LogFAQs > #948905387

Final Analysis: God of War II
What I Thought of God of War II: Uninteresting game
Would I play it again? No
Did it deserve to lose round 1 (In GotD 2010?) Yes

If I were asked whether God of War II was better than the first game, I would say it definitely is, but my favorite part of either game is from 1. I had four major complaints at the end of God of War 1 and the second game addresses almost all of them to at least some extent, even the joking one I made about how the carvings on the temple walls in the first game omitted the miniaturized dicks that were universal to real Greek art. In particular, I was happy to see that there were a lot more boss fights than before. The two games are about equally as long, but while God of War 1 has three boss fights the second one must have over a dozen. With a couple of lackluster exceptions, those boss fights are easily the highlights of the game, pushing the mechanics to their furthest and delivering best on the over-the-top violent spectacle the games are so based around. But none of them quite measure up to that nightmare of a fight against the giant Minotaur from the first game. That one was long, challenging, and well-designed: it had loads of attacks, doesn't rely on gimmicks, and healed you between phases. That's the way to go for bosses in this series.

God of War II is maybe a 10 hour game. It's crazy that it took me about as long to play this as the 50+ hour Fallout: New Vegas. To be fair, part of the reason for that is that Christmas came in the middle of my playthrough and brought me away from my apartment for four days. The other reason, to be blunt, is that God of War II bored me to tears. It was hard to get started on a session because I was more interested in doing just about anything else, even the dishes.

There are a lot of different reasons for that, but the biggest one has to be the story. I guess it's fair to say that I'm more interested in video games as a medium of storytelling than anything else. I honestly think God of War and its sequel have two of the worst stories in professionally-made video games. They're down there with Kingdom Hearts. Reason #1 for that is Kratos, who just sucks. Look, I really like edgy boys. I was naturally drawn to Kaiba and Sasuke when I watched anime as a kid. I still love Shadow the Hedgehog. I watched Sephiroth's smash bros. trailer like ten times. I play as Yone in League of Legends. But even I think Kratos is the most repellent, uninteresting character in the entire world. People give Shadow a lot of well-deserved crap, but at least he has emotional connections to other characters like Rogue and can be persuaded to do good things. That shows a shred of complexity. Sephiroth works as a metaphor for sociopathic narcissism. Kratos is just pointlessly evil. He's a joyless, overaggressive loser who reacts the same way to absolutely everything. The only problem-solving skill he has is to torture other people until they do things for him. I'm not opposed to violence or depravity in stories, but I struggle to see either a point or entertainment value in that of Kratos. Part of it is that there's no use of contrast. When you never see Kratos do anything except violently murder people for poorly-explored reasons, it loses its impact.

Greek mythology might be over-used in video games, but it definitely is a rich source of ideas and themes. God of War completely fails to capitalize on that potential. It reduces everything in the entire Mythos to just another creature to kill. Heroes like Perseus and Theseus bear zero resemblance to their original characters and appear totally outside the context of their actual stories, because all God of War wants them to be is combat encounters who will pick a fight with Kratos. Making entities like the Fates and the Gods mortal drains much of their conceptual force. The point of the Fates is that they represent the inevitability of death. They're personifications of the inherent nature of reality, which is far beyond what humans are capable of opposing. That idea is evocative, but it's just not present in God of War II, where it turns out you can avert your fate if you just punch things hard enough. On top of that, what does the death of something like the Fates even mean? For the Greeks, a life ends when the Fates cut someone's thread. If they're not around to do that, has Kratos destroyed the concept of death itself? Evidently not, because Athena dies right afterward, but my point is that if you are going to kill off a personification of a concept like death, then that creates an opportunity to explore the consequences of such a thing. God of War just kind of doesn't bother with such trivialities. Speaking of death, what's with the underworld in these games? How come Kratos is the only one who can die and then just come out of Tartarus like it's nothing? Where does a God go when he dies? Is it the same underworld, and if so, why doesn't Zeus get Athena out like he did for Kratos? God, what would happen if Hades died? Would he be able to get himself back out using his own power as the Lord of the Dead? I have a feeling God of War III won't explore any of this, and I think that's in part because there just wasn't much thought put into the story.

But honestly, all of that would be fine if I was into the gameplay. If I can play Civ V for hundreds of hours then not every game needs an excellent story. To tell the truth, I was bored of the combat way before the end and I never thought the puzzles were any good. Yes this game has a little more enemy variety and more boss fights, but the enemy pool is still a little small, a lot of the monsters that do exist are the same ones from the first game, and it still uses that lame "trickle in" encounter design where you'll kill an enemy only for it to be replaced by another of the exact same enemy, which again makes things repetitive. The upgrade system in this doesn't make a lot of sense, especially when it comes to the sub-weapons. There's just no incentive to use them when you've had the Blades of Chaos for the whole game and they're the most logical choice to upgrade because the value of such upgrades doesn't rely on a resource like mana. It doesn't make much sense to upgrade the Barbarian Hammer when you can just use the Blades instead and upgrade your spells with the points you save, and there's certainly no reason to go swinging around your level 1 hammer all game.


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I'm playing every game from GotD 2020! Games Completed: 13/129
Currently Playing: Call of Duty: Black Ops