Support NeoGAF

[Danjin44]

I just fought giant Drake, that was somewhat fun fight, I’m not much fan of those Draugr that come out of the ground, they have exact animation and attacks from pervious game but boss like health with barely reacting to your attacks.

 

[Ghost of Caelid]

I prefer to play the newer god of war games on the easiest setting.
Enemies are too tanky. I don't mind the damage they deal, but damage sponge effect on even basic jobbers is boring.

On higher difficulties, it starts to feel like a beat'em up game that relies too much on you wailing away at the attack button.
Kratos should NOT feel this weak.

I honestly might do the same. Theyre not hard, but they just take too long to kill. But I'm all about playing intended experience so blah.

 

[a multicultural team of v]

My main issue is most of those fights are not one on one. It is extremely frustrating when you are trying to focus on main boss and get distracted by minions. You have a very limited field of view on tv screen and it’s just impossible to have more then one opponent and be fair to the player. Dying in few hits is fine as long as I get out something from the fight which usually is better understanding the boss. Adding minions just interrupt the whole process. Most of them are off screen you have no idea what they are doing and you are just reacting to yellow/red lights, might as well play dance dance Revolution then.

Soulsborne nailed this but there are f**kups around this in Elden Ring, hopefully they will be careful in future.

This is my biggest issue with the game. Combat mechanics generally feel good in isolation but encounter design is really, really bad and does not mesh with the combat. The combat is very sticky and feels designed primarily for 1v1 encounters with little crowd control ability other than what is directly in front of you, yet the game constant throws you groups of enemies that attack from off screen aggressively. Even worse are the projectile attacks from off screen, which also happen way too often.

Now all this might be ok if you could see more than a corridor of width in front of you, but of course you can't, so most encounters just end up being more annoying than fun either getting smashed by enemies you can't even see, or like you said playing DDR with stupid HUD indicators. I got very, very strong Hotline Miami 2 vibes while playing so far, which is a pity. It's like they wanted to crank things up but did it in all the most annoying ways instead of the fun ways.

 

[hinch7]

The optional bosses are fine. You just have to play and learn enemy patterns and focus. Its fustrating when you hit a wall but with some practice.. and when you get into the flow, its quite exilerating. Just don't panic. Use fast attacks and be ready to dodge, counter and attack in between. Don't use long combos or attacks that lock you into an animation.

Use quick stun runic powers to interupt big attacks and unblockables. Most of the bosses can be cheesed by giving yourself some distance, circling and using your shield to block a large portion of attacks.

Also made much easier if you go in ready with full or near full rage, and a highest ress stone you can equip. Else go back and explore and level your character with new armor, amulets and weapons. With side quests and main story. Take them down when you are the same level as them and beyond.

 

[Drizzlehell]

Just wanted to say that all the scrubs who keep posting "git gud" can blow me, lol.

I eventually ditched that fight, finished the story, and then returned later with higher level gear. And lo and behold, I mopped the floor with that boss on first try.

I already said at the start of this thread that this wasn't a hard fight at all in terms of learning the patterns, and the only reason why this was a struggle is because it was previously taking forever to kill that boss and it could take me down in one hit. Which essentially left zero room for fuck ups.

Let's see what a tough hombre you're gonna be when I tell you to go and beat those extra bosses with low-level gear for extra challenge. You'd get your ass handed to you faster than you can type "git gud"

 

[K' Dash]

Damage sponge enemies are the laziest shit, I maxed out strength and the damage I was doing to regular enemies was a fucking joke.

Glad I finished the game last night, I have zero interest in doing any of the post game favors, I’m just going to wait for Callisto while finishing AC Odyssey.

Also, it cracks me up that any hint of criticism in the OP gets you a mob with pitchforks, but once you go to the spoiler thread you see that most people have the same issues with the game and most agree 2018 is the superior GOW.

 

[ElCasual]

Let's be real here for a moment.

