Playing GoW for the first time. It started out great, but I'm not quite feeling the combo system. Feels like I'm always doing low damage no matter what. Juggling feels a bit weird. Only Medusa gaze feels strong.
Maybe I'm the retard because I dumped all red orbs into leveling up the main weapon (to lvl 3). I thought I'd get something really strong, but so far I got nothing special. R1 (tackle) seems to do jack shit, same for the air version which is just shit. L1+Square/Cross is alright but really more flashy than anything. Anything starting with Triangle attack is pretty slow and lacks range/radius.
Also, it's pretty damn repetitive.

>>11834450 (OP)
It is repetitive. And yes you do jack shit for damage because they didn't want the game to be 5 hours long. There is a subset of people who will tell you that you need to increase the difficulty. Don't listen to those people.
After 30 years of playing games, this game God of War is the only game that I've ever beaten and then immediately restarted and beat it again.
But my reason for doing that is cause the game was a graphical rollercoaster, the greek shit was cool, and the story was also pretty kino. It was never the gameplay. The gameplay was okay, but not some amazing thing.

You were probably duped into thinking otherwise from seeing this game on some top 10 list. But no this is a "You had to be there" kinda game. It's better than most games that fall under that category to be fair. But this game came out during the 3d hacknslash craze, it was trying to be a less technical Devil May Cry for people who were older and not good enough to enjoy Devil May Cry. The ancient greece setting and the sexuality and violence also added to that, since it's much less gay than DMC is

>>11834450 (OP)
The trick is whiffing two lights and then landing a heavy.
But yeah the game is repetitive and shallow. It's a surface deep action game that relies on set-pieces.

Imagine playing a masterpiece like this 20 years after the release
Just stick to whatever crap you are used to

>>11834450 (OP)
>Anything starting with Triangle attack is pretty slow and lacks range/radius

Triangle is the heavier attack so it's slower but you need to work it in there for higher damage. Doing long combos with square looks cool but you should always be working towards triangle finishers. Spamming a bunch of square is like throwing nothing but jabs. Also, grab attacks do excellent damage.

And their damage will increase with upgrades so make blade upgrades your highest priority so their damage increases as you go along. Once you've leveled them up a few times it'll take a while to accrue the orbs necessary for the higher upgrade tiers so then it might be time to think about taking some of the cheaper upgrades for magic or such. But your first 2 upgrades at the very least should be to the blades

The best part of the game was killing enemies with medusa gaze or juggling them with an air combo followed by a grab, you can juggle medusas and minotairs like that and its fun.
The most annoying part of the game was that one onsalught of enemies mid-Pandora's Temple (the one where you are in a conveyor belt), the spinning thinh with spikes you have to climb in the underworld and that one fucking section with the harpies near and the archers the end.
Fantastic game otherwise.

Army of Hades is the best magic in the game but I don't believe you've received it yet. Don't sleep on Poseidon's Rage either. Like others said, you have to land with triangle for good damage. L1 + O is the spinning attack out of blocking IIRC? That is a pretty situational move that doesn't deal much damage and you can't cancel it so usually it just gets you fucked up. Also don't bother wasting orbs upgrading Zeus' Fury

But yeah, I absolutely love the original God of War. Easily the best atmosphere of the series with a perfectly self-contained story. (Spoilers) Pandora's Temple as a whole is one of the great video game levels IMO. Found out recently that in the PAL version, the soldier you burn to death as a sacrifice is replaced by some generic monster. Such a cool/brutal scene. Also really enjoy the bits of lore you pick on its architect Pathos Verdes III and how he lost his mind in the process. As an aside, I always found that cover art super appealing and the main theme is hype af:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1vYktiU-zdI

>>11834450 (OP)
Fun fact: this game uses a combat system similar to DMC1-3 wherein you can animation cancel the attacks by wiggling the analog stick at the right moment following an attack animation.
It basically breaks the game, you do enough damage quickly enough to trivialize most of the game. The most efficient combo I've found is light attack > heavy attack > animation cancel > reset combo
this single two hit combo will knock down most enemies and 2-shot most trash in the game.

>>11834819
Yeah, I mean that only starting with Triangle sucks, I always end combos with it because it's the only way to do decent damage. And yeah, grabs are good, except from the 2nd level onward no enemy lets you grab them "for free". You have to either lower their health or knock them down at first (don't know which it is). At this rate, finishing them with combos is just more convenient, except for when you want green orbs from minotaurs.

