Video Game Review #114: God of War

God of War

PlayStation 2

Back in 2005 I was dating a girl named Jessica. It was a good match at the time because we both shared a strong love for video games. As a result we always knew exactly what to get each other for birthday or Christmas gifts. That year I asked for God of War for Christmas. The game had been released way earlier in the year, but I had still yet to play it. All of the reviews said that it was a fantastic game. I even remember seeing a few perfect reviews out there. I figured hey why not give it a shot?

Despite all the rave reviews I still came in a little hesitant. At that time in my life I was a gamer who mainly stuck to franchises that I knew or was very familiar with. Sonic, Mario, Final Fantasy, etc. I was a boring fuck, I know. I didn't even know what kind of game it was or what it was about. But obviously I had asked for it so I was willing to give it a shot.

Right from the start I was blown away by God of War. The setting, the graphics, the cut scenes, the booming soundtrack, the in your face violence. The character of Kratos intrigued me too. Antiheroes are nothing new these days, but back then they were for the most part unheard of. A good guy who did bad things? Whaaat? I played God of War for hours on end, completely immersing myself in the game. I don't know how long it took me to beat the game. I am guessing less than a week, probably. But still it left a huge impression on me. I played this game several times. I went out and got a couple of the numbered sequels when they came out. I was a big fan.

Whenever the holiday season rolls around each year, I always get it in my head that I should play God of War again. I probably associate the game with this time of year in my head because I had initially gotten it as a Christmas present twelve years ago. The past few years I've passed on the opportunity to play the game. This year, however, the urge was too strong. I had to play it.

Even though the game is twelve years old I still think it has aged pretty well. Of course the graphics aren't as crisp as the graphics everyone is used to seeing by today's standards, but they are still pretty good. The animations are smooth. The levels are (for the most part) pretty varied and detailed. I have no complaints about the game's visual style.

The music still shines strong after all these years too. The booming, intense score lends itself well to this game. It really puts you into the mood to be a badass and kick some major butt. The game can be quiet and subdued when it needs to be as well. One of my favorite areas in the game is when you have to wander through a sandstorm with limited visibility. You instead have to rely on your ears, listening for the song of the sirens to guide you to your foes.

The overall presentation of the game is very well done. Graphics, music, the whole nine yards. God of War has a very cinematic feel to it that is still very exciting to this day. Cut scenes tell the story of the game as you play. At the beginning of the game you know very little. Just that you are a character named Kratos, a mercenary of sorts who is commanded by the gods. Your first mission is to destroy the evil Hydra that has been annihilating supply ships at sea.

After you destroy the Hydra, Kratos begs Athena to release him from the gods' control. He is informed that he has one last mission in store for him. The god of war Ares has attacked Athens. Since the gods can't attack directly attack each other, Athena tasks Kratos with the job of finding Pandora's Box. When opened, this box will give Kratos the power he needs to kill a god and take down Ares once and for all. Thus begins your real quest in this game.

Basic combat is pretty simple to get a grasp of. You mainly use four buttons. You can jump, grab, do a weak attack, or do a strong attack. Of course, different button combinations will produce different results. As the game progresses, you earn orbs that you can use to level your character up. This helps you learn new attack combinations to aid you on your journey.

Kratos also is gifted with magical powers from the gods as he progresses through the game. You can turn your enemies to stone, you can fire arrows from a magical bow to hit enemies from a long distance, you can evoke a magical electric attack which hits enemies in your immediate vicinity, and you can summon lost souls to swirl around the screen and do damage your enemies. As I played, I found the electrical attack to be the most effective.

You can also gain additional weapons as you play, but I found myself sticking to the original chains given to you at the beginning of the game. They are the most effective in my opinion.

Gameplay is mainly of the hack and slash variety. One of the big complaints I hear about the series is that it can be a little repetitive with all the button mashing. I didn't necessarily think so, but I could see why people might think that. God of War throws quick time action events in every so often to keep things fresh. Mainly these are triggered when an enemy is close to death. I didn't think any of them were too difficult, but it did make it hard to appreciate the gruesome animations as you killed your enemies when you are too busy looking for which button to hit next.