There's nothing unique or interesting about those fights that would set them apart from any regular story boss encounters, and the only challenge stems from the hideously long health pools of those enemies, and their uncanny ability to drain your own health bar in three hits. So, in other words, the only thing that's in any way challenging about those fights is trying to stay awake throughout the whole thing because each of them is so mindlessly repetitive, and they go on for such a goddamend long time that I literally start thinking about something else while I'm mashing the attack button and dodging the same repetitive attacks, until I inevitably get distracted enough to slip up and let the enemy land a hit on me, essentially ending the fight because they used a bullshit special attack that ended me in one hit.

I swear, those are some of the worst boss fights that I've seen in a while in an otherwise excellent game.

Let me Guess, OP. You are with the three Berserks at the same time

 

[The artful mincer]

Just wanted to say that all the scrubs who keep posting "git gud" can blow me, lol.

I eventually ditched that fight, finished the story, and then returned later with higher level gear. And lo and behold, I mopped the floor with that boss on first try.

I already said at the start of this thread that this wasn't a hard fight at all in terms of learning the patterns, and the only reason why this was a struggle is because it was previously taking forever to kill that boss and it could take me down in one hit. Which essentially left zero room for fuck ups.

Let's see what a tough hombre you're gonna be when I tell you to go and beat those extra bosses with low-level gear for extra challenge. You'd get your ass handed to you faster than you can type "git gud"

Okay... But every game is like that potentially if you fight underleveled.

God of war is not that bad really. The fights last about as long as souls fights and I would say demand more from the player than dodge roll and spam r1.

Now if we want to talk about reeeèeeeaaaaaally long fights and 1 hit kills let's chat about Monster Hunter World!

 

[genesisblock]

Playing on Give Me God of War?

The first one was kinda like this too on that difficulty so if you played that one this shouldn't really come as a surprise. Personally I prefer the challenge not coming from dying in 3 hits when fighting bosses too.

No, it is not. And I played it both on the Give me God of War, and no Valkyrie in that game ever matched the awful Gná fight and King Hrolf. The amount of patience, and luck due to their overwhelming damage as their health bar goes lower goes significantly higher.

Ironically, I had either near perfect health or perfect health at the end of those fights because either you got it right or you messed up the flow that the continuous attacks brings you back to near death.

 

[The artful mincer]

Damage sponge enemies are the laziest shit, I maxed out strength and the damage I was doing to regular enemies was a fucking joke.

Glad I finished the game last night, I have zero interest in doing any of the post game favors, I’m just going to wait for Callisto while finishing AC Odyssey.

Also, it cracks me up that any hint of criticism in the OP gets you a mob with pitchforks, but once you go to the spoiler thread you see that most people have the same issues with the game and most agree 2018 is the superior GOW.

Damage sponges are essential for a good challenge and gameplay variety.

Ghost of tsushima is rubbish on lethal mode because everything dies so quickly. It's less challenging than hard mode and because everything dies so quickly you barely need to use all your abilities.

Not to mention the only way to make the game challenging is to kill the player quickly which is less than ideal.

 

[The artful mincer]

No, it is not. And I played it both on the Give me God of War, and no Valkyrie in that game ever matched the awful Gná fight and King Hrolf. The amount of patience, and luck due to their overwhelming damage as their health bar goes lower goes significantly higher.

Ironically, I had either near perfect health or perfect health at the end of those fights because either you got it right or you messed up the flow that the continuous attacks brings you back to near death.

What? With Sindrin you basically need to be perfect as well on give me god of war ?

 

[Kusarigama]

It is kind of same for soulsborne games too but what makes them better in GoW and Ragnarok is that we don't have to backtrack to boss fights from respawn point. We spawn right in front of the said boss fight. Hence GoW2018 and Ragnarok are in my opinion superior to soulsborne games.

 

[K' Dash]

Damage sponges are essential for a good challenge and gameplay variety.

Ghost of tsushima is rubbish on lethal mode because everything dies so quickly. It's less challenging than hard mode and because everything dies so quickly you barely need to use all your abilities.

Not to mention the only way to make the game challenging is to kill the player quickly which is less than ideal.

You’re talking about extreme opposites, we need a good balance, also, why jobbers need a full combo plus a couple of hits to die with a maxed out strength build and maxed out weapons?

I don’t mind bosses being somewhat damage sponges if the encounter is fun enough, but fighting a boss for 15 minutes is ZERO fun.

