I've been a God of War player since the very first game. It's a great series, not really for a deep character or intense introspection, but for the way the games have felt to play and my joy at seeing things I learned about in Greek/Roman* mythology coming up in a bloody violent beat 'em up. They've been an absolute blast, even the ported PSP games were a complete riot to go through. I just recently got the latest attempt, God of War: Ascension and I have to say... majorly disappointed.

Let's start with the least of it's problems: The story. From the very beginning of the game, I had no fucking clue what the Hades was going on. I'm as big a fan of stories told out of sequence as the next Tarantino fan, but seriously, what is going on here? It seems Kratos has been captured by... someone... who he kills with no explanation of who she was... two weeks after whatever got him captured... that I haven't been let in on yet. After some light detective work, you find out, if you recall your GoW history, that this game has to take place before the first God of War, because you're still in service to Ares, apparently. It never comes out and SAYS that, but just implies it lightly. Oh look, Kratos' reverse Batman origin story is apparently STILL pissing him off. Neat.

Aside from the incomprehensible story, they're really plumbing the depths of Greek mythology on this one. The Hecatonchires? Also, is that the prison he's been captured in or the thing I killed (after many, many failed attempts, see last paragraph, below) with the bug legs coming out of it's mouth and hands? I'm glad the Oracle at Delphi is apparently going to make an appearance later, but we already had the Oracle of Athens in the first game. How many Oracles does one civilization really need? Also, flying snakes? Who built these? And why such an insanely complicated activation system for... whatever I activated when I managed to turn on all 3 giant flying snakes?!

Aside from all the story, narrative and mythological problems in here, the major problem is the actual gameplay. When it came out, God of War on the PS2 was a revelation to the genre. It became the new gold standard for action beat 'em ups. The controls were so tight and made you feel so powerful, you understood why the gods would fear a mere mortal like Kratos. Now, I've played all of them and beaten them on at least hard, if not higher difficulties. Hard always felt about right to me as being just challenging enough without being monstrously cheap. Like Super Meat Boy or Trials, you knew right away that the reason the "YOU ARE DEAD" screen came up was your fault for not controlling the crowd or letting that Satyr get it's wind up in, etc. It wasn't easy, but at least it was fair.

Ascension kind of throws all that out the window. It's cheap. It's frustrating. It's mean. It's not well designed. The camera occasionally pulls so far out that I can't tell which lighted dot is Kratos and which ones are the enemies with glowy swords (Which led to my repeated death at the mouth of the thing with bug feet coming out of it's lips). The encounters take far too long to figure out and basic foot soldiers have far too much power. Kratos can't break out of certain animations by blocking or rolling anymore. When you do block, it seems to accomplish very little in the "stop enemies from damaging you" field. The parry system is absolutely fucked to the point of being useless. The battle where you get the ice power up had me stalled for at least 30 minutes, dying and retrying and dying again. I've made it to the top of the tower where you fight a dragon-dog-thing before entering the Oracle at Delphi and... I think I might be done. I have almost no interest in continuing a game like this. Is it me? Or did something utterly terrible happen to Sony Santa Monica?

*They're interchangeable, after all... and Hercules is a Roman name. He was Heracles (Hera's glory) in Greek mythology.

2 years and 7 months later, I played this because I had it "free" from PS Plus and yeah, it's really not that great. Just finished it on normal and have no desire to come back to this one, ever. And I finished the first one on the hardest difficulty as well.

I loved some of the set pieces, but the combat is really weak, the story is nonsense and the puzzles man, what the hell were those about? I finished some of them not really knowing what was the point at all, not intuitive, just terrible.

2 stars

@quipido: I had almost forgotten about this post... and Ascension. Totally agree with your summation. Glad you finished it though, I never did get around to powering through it. Free is about the right price for this one... maybe 10 bucks on sale at the most.

@phoenix654: No its a waste of your time.

This game got so-so reception across the board, as deserved. Not unusual to be disappointed.

Gears of War also got a disappointing prequel that year. It's weird.

I thought Ascension was OK, if still the worst of the main four releases. I remember really enjoying the combat actually, that it felt powerful and hit really hard. And I particularly thought it was clever to remove side-weapons entirely in favour of elemental buffs, given how the side-weapons were never as fun nor effective as the chains anyway. The camera was poorly placed in spots, however, making it hard to distinguish Kratos from the things that are trying to kill you. And yes, the story barely justifies its existence, and while removing Kratos's comically undying rage in favour of trying to make him seem more likeable is an interesting endeavour, they didn't replace it with anything beyond stone faced silence. They literally removed his single defining trait with nothing to take its place therefore making him resemble even less of a character than he is usually is.

Despite all that, it without a doubt has the best ending set piece boss of the entire franchise. Legitimately freaky and chilling.

In the same month even. Though Judgment is a far better game than Ascension could ever hope to be.

Maybe it was the hard slam from the high points of the series to its low point that took me so off guard. I think I had just replayed the remaster of GoW 2 before tackling Ascension, so kind of a hard swing. Kind of a bummer I never got to see the end boss, but not sure it's worth the slog to get back to that point. Might just drop it onto normal some slow weekend and give it another go.

I really loved Ascension. I think it might have my favorite gameplay of the series so far. The game is absolutely tough and like you I played it on hard to start with because yo the gameplay in these games has alway been pretty much the same. It felt like a game made for people who had played the five other games that came before it and wanted something tougher.

Edit: shit didn't realize this was two years old.

Having just replayed and completed this game, I really agree on the story being extremely hard to follow. It was all over the place and really didn't explain itself at all.

That said, some of the cinematic's during the boss fights were absolutely amazing and the presentation was great.

I've always enjoyed the God of War games, and I had fun even on the replay of this one, but overall they would really need to overhaul alot of the aspects of the franchise if (as recent rumours have suggested) there might be a new game on the horizon.