In addition to copious amounts of combat, the game throws puzzles at you too. Nothing too difficult to figure out. Collect the keys. Move this block over here. Turn these cranks to open up a new part of the stage. That type of thing. Don't expect to get stuck too often, if at all, when playing this game.

The game's settings are a high point. The ship at sea when you are battling the Hydra is a great set piece. So is Athens. So is the desert. So is Pandora's Temple. So is Hades. Especially Hades. All of the screaming bodies falling from the sky into the lake of fire around you is a nice touch. The game definitely creates an immersive atmosphere for you as you make your way through it.

God of War isn't too difficult, nor is it too long. There are a few tough battles towards the end of the game, but a little trial and error and a little patience will go a long way. The final battle with Ares, for example, made me want to chuck my controller through the wall. But once I discovered his pattern and figured out how to block his attacks, I quickly was able to take him down and complete the game.

This game is a ton of fun. Some people say it is too much of a button masher. Fine. Some hate the quick time events. Fine. Some say the puzzles are too easy. Fine. The game is what it is. It's an immersive, whirlwind journey filled with boat loads of violence, a great sweeping musical score, and a surprisingly effective story. It is not a perfect game, but it is one I enjoy a lot and like to come back to every few years or so.

Most people know that I have a really short attention span regarding video games, yet immediately after playing this I wanted to dive right into God of War II. That does not happen much. It speaks a true testament as to how much I really enjoyed this game. I would for sure recommend this series to anyone who has never played it before.

Overall:

A-

Video Game Review #113: Final Fantasy VI

Final Fantasy VI

Super Nintendo

This debate has been raging for a long, long time. What is better - Final Fantasy VI or Final Fantasy VII? Having never played Final Fantasy VI, my answer has always been VII by default. Not only do I consider that game the best RPG I have ever played, I also consider it to quite possibly be the best game I have ever played, period.

But still, I couldn't help but notice how many people would stand up for VI whenever the question of which game is better was raised. Just due to the simple fact that FFVI had such great support was enough to tell me that it was a game worth checking out. FFVII was the first Final Fantasy game I had ever played. I am willing to admit that nostalgia probably plays a huge factor in how I feel about the game. I was willing to put that nostalgia aside and come into FFVI with an open mind.

However, now that all is said and done and I have beaten VI, I can honestly say that I still prefer VII. Sorry, VI fanboys (and girls!).

A little history on my relationship with this game. Back when I was in 7th or 8th grade, I was the only kid in my class who had a Sega Genesis and not a Super Nintendo. I always had to sit there and listen to my classmates talk about how Final Fantasy III (which is what VI used to be known as in the United States before the other previous games were brought over from Japan) and how it was so amazing. It dominated many of the recess conversations. My classmates would draw game maps, compare notes on their progress, write out little question-and-answer trivia sheets for each other to fill out. Honestly, I felt really left out of the whole conversation. I started to resent Final Fantasy III even though I had never actually played it before.

Years and years passed. I got Final Fantasy VII for the PlayStation and fell in love with it. I would pick up several later sequels in the series as well. VIII, IX, X, XII, XIII, Tactics, nearly all of them except for the online only ones. I ended up getting a couple of collection discs which had some of the earlier Final Fantasy games on them too, but for whatever reason I never got around to playing them.

That changed in 2017.  Of course, I had been reading the online discussions for quite some time. FFVI vs FFVII. What was better? It was time I finally played VI and would be able to make that decision for myself.

The game's story line is pretty strong. Be warned, I am going to spoil things for you here. Thousands of years ago there was some kind of war between magic users and non magic users. In the present time, magic is generally thought of as something from the past which may or may not have actually been a real thing. But the evil Empire (why are Empires always so evil?) has started digging up and unearthing artifacts from the ancient war. They begin using these magical artifacts to strengthen their military might and take complete control of the planet.

When an Esper (an ancient magical being) is dug up out of the ice in a remote mining city named Narshe, the Empire sends in their magic using soldier Terra and a couple of cronies to storm Narshe and take control of the Esper and bring it into Imperial control. Things go wrong however, and Terra is injured in the attack. When she wakes up, she realizes that she had been brainwashed to blindly follow the Empire's orders. Now that she can think for herself, she uses her mysterious magical powers to fight back against the Empire.