 

[Cyborg]

Im still struggling with an optional boss

 

[The artful mincer]

You’re talking about extreme opposites, we need a good balance, also, why jobbers need a full combo plus a couple of hits to die with a maxed out strength build and maxed out weapons?

I don’t mind bosses being somewhat damage sponges if the encounter is fun enough, but fighting a boss for 15 minutes is ZERO fun.

Okay but what boss in god of war takes 15 minutes? They literally are that long in Monster Hunter

It's level dependent but I've found the health of regular enemies fairly reasonably of give me no mercy maybe it's different on GMGOW

 

[JohnnyFootball]

The thing that I am hating is how difficult it is to parry. Half the time I press the button and it doesn't seem to register. Even on normal difficulty that kills a ton of my health. Pisses me the fuck off.

 

[The artful mincer]

The thing that I am hating is how difficult it is to parry. Half the time I press the button and it doesn't seem to register. Even on normal difficulty that kills a ton of my health. Pisses me the fuck off.

You can get an upgrade that widens the window

 

[Trazyn the Infinite]

Okay but what boss in god of war takes 15 minutes? They literally are that long in Monster Hunter

It's level dependent but I've found the health of regular enemies fairly reasonably of give me no mercy maybe it's different on GMGOW

GMGOW is “challenging” in the most lazy ways possible. Enemies aren’t more intelligent, they just increased health and damage numbers for enemies while lowering your health. They also increased them to be slightly more “aggressive” and giving you less time to react.

Maybe that changes halfway through the game, but I was so bored of it by 24 hours in that I just lowered it to No Mercy.

 

[adamsapple]

I found the Gna fight a lot easier than Sigrun in 2018. The addition of things like the double tap shield distract lets you get in a lot more hits this time around.

 

[Trazyn the Infinite]

I found the Gna fight a lot easier than Sigrun in 2018. The addition of things like the double tap shield distract lets you get in a lot more hits this time around.

Also easier to essentially stun lock the enemy into doing nothing. A few of the raven rewards gives you heavy runic attacks that essentially stop her in her tracks for a good 4-5 seconds. Couple that with certain artifacts and the final rage ability - you can basically get a free 3 health bars down without any worry of being hit. Or spread that out for moments you feel you can’t react fast enough.

Really makes the entire game overly easy.

 

[JohnnyFootball]

You can get an upgrade that widens the window

Please tell me where.

 

[Dragon_Rocks]

Berserkers don't have minions. Honestly I think they more fun than the valkyries on the first game

One kind of does. Not minions but 2 mini bosses. It's also the hardest one for me.

 

[Neff]

Why are you complaining about optional bosses being HP fountains when you have medium spec gear

 

[March Climber]

The amount of people misunderstanding the OP's post as a complaint about difficulty is astounding.

The following combination is annoying no matter what game it is:

1) Increased health pools to extend a fight length.
2) The fight itself being way too repetitive.

None of this has to do with difficulty, and bringing up Souls games isn't the right call because those games have more interesting boss fights with more phases. In addition, those souls game boss fights usually also have the perfect time length to healthbar ratio so you're engaged all the way through the fight instead of being annoyed and bored at the same time.

What OP is describing sounds like soloing a world boss or raid boss in an MMO. Except with MMOs you know that you're not supposed to do that so it explains why the fight would take so ridiculously long. There's no reason for this to exist in single player games.

 

[The artful mincer]

GMGOW is “challenging” in the most lazy ways possible. Enemies aren’t more intelligent, they just increased health and damage numbers for enemies while lowering your health. They also increased them to be slightly more “aggressive” and giving you less time to react.

Maybe that changes halfway through the game, but I was so bored of it by 24 hours in that I just lowered it to No Mercy.

Maybe but 99% of games do this. God of war is ahead of the curve by making them more aggressive. What games makes there AI more intelligent? They basically don’t exist

 

[s-bojan]

It's ironic that this kind of thing is acceptable and loved when it's on Soulsborne, but everywhere else it's unfair and whatnot lol

It is not the same.
Some fights in this game are more like a cheap imitation of a Soulsborne bosses.

