LogFAQs > #947155876

When I last saved, Kratos was standing just outside of the room where he'd finally get his hands on Pandora's Box. The only remaining obstacle was a surprisingly difficult room full of harpies and archers. Those are two of the weakest enemy types in the game, but their attacks still cause Kratos to go into his flinching animation, which makes him susceptible to the room's real enemies: a conveyor belt floor and grinding wheels on the walls. Getting knocked into these takes out a substantial amount of health, and because there are so many enemies with ranged attacks it's not a hard thing to see happen. I had squeaked through the previous battle with about a quarter of my health, which meant going into that room on low hp because the game remembers how much you had even when you restart from a save point or checkpoint. I couldn't beat the room with so little health and wound up having to backtrack across the entire cliffs of madness section to find a health box I hadn't opened yet.

Once that was out of the way, Kratos finally retrieved the box, but Ares sensed it happening back in Athens and threw a giant pillar all the way to the temple where it fatally impaled what I will generously call our hero. This sent Kratos to the Underworld where he would have to fight his way back to the land of the living.

I doubt it would be controversial to say that the underworld is easily the worst part of the game. It's mostly composed of annoying 3D platforming sections where you're constantly in danger of falling to an instant death. The most obnoxious part is when you have to climb a tall pillar covered in rotating blades, and getting hit at any point will cause Kratos to lose his grip and fall all the way back to the bottom. There were no new enemies in this section, just infernal versions of the ones I'd fought before.

When Kratos claws his way out of Tartarus, he's in Athens, where the mysterious gravedigger he met last time he was there has just finished digging the hole for him to climb through. I stopped shortly after that, but I spent a little bit of time in Athens fighting the old weaker enemies that had been there last time. The intention behind this might be to give the player that feeling of having grown throughout his journey that metroidvanias can kind of emphasize - I was surprised how quickly I took down the enemies with the fully upgraded Blades of Chaos.

I should be in a good position to wrap this game up over the weekend.

---

I'm playing every game from GotD 2020! Games Completed: 10/129
Currently Playing: God of War (2005)