying instead of fun. What do I mean by that? Here's an example. You're on a platform that you have to manually move down by grabbing a chain and mashing . But wait, it's full of enemies that interrupt you every few seconds, so you have to fight them. But wait, the spiky ceiling is descending too, so be fast or get turned into a very flat piece of swiss cheese. But wait, the enemies also regenerate, so you have to use the finisher. My question is: at what point am I supposed to have fun? The game is full of similar scenarios. GoW1 did some of that too: "kill the enemies, but do it over here, otherwise they will respawn". GoW2 went overboard with stuff like this.
- I didn't find much use for longer combos. Bigger enemies interrupt your attacks all the time. And I don't think you can cancel many of these moves (like +). I had to rely on the old "hit, hit, dodge" or "hit, hit, parry" and magic often. The worst part is Medusas. If you're in the middle of a combo animation, you can be turned into stone by them very quickly (some medusas can freeze you instantly as well) while another enemy, as if planned, attacks 0.2 seconds later resulting in an insta-kill. Start the 10-minute fight over. Situations like this made me disregard weapons even more.
I think the intro fight against the Colossus was the highpoint of the game for me, unfortunately.
I don't really want to get the platinum. Although I'm interested in checking out the challenges. After that I'll either start another retro game or Sly 1 (which probably also qualifies as retoro at this point).