I’ve spent 6 hours on the one where you fight 3 enemies and seen the worst this game has to offer (bad fov not suited to fighting multiple foes, dying to offscreen attacks or projectiles, auto aim and camera issues).
I like a good challenge. But i don’t like long fights that are not interesting.

And I really hate fighting dudes that are stronger than the main antagonists. It just does not make sense lore wise.

 

[alabtrosMyster]

My wishlist:
Optional puzzle hints
Zoom out camera during fights
Jump button and unmarked ledges
Cooler and less visible loot
Less tanky boat controls

I agree with the puzzle hints being optional and the loot thing... You just have these giant chests every 4 steps, and it's never a real "secret area".

You still end up with markers for stuff that's already too obvious.

What I miss is doing a first playthrough of a game doing my best to find stuff and replaying with the help of a guide to find them rest. Having all the chests in plain sight the only "challenge" being to find how to walk to it becomes old after a while.

 

[The artful mincer]

The amount of people misunderstanding the OP's post as a complaint about difficulty is astounding.

The following combination is annoying no matter what game it is:

1) Increased health pools to extend a fight length.
2) The fight itself being way too repetitive.

None of this has to do with difficulty, and bringing up Souls games isn't the right call because those games have more interesting boss fights with more phases. In addition, those souls game boss fights usually also have the perfect time length to healthbar ratio so you're engaged all the way through the fight instead of being annoyed and bored at the same time.

What OP is describing sounds like soloing a world boss or raid boss in an MMO. Except with MMOs you know that you're not supposed to do that so it explains why the fight would take so ridiculously long. There's no reason for this to exist in single player games.

Strong disagree on this souls difficulty can be all over the place based on player levels and weapon upgrades especially Elden ring. Personally I think god of war boss’s are way more mechanically interesting and engaging than souls boss fight.

Frankly this problem is on the OP he attempted a boss way underleveled and got his ass handed to him you could of thought he could of worked this out by both dying in one hit and barely doing any damage but apparently not.

What else should the game have done? Put up a big neon sign saying come back at level 8? I thought players didn’t want there hands held!?

 

[K' Dash]

It is not the same.
Some fights in this game are more like a cheap imitation of a Soulsborne bosses.

I’ve spent 6 hours on the one where you fight 3 enemies and seen the worst this game has to offer (bad fov not suited to fighting multiple foes, dying to offscreen attacks or projectiles, auto aim and camera issues).
I like a good challenge. But i don’t like long fights that are not interesting.

And I really hate fighting dudes that are stronger than the main antagonists. It just does not make sense lore wise.

The game is definitely not suited for encounter with multiple enemies, I defeated the 3v1 but I was about to throw my controller to the floor and kick the TV.

How do you manage multiple enemies with that FOV and camera?

 

[The artful mincer]

Please tell me where.

Rond of deflection you can buy it from the brothers I can’t remember when. It’s a shield attachment.

If you don’t like parrying the stonewall shield is good fun.

 

[skneogaf]

Valkyrie fights are so much better in the first game

 

[Trazyn the Infinite]

Maybe but 99% of games do this. God of war is ahead of the curve by making them more aggressive. What games makes there AI more intelligent? They basically don’t exist

Alien Isolation is a perfect example of making an AI more intelligent. If you use too many distraction items, the Alien will begin to ignore them and instead find where it was thrown from. Use the flamethrower too much and it will test you and take increasing amounts of swipes at you. The alien adapts to what you throw at it.

Also I respectfully disagree that God of War is “ahead of the curve” by making enemies more aggressive. That is most action games. God of War, Uncharted, Devil May Cry, Gears of War - etc. They all make enemies more aggressive on harder difficulties. The difference is that games with well designed difficulty will add more on top of just that. Devil May Cry for example will change the enemies in a section, offering enemies new combat moves, allowing them to enter Devil Trigger forms, and forcing you to utilize your full kit (where you may not have needed to or have access to on easier difficulties).

 

[alabtrosMyster]

Just wanted to say that all the scrubs who keep posting "git gud" can blow me, lol.

I eventually ditched that fight, finished the story, and then returned later with higher level gear. And lo and behold, I mopped the floor with that boss on first try.

