LogFAQs > #947190679

I finished God of War. I was actually saved right outside of the final boss when I picked it back up, unbeknownst to me. Kratos finds the Oracle of Athens bleeding out and she tells him that he's too late because the city has already fallen. It turns out that Ares' central motivation was daddy issues - he's attacking Athena's city because he feels that Zeus prefers her. Kratos manages to snatch away Pandora's Box while he's distracted, and it turns out that it just contains the Giant's Mask from Majora's Mask. He grows to a giant version of himself with identical controls and fights it out with Ares. It sort of functions as a "rival battle" similar to the fights with Jeanne in Bayonetta. It's a much faster battle compared to the Minotaur fight - it doesn't take too long to drain Ares' single health bar but on Spartan his attacks can drain half your health at once. He drops a lot of health and mana, so you can use the Army of Hades (the most powerful spell) against him quite a lot. It's pretty tricky to get a hit in on him normally - he has a lot of poise, he attacks all the time, and some of his moves make him essentially untargetable, for example a large flame burst attack that zones you away from him and another where he flies into the air and throws meteors.

It's a three-phase final boss, though. The second phase isn't against Ares, but illusions created by him. He makes Kratos relive the night when he murdered his own wife and daughter, but in this case he's defending them against hordes of clones of himself. It's the last example of what I consider one of the game's bad design habits, where it will just throw one enemy type at you in large numbers and make them respawn every time you kill one for a really long time. Your family have a separate health bar and you get a game over if they die. You can hug them to transfer your health into them. I found that the best strategy was to stand aside and do the light -> light -> heavy attack combo over and over again, aimed at Kratos' family. It's the fastest way to get out an attack that will knock down all the Kratos clones. I'd use Rage of the Gods or Poseidon's Wrath if I got surrounded. I found it really difficult, though. It was easy to get surrounded and then immediately get surrounded again after I had used my resources to escape, the section was pretty long, and because there were so many enemies around at any given time it could be tough to find a great opportunity to attack. The controls got in my way a little too. Circle is the button for grab, hug, and to use spells, so sometimes I would need to bail myself out with Poseidon's Wrath but Kratos would keep throwing single enemies instead.

For a lot of the later sections of this game I felt that I should have chosen to play on Normal, but it was this section that finally made me give up and take the game's offer to reduce the difficulty to easy. I had failed it a lot of times and was starting to get way too tilted. On easy mode, Ares' attacks that would have taken away half my health previously would barely tickle, and I beat the illusion section on the first try.

The final phase is essentially the same as the first, but Ares takes away all of Kratos' powers and you have to fight him with a giant sword from a statue, which has essentially the same moveset as the Blade of Artemis. There's kind of a tug-of-war mechanic going on with the health, where each time you hit Ares you heal a little and vice versa. It's harder since you don't have the Army of Hades, but since I was on easy mode by that time I could pretty much just mash square and win.

Ares realizes that he's beaten and tries to get Kratos to spare him by saying that he made him kill his family to try and make him into a great warrior, and Kratos quips "you succeeded" before impaling him through the chest. The Gods say that they forgive him for his sins but can't take away his nightmares, and then Kratos throws himself off a cliff in the scene we saw at the very beginning. I guess he didn't take into account how if he died he'd still probably have nightmares down in Tartarus. The gods decide to bring him back and make him into Ares' replacement, though, and the first game ends before they can start to regret it.

Final Thoughts on God of War coming later.

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I'm playing every game from GotD 2020! Games Completed: 10/129
Currently Playing: Sid Meier's Civilization V