As you play, you being to form a party that is intent on taking down the Empire and stopping their crusade of world domination. You travel the globe evading Imperial attacks, picking up party members sympathetic to your cause, and spreading dissent against the Empire everywhere you go. Eventually your group storms the Empire's science laboratory, and that is when the game drops some bombshells on you. The aforementioned ancient war was between humans and Espers. The Espers lived in their own dimension apart from humankind. However, humanity discovered a rift that acted as a bridge between the "real world" and the Esper dimension. Human beings have throughout history shown time and time again how big of assholes they are. Humans in the world of Final Fantasy VI are no exception. They storm the Esper world, slaughtering them for their magic powers and triggering a massive war in the process. Eventually the rift is sealed, but of course this doesn't last forever.

We also find out that Terra is half human and half Esper. This makes the quest personal for her and everyone on her side. The Empire is out to slaughter or enslave HER people, while using their powers to conquer the world at the same time.

There are many other twists and turns as far as the plot goes. I am not going to explain them all. But I would be remiss if I didn't tell you about Kefka. While you are playing the game it doesn't take you long to figure out that the real villain is not the Emperor himself, but Kefka - one of his top commanders. Kefka is a truly great Final Fantasy villain. He is completely evil and willing to do anything and everything to ensure his own personal victory. This is demonstrated pretty early in the game when he poisons the water supply of an entire town to kill its people to get them out of his way.

Kefka eventually overthrows the Emperor and takes control. In the game's biggest twist, Kefka wins one of the game's major battles and uses the power of the Esper world to become ridiculously powerful. He unleashes this power to cause massive devastation to the world. Oceans rise, continents collapse into the sea, earthquakes ravage the planet. Your party is tossed to all corners of the world. All of a sudden the game's world map looks nothing like it did before. You have to travel this new World of Ruin and reassemble your party. The devastation is felt everywhere. Monsters roam the map freely, entire cities are destroyed. Crops won't grow. The people you talk to are depressed and ready to give up on life. The entire composition of the game is changed in one fell stroke.

After reassembling your party, you must then storm Kefka's Tower and take him down once and for all. Defeating Kefka and destroying his magical pillars will banish magic from the world forever. But what will this mean for half-Esper Terra? I will let you play and find that out for yourself.

So yeah, the game's story line is pretty good.

How does the game play though? Again, pretty good. Combat is turn based, so if you have played Final Fantasy VII you know what to expect here. You attack, you use magic, you use items, you equip weapons and armor, you level up. The game has a big cast of characters, and each of these characters has their own unique special moves. I can't knock the game's combat at all. It is solid and easy to understand.

Often the game breaks up your party, which forces you to use nearly every character in the game. This is not like other Final Fantasy games where you can just use the same three or four people all game long and ignore everyone else in the game. All the characters are pretty well fleshed out too, each with their own back stories and personal struggles they are going through. I have to give the game kudos for keeping you interested in what is going on with everyone in your party.

The graphics of course aren't too impressive by today's standards. But for its time, I am sure FFVI looked sensational. Solid 2D sprite characters, great looking backgrounds and landscapes. Lots of bright colors and cartoon-ish environments that are very nice to look at. Again, not horribly impressive, but by no means ugly either.

To me the music outshines the graphics. There are a LOT of really memorable tunes here. This game has a sensational soundtrack. It is almost as good, if not better, than Final Fantasy VII's. In fact a lot of the tunes are very similar to VII's, and you can tell that that game used this game's musical score for inspiration. This is particularly impressive when you consider that this is a 16 bit game.

So we have established that I like the game's story. I like it's combat system and controls. I like the game's look and LOVE it's soundtrack. But what did I dislike about the game?