I already said at the start of this thread that this wasn't a hard fight at all in terms of learning the patterns, and the only reason why this was a struggle is because it was previously taking forever to kill that boss and it could take me down in one hit. Which essentially left zero room for fuck ups.

Let's see what a tough hombre you're gonna be when I tell you to go and beat those extra bosses with low-level gear for extra challenge. You'd get your ass handed to you faster than you can type "git gud"

What I learned is that you been to be more mobile in all probability.

 

[Crispy Gamer]

Finishing the Berserker king helped me out a lot on the Gna fight...he was too easy BTW for what you get

 

[The artful mincer]

Alien Isolation is a perfect example of making an AI more intelligent. If you use too many distraction items, the Alien will begin to ignore them and instead find where it was thrown from. Use the flamethrower too much and it will test you and take increasing amounts of swipes at you. The alien adapts to what you throw at it.

Also I respectfully disagree that God of War is “ahead of the curve” by making enemies more aggressive. That is most action games. God of War, Uncharted, Devil May Cry, Gears of War - etc. They all make enemies more aggressive on harder difficulties. The difference is that games with well designed difficulty will add more on top of just that. Devil May Cry for example will change the enemies in a section, offering enemies new combat moves, allowing them to enter Devil Trigger forms, and forcing you to utilize your full kit (where you may not have needed to or have access to on easier difficulties).

Well that’s interesting about alien isolation I didn’t know that. Still games that are harder because enemies are more intelligent do seem to be rare.I meant generally when I said more aggressive enemies but maybe that’s more common than I thought.

Regarding New moves etc I think that might happen with god of war but only from medium to hard. From hard to GMGOW the differences are less. E.g. I brought the difficulty down on one of the phantom fights and the glowing openings are way more frequent. I started on medium and the enemies are way less aggressive generally. Certain tactics work on lower difficulty’s that don’t on harder one e.g. in 2018 you could knock the Valkyries out the air with arrows on medium but you need to use the axe on hard.

Anyway as much as I appreciate difficulty through other means lowering the players health and increaseing the enemies seems pretty fundamental ultimately. All those other games you mention do one or both to some degree.

 

[anothertech]

Alas, some dudes just need to play on story mode...

 

[Drizzlehell]

It is kind of same for soulsborne games too but what makes them better in GoW and Ragnarok is that we don't have to backtrack to boss fights from respawn point. We spawn right in front of the said boss fight. Hence GoW2018 and Ragnarok are in my opinion superior to soulsborne games.

I dunno man, I remember downing high level bosses with low level characters in Dark Souls on my repeated playthroughs. You still had reasonably good chance of beating those one you knew what you were doing. Try doing that in any of those GoW games and you pretty much have to be perfect, without getting hit even once for like 10 minutes that it takes to chop through the boss' health bar on second-to-last difficulty level and with underleveled gear. Unless you're really fucking good, that shit is nigh-impossible to do.

Also, those games are just very different so I don't get the comparison at all.

 

[The artful mincer]

I dunno man, I remember downing high level bosses with low level characters in Dark Souls on my repeated playthroughs. You still had reasonably good chance of beating those one you knew what you were doing. Try doing that in any of those GoW games and you pretty much have to be perfect, without getting hit even once for like 10 minutes that it takes to chop through the boss' health bar on second-to-last difficulty level and with underleveled gear. Unless you're really fucking good, that shit is nigh-impossible to do.

Also, those games are just very different so I don't get the comparison at all.

Right but you can upgrade your weapon to level 15 or whatever in darks souls. If you tried taking them with the level 1 weapons it would take you ages as well.

 

[Danjin44]

To me Breseker with two sisters are the only one annoyed me in my give me no mercy difficulty playthrough.

 

[The artful mincer]

To me Breseker with two sisters are the only one annoyed me in my give me no mercy difficulty playthrough.

What level did you fight them at?

 

[Danjin44]

What level did you fight them at?

I think I was at level 6, I was doing decent damage but it was annoying as hell trying not to get hit by projectiles off screen, also when I try to aim at those slow moving ice or fire spheres, the aim assist was really interfering with that because it wants to aim at Breseker instead. I went to the options to turn it off but there no turning it off, there is only option for classic or classic +.