>>11834450 (OP)
it's one of the most overrated franchises
having said that, the PSP games are better imo

>>11834450 (OP)
I'm playing it right now as well. The graphics look quite good still, especially the water. You really need to grab every red orb that is in chests or destroyable items. The game isn't that hard if you know the moves of the enemies and block constantly.

Poseidon's Rage is a really great attack, especially if you have maxed it, it destroys every enemy easily.
You can also throw enemies in the air by holding △ and then pulling them with O and slamming them on the floor repeatedly.

The games are fun, although a bit repetitive. I like the Greek mythology and how it pushed the graphical capabilities of the PS2.

>>11834450 (OP)
Funny how people never bitch about how massively spongy DMC's enemies and bosses are. Or how utterly asinine and time-wasting the "gameplay" between combat encounters.

Nope, it's always bitching about God of War for some reason. Fuck off.

>>11835549
Keep in mind that enemies being kind of tanky actually provides you with a means to an end because you get red orb bonuses with each combo. It doesn't seem like much but if you get a 10 hit combo and a few bonus orbs every time you attack something it's like compounding interest and it just adds up in the background. If you get good at air juggling and can can do the L1 + square spin in midair (which is the only time it's really useful) you can rack up like a 30-50 hit combo pretty quickly. You want to try and get to 100 every time if you can, the returns start to diminish form there but if you're constantly getting long combos you'll be able to upgrade sooner and deal more damage.

>>11834450 (OP)
It sounds like you're trying to force yourself to use all your moves equally, which isn't how you're meant to play the game. You will deal little damage if you play excessively passively and only fire off light attacks, or constant whiff launchers or don't follow them up well, but the game is designed around dealing damage to several opponents at once, and their high aggression compared to similar games like DMC. Some tips
>light attack before heavy makes it come out faster
>two lights removes the wind-up for your triangle launcher
>aerial specials have zero startup lag and are shorter than grounded, and can be activated by just jumping and doing them instead of purely off launchers
>STTS is the single best move in the game and great for getting breathing room
>you have iframes on your roll that come out instantly and last a little less than half its length
>enemies can be "carried" in their inactionable stun state by your square special if you launch them then return to the ground and use it so it hits them while they're still suffering stun
>most enemies have an uninteruptible get up animation
>attacking most enemies while they approach, especially later in the game, may have them block or dodge your hits
>"buffering" a launcher by inputting the combo so you hit an enemy with the finisher is a good fight starter, and your TTT combo has a massive disjoint
>blade of Artemis has many unlisted true combos and a brutal stunlock on satyr enemies
>inputting an attack at the end of your roll cancels the endlag and lets you act off it sooner
>ringing out enemies is possible but nets no experience
>the final upgrade move of gorgon's gaze grants 0 exp off enemies slain after petrification
>your magic is a hard limited resource and shouldn't be spammed at the first sign of trouble
>your two AoE and ranged option are better than gorgon's gaze and have higher and more fun skill ceilings

>>11836648
>enemies can be grabbed when launched and you're also in the air for big damage at the cost of ending their stun and putting them in an uninterruptible getup animation
>spamming your block counter is an option but lowers your overall damage because it launches enemies all over the place for a single hit instead of letting you do group damage that would be possible by, for example, rolling away and doing a TTT into special
>grab throws do a lot of damage and create a lot of space
>the gains off your combo meter are easily the difference between near-max and max level weapons over the course of the game, and hit-and-run or spammy strategies tend to not fill the meter up
>standard attacks in the air are great for knocking harpies down so you can grab kill them
>hard mode is the best way to experience this game, and it has the most balanced god mode in the series save the obnoxious clone segment

>>11834450 (OP)
Square square triangle

>>11836671
I mashed triangle with Ifrit for most of the back half encounters in my first playthrough of DMC and won with a good combo meter for my efforts

>>11836648
>STTS
You mean "square triangle triangle square"? Do you have to unlock it? Not sure I've seen it in the move list
>blade of Artemis
It's that 2nd weapon you acquire, right? Haven't gotten it yet. I checked some guide on GameFAQs, and it said that the weapon is trash except for niche uses, but I doubt it. Is it worth using?
Also in general I'm kind of confused, is launching that useful anyway? Like you said, the game is about hitting many enemies at once, but launching is typically about fighting a single enemy. Like, you can rake up some damage with L1+Cross, but cheesing everyone with this is so slow. Just pressing Square/Triangle in the air seems to be weak.