Unfortunately, there are many flaws that really irritated me while I played this. First of all, I often got lost while playing and would have no idea where I was supposed to go next. I'm sure they offered little hints during the game's story line text sequences, but for someone like me who spaces out a lot and has a hard time paying attention, I would miss out on these little clues. Then all of a sudden I'd be in control of my character in the middle of the world map with NO clue where I was supposed to head next. I'd talk to people around me and they would just comment on the weather or the war or something that was of no use to me. But where was I supposed to go? I thought this was just a "me" problem, but when I looked up the game on Google, apparently a lot of other people had this same problem too.

This problem is especially a big one once you make it to the World of Ruin portion of the game. You start out with one character and have to reassemble your party. But where do you start? The first few destinations are obvious, but once you get the airship and are free to explore the entire world map, things become much more challenging. What are you supposed to do, just visit every city in the game and hope you stumble across something helpful? I became tired with that quickly. I wanted to play the game and discover things on my own, but I ended up having to use a walkthrough from Gamefaqs to get me through the World of Ruin.

Things might not have even been that bad if the game's world map actually was in any way useful at all. All you have is a tiny little map in the corner of the screen that is very hard to see. Cities appear as tiny little dots on the map. But the cities aren't labeled. The game can tell you to visit Mobliz, but where the heck is Mobliz? You have to go from dot to dot hoping you stumble across the right city. It is very tedious and time consuming. It is even worse because once Kefka unleashes his power and creates the World of Ruin, many of the cities you visited earlier in the game appear in different locations.

So yes, lots of frustration to be found here. Not only does this make the game annoying to play, it completely interrupts the flow of the story and destroys and all momentum the game had been building up to that point. It seems like the entire World of Ruin portion of the game is just wandering around and hoping you luck into something useful. Honestly, it almost wrecked the game for me. I took a 2 or 3 week hiatus from the game in the middle of playing it because it had become such a chore to play.

Another annoyance: the game's encounter rate. It's a Final Fantasy game with random battles. I get it. I expect to get pulled into battle while exploring the world map and the game's dungeons. But the encounter rate seems absurdly high in this game. It seemed like there were times in the game where I couldn't take 2 steps without getting attacked. Win the battle, and I get attacked after another 3 steps. It is a big game with a lot to explore, a lot to see, and a lot of items to find. But getting attacked so many times made me want to rush through the game. It was very discouraging. There were portions of the game's dungeons that I wouldn't explore because I knew I'd get attacked too many times. Was it really worth it to go down this corridor and through a couple turns to get a chest when I knew I'd get attacked 7 times in the process? Nope. So I'd skip it and move on.

With all the random battles I had to endure, I expected to be properly leveled up enough to easily beat the game once I was ready to storm Kefka's Tower. Ummmmm..... no. The enemies there were insanely tough for my party to beat. I had to end up leaving and grinding for several hours just so I wouldn't get wiped out in one or two turns. Eventually I came back and made it through the Tower and on to Kefka himself, only to find that I STILL wasn't powerful enough to even challenge him at all. I had to leave the Tower and grind for several more hours before I could finally came back and eek out a win. In a game where I had to endure so many random battles I was not happy with having to grind so much. I LOATHE grinding in games and find it to be very, very boring. I'm all for a challenge, but it seemed like the game was unfairly hard at the end. I do have to say though, I felt extremely accomplished once I saw the white flash and heard that telltale lightning crack sound that indicated I had won the final battle. It was like an enormous weight had been lifted off my shoulders.

So all in all, the game was a very mixed bag for me. It did a lot of things right and was technically a very impressive game. Great story, great music, awesome characters and character development. But man did it become a drag to play after a while. I can truly say I did not have a whole lot of fun towards the end of this game. And that is the whole point of playing games, to have fun, is it not?

So no, I don't think this game is better than Final Fantasy VII. And quite frankly, I don't think it is even close. This game does enough things right for me to consider it a good RPG. And who knows maybe I will pick this up again at some point in the future, and knowing where to go and what to do, I will be able to overlook the game's flaws. But for now I consider this to be just a decent RPG, and that's it. After reading all the hype for years and years, I really wish I liked it more.

Overall:

B-

If you liked this review, please check out my reviews for the following games:

Shining Force

Final Fantasy VII

Final Fantasy IX

Final Fantasy X

Ni No Kuni: Wrath of the White Witch