 

[The artful mincer]

I think I was at level 6, I was doing decent damage but it was annoying as hell trying not to get hit by projectiles off screen, also when I try to aim at those slow moving ice or fire spheres, the aim assist was really interfering with that because it wants to aim at Breseker instead. I went to the options to turn it off but there no turning it off, there is only option for classic or classic +.

Fair enough have you tried gyro aiming? It was a game changer for me some people apparently don't like it though.

 

[Danjin44]

Fair enough have you tried gyro aiming? It was a game changer for me some people apparently don't like it though.

Not on in controller, it never feels right for me. Still this game has lot of accessibility option but I cant turn off aim assist? why?

 

[March Climber]

Strong disagree on this souls difficulty can be all over the place based on player levels and weapon upgrades especially Elden ring. Personally I think god of war boss’s are way more mechanically interesting and engaging than souls boss fight.

Frankly this problem is on the OP he attempted a boss way underleveled and got his ass handed to him you could of thought he could of worked this out by both dying in one hit and barely doing any damage but apparently not.

Other than Elden Ring(since it's a special case) other Souls games did a great job of making sure if you sequence broke the game, that they wouldn't make the boss' health overly large to the point of extremely forcing you to level.

That's why I can go back and fight the Asylum Demon at a very low level and the fight not take forever(even though he can kill me in 2 hits), or why I can go fight in the pit in DS2 very early on if I take off my armor and jump down the well. Beefing up damage is fine but making it so that the health bar is so monumentally large that you have to grind for a long time to overcome it just sucks.

Most souls games made sure that the fights were short and sweet, and not necessarily a grind because you decided to go right even though they wanted you to branch left. GoW devs' answer to OP's problem is an incorrect one, but that doesn't make the game itself bad. It just makes it way more linear than some people wanted it to be due to bad reasoning. It's one of the reasons why the more forced linear Metroid games are divisive amongst fans.

What else should the game have done? Put up a big neon sign saying come back at level 8? I thought players didn’t want there hands held!?

Just be a better challenge that isn't based mainly on healthbars. Test OP to the extreme but not to a point of grinding. Make him feel like he earned the win more rather than feeling like he is slowly chopping a big tree.

 

[BlitzerRadic]

GMGOW is “challenging” in the most lazy ways possible. Enemies aren’t more intelligent, they just increased health and damage numbers for enemies while lowering your health. They also increased them to be slightly more “aggressive” and giving you less time to react.

Maybe that changes halfway through the game, but I was so bored of it by 24 hours in that I just lowered it to No Mercy.

So how you supposed to make this game more challenging without being "lazy?"

Like do you have any game design experience? Because damage sponge has been around for a long time and is prevalent across all of gaming.

Modern AAA games have many complex systems and are tested heavily. So I find it hard to believe that devs just phone it in when it comes to difficulty levels. Especially SMS, both GOW games look to be very well polished out of the gate.

 

[The artful mincer]

Not on in controller, it never feels right for me. Still this game has lot of accessibility option but I cant turn off aim assist? why?

You sure? In the video here it said you can turn it off about a 1 minute in.

 

[Danjin44]

You sure? In the video here it said you can turn it off about a 1 minute in.

I guess I did something wrong then because I try turn it off but only give me option between classic and classic +.

 

[The artful mincer]

I guess I did something wrong then because I try turn it off but only give me option between classic and classic +.

I think you were looking for it in the wrong place its under gameplay challenge in the above video. Which is fair enough god of war ragnarok menus are awful!

 

[Danjin44]

I think you were looking for it in the wrong place its under gameplay challenge in the above video. Which is fair enough god of war ragnarok menus are awful!

Maybe and I also was very frustrated with that fight, both Gna and Breseker king were harder fights but no were near as annoying as that fight, I hated that boss. Devil told me just turn down the difficulty but I was too stubborn for that. I beat it eventually but It was not fun or satisfying.

 

[yurinka]

Berserkers don't have minions. Honestly I think they more fun than the valkyries on the first game

As I remember one berseker combat is against 2 bersekers, another one against 3 bersekers and I'd bet other one is a berseker with minions.

But well, in any case it's true that many other bosses and minibosses have minions.