>>11835275
Do you just wiggle the left stick left-right or what?

>>11836701
It's not a listed combo and instead an intuitive thing you can do. Throwing out a light attack cuts the initial heavy attack wind-up in about half, as I said
>>11836701
>is launching that useful anyway? Like you said, the game is about hitting many enemies at once, but launching is typically about fighting a single enemy. Like, you can rake up some damage with L1+Cross, but cheesing everyone with this is so slow. Just pressing Square/Triangle in the air seems to be weak
It's the most important skill in the game. Launching hard targets like minotaurs melts them and it's possible to get groups of smaller enemies into the air with the same move. There's no cheese to appropriately using your moves. High health values is just how this game is. Raw damage numbers are only a small part of the game. Less damaging hits that put enemies in a stun state are what allow you to throw out the hard ones without getting hit in startup

>>11836743
Forgot to mention, being high in the air is also a position of relative safety. The ability to L1+square a heavy target 3 times in a row from a safe vantage then grab it for heavy damage and iframes on your landing is immense. You can also crowd surf large groups by jumping on top of their collision and using your vertically oriented L1+triangle

>>11836752
Ok, I'll try that. Is there any way to launch them again mid air? Also, I think using Triangle in air can launch grounded enemies, is this any good?

>>11836769
Depends. Both your heavy finishers will launch enemies vertically depending on context, and your light finisher sends then flying horizontally. Your hold triangle option is the most consistent and lets you immediately chase, and light enemies will be knocked into the air or to the ground if they're fliyng by both your aerial and grounded heavy starter, which is why jumping and using a basic heavy attack is so good for harpies. You can't infinitely reset a single launch, as enemies will either bounce lower and lower or not at all and enter that scripted get up animation you can't do anything about in the case of minotaurs. It's not one or the other. Fighting both on the ground and in the air are equally important and you have to figure out what each scenario calls for. You can also neutral grab certain enemies outside the fodder undead legionnaries for an instant launch or after completing a button mash for satyrs
tldr sometimes you wanna launch for safe damage, sometimes you wanna stay on the ground and use blocks/dodges

>>11834450 (OP)
>Maybe I'm the retard because I dumped all red orbs into leveling up the main weapon (to lvl 3).
nah the main swords are the most fun i only play with those usually

>>11836703
Essentially yea, you can always look up old tech vids about either GOW or DMC attack cancelling should bring up something. The tech is literally the same in both games, just flick your left stick input to interrupt the attack animation with a movement animation to reset your combos, since a light>heavy 2 hit combo is fast and easy to spam but does huge knockdown and damage for how short it is it pretty much breaks the game for the most part.

>>11835876
DMC1 didn't really have any issues with enemies being spongy. You can kill even bosses surprisingly fast if you know what you're doing. DT and the special moves let you wipe things pretty quickly. After that it did get spongy though and complaints about that are more prevalent with 2 and 3.

I only really played GoW1 but it felt like your damage was low even if you knew what you were doing. The game overall felt a bit slower than it should've been despite everything being designed and created pretty competently. I prefer DMC1 and I don't hate GoW1 but I'd probably enjoy it a lot more if it was just faster paced and less with the slow cinematic stuff.

>>11834450 (OP)
the best one is the 4rth one, the sequel that reboots the mechanics. The 5th one, even if it has its great moments is the worst of them all, is a direct continuation of it but drags and the enemies are more fantasy land instead of demons and possessed beings and Gods than the previous ones.

>>11838179
I at least understand DMC a bit more because clearly the whole game is about its combo system. You need a punching bag to show it off.

>>11838198
BY 4th do you mean Ascension?

>Feels like I'm always doing low damage no matter what.
God of War was one of the titles that popularized ultra-spongey garbage enemies that we see so much of today. Such a horrible game.

>>11838240
No, that was DMC you fucking weeaboo retard

>>11838243
>>11835876
>b-but DMC!
Whataboutism
No one brought up DMC except for you btw

>>11838243
How am I a weeaboo? I hate DMC. My god you zoomers are fucking insane lmao. But yes, you are correct, DMC came before GoW and was equally horrible.

>>11838198
How is God of War III any of those things?
>>11838240
This mindset is highly coordinated with people who don't know how to space or stun and constantly have to stop moves after only a few light hits to roll. Something I constantly do during the beginning of a run is STST, which is a higher damaging but slower alternative to SST with two launcher hits, short hop triangle for the faster animation, and the instant I unlock a special, especially in II, I'm making good use of its aerial on bigger enemies. Rolling into the attacks of various cyclops and minotaur enemies at the last moment and then canceling the roll with a light attack lets you use the iframes to position yourself right next to them during their recovery so you can jump and use a higher-damaging aerial special, and starting this move by going for a buffered SST for damage and stun lays on even more damage. You're just not experimenting with your kit

>>11838252
>coordinated
CORRELATED FUCKING PHONE PIECE OF SHIT I HATE AUTOCORRECT

>>11838252
>words
Nah, enemies are spongey as fuck and the game is built around spongeshit. It's like if every enemy in DOOM had the health of a baron.

>>11838258
You have a litany of multi- and hard-hitting attacks that are all at least a little AoE focused, on top of multiple AoE magic attacks. Use them

>>11838247
the first replay mentions dmc

>>11838247
the first reply mentions dmc

>>11834784
>it was trying to be a less technical Devil May Cry for people who were older and not good enough to enjoy Devil May Cry. The ancient greece setting and the sexuality and violence also added to that, since it's much less gay than DMC is

>>11838263
>still takes more than 20 seconds to kill an enemy

>>11838313
Yes? What's the problem? The fact that fights last so long is part of the appeal

>>11834784
DMC is much easier considering the game has jarpig grinding crap and unlimited items. Obviously DMD S-ranks are tough, but just clearing the game, even on DMD, isn't hard since the game gives you so mant resources.

God of War NUR is way harder

>>11838330
>The fact that fights last so long is part of the appeal
obviously not to everyone. when getting better at a game doesn't really let you kill things much faster it feels unsatisfying to some.

>>11838362
Good for you. Now go play a different game

>>11838386
ok what should i play?

>>11838497
Something you personally like

>>11838179
Now try playing on DMD.

Bosses deal 5x as much damage and have 3x as much health.

NA version you also deal 20% less damage, which I assume is multiplicative, so NA DMD has bosses with 4x as much HP as JP Normal, and you almost get one-shot due to the massive damage increase from the bosses

>>11838787
God of War 2's Titan mode is like this as well. It's extremely hard. I don't know the exact numbers, but I think you deal 25% less damage, everything has more health, and you can get 0-death'd or instakilled below ~80% by a good number of attacks

>>11838803
Difference in Titan Difficulty Compared to Other Modes:
Kratos' Power: 75%
Kratos' Damage Intake: 500%
Health Orbs Worth: 25%
Magic Orbs Worth: 25%
Experience Orbs Worth: 75%
Titan Orbs Worth: 25%
Enemy Pressure: Merciless
Enemy Recovery: Immediate

This is all I could find. It is not like DMC where it beefs up the enemies to absurd amounts on higher difficulties, with enemies only having 33% more HP, compared to 3x or 4x of DMC plus the massive sponginess of DT

DMC truly is a piece of shit series and it only becomes more miserable on higher difficulties as enemies become even bigger sponges

I like both GOW and DMC

>>11838787
>Now try playing on DMD.
I played it on DMD, by that point you should have fully upgraded DT and all the special moves unlocked so it still lets you kill things pretty fast. Nelo 3 and the Mundus fights are the only ones that actually feel like they take a bit longer on DMD to me.

>which I assume is multiplicative
It's not, and overall it doesn't make a huge difference. I only really notice it with puppets that can take an extra hit sometimes or Shadows not going down with critical hits as easily. I do think the JP version is balanced better but it's not enough to make them seem spongy because their health is low to start with.

3 had a bigger problem with that at least in the original release because enemies already had more health than in 1 plus your damage was lowered too just like with 1 in NA. I remember playing the original release of 3 and being annoyed with how long the Sloths took to kill.

>>11838252
third is a more polished version than 1 and 2, more action, a more streamelined straight game. 4rth enters the now classic playstation moviegame genre that anyone expects from a Sony game, a great one at that.

Dmc3 sucks, poor level design.
Dmc1 and gow1 better

>>11840115
DMC1 has absolutely godawful level design lmao

>>11838339
>God of War NUR is way harder

What about compared to Kirby with no copy moves and you reset when you get hit and play on a dance pad?