Frost is a horrible mechanic in this game.

I just got to Hel and am about to quit due to the bridgekeeper fight. Maybe it's not that big a deal on lower difficulties, but on the hardest difficulty (which hasn't been that big a deal up to this point for me) it is extremely common to take 1 hit and get stun locked from full health to dead due to frost. On top of that I put a lot of money and XP into Atreus and don't have him anymore, I'm forced to use a new upgraded weapon, and I can't grind because of the story.

This has got to be one of my most disappointing gaming experiences ever. I love this game so much, but it's way too frustrating to continue.

Dude lower the difficulty. Don’t make the game harder for an arbitrary reason just enjoy the narrative. Dark Souls (while awesome) this is not.

Don’t complain about difficulty if you set it on the hardest mode. What you described is exactly what the hardest mode in this GoW is meant to be.

I hate to parrot other people but like, there isn't even a trophy penalty for lowering the difficulty. If you hate it, just do what makes you happy?

@flashflood_29: 1 hit kills weren't advertised and I didn't see any of them for the first 20 hours, suddenly this happens. and no you can't turn the difficulty down from Give me God of War.

The fact you don't really get anything out of playing on harder difficulties aside from possible satisfaction and frustration, there's no reason to play on hard. And that's right, you can't turn the difficulty down from that setting. That sucks dude. And I'm not sure why you think the game needed to be advertised that it'd be hard for that difficulty.

I'm not going to tell you not to complain about how hard it is because "you chose the hardest difficulty" because I agree that multiple aspects here are bad game design decisions.

I don't like frost, either. Maybe I just need to git gud, but stun locking - with or without frost, but it definitely exacerbates it - is an issue on "Give Me A Challenge" difficulty as well. It's common for a fight that's going great to turn sour because three different enemies happened to have their attacks all line up and OH I'M AT CRITICAL HEALTH. Though, something tells me I'm preaching to the choir. Anyway, I think it sucks and just isn't fun. Though, to be fair, this is subjective.

The part where story locks you into an extended sequence without Atreus (who they had to assume some people would be relying on) in what I think is one of the harder areas/bosses of the game... is a little tougher of a pill to swallow. That would be a suck-ass time on any difficulty, and while I appreciate story reasons putting Atreus out of commission, "tough, deal with it" is a pretty terrible answer to the criticism "hey, this part's kinda not fun because you took away my #1 battle asset".

That sucks, man. I wish you luck if you coninue.

I don't think Give me God of War is a very enjoyable experience overall. Give me a Challenge is the perfect difficulty for a first play through. GmGoW has a lot of unnecessary bullshit.

i think it's weird that people act like the only reason to play on hard is to get trophies or something else out of it. There are a ton of games where the enemies stop being a threat once you get some key abilities, so why not play a game on hard and be challenged? That's more fun to me. So when this guy plays on the hardest difficulty for 20 hours without feeling like he made a bad choice, and suddenly there's this huge barrier, that's a problem. Especially when the game doesn't let you turn the difficulty down. Now if this was some mod to make things harder, that's one thing. But when the devs offer a hard mode, surely you may expect that it prepares you adequately to not end up stuck in a hard encounter?

@onemanarmyy: not bring able to turn the difficulty down is a problem. But I doubt the game was exactly designed to be balanced with that difficulty in mind. If there’s a section that takes away a tool from the player, then the game was designed to be beatable by other means no matter the skill tree, in other difficulties. Tackling difficulties like “Give me God of War,” in games often means having the foresight with specific builds in mind. Though, it can be argued that if this were the case the designers should have locked it off until the game was already beaten once. That, though, would just mean less options for the player.

To be honest, I’m actually surprised that’s the first instance of 1 hit KOs. That’s exactly why I don’t find these sorts of difficulties enjoyable. They can be unbalanced against the player in ways that are extremely frustrating and demand too much care and attention to speccing.

@flashflood_29: I would say that the hardest difficulty being downright unfair is more common than it is not. It's the reason why I never play games on said difficulties because what are you really overcoming at that point - coded subroutines that are always going to be faster and better than you. If you're playing against other people then there is real satisfaction from besting another human being. Beating AI that is tuned to be unfair but still beatable is whatever. I remember playing the latest Gears of War and everyone always says to put it on the hard difficulty to get the real experience or whatever, and I always did that in the past, but something about Gears of War 4 made it such a slog with the enemies being such incredible sponges that I lowered it and never looked back.

God of War has a ton of poorly thought out fighting mechanics that come to light only when you ramp things up and being sloppy is no longer an option. Valkyries for example are a prime example of how bad the combat can get. Forget about all your moves because the windup on most of them is so long that anything beyond the basic light and heavy combo is useless, and even that is often too slow to fully connect. I'm not sure who thought those stance changing combos were a good idea in a game where enemies do not wait and attack all at once from all sides. Most guys don't even give you the time needed to switch into that stance and as far as I know there is no Bayonetta/DmC mechanic where you can somehow evade and chain into the longer strings. You have to stand there like a dolt and wait for him to knock the axe back, it's a real bummer.

Also as much as I am with everyone that the balancing is rough and that fight in particular is awkward and weird even on lower difficulties, ultimately you do get what you pay for, and hey you wanted a challenge so here you go. I'm sure learning to perfect a boss fight is not exactly the challenge you had in mind but it is what it is. Putting the game on the hardest possible difficulty and then complaining that it gets too difficult is a rough hole to dig yourself out of.

You did chose the hardest difficulty. I haven't tried it yet, that usually something I do on a second play through.

I loved the frost mechanic playing on normal. It's part of the reason I used the leviathan axe so much. It being a pain on higher difficulties didn't affect my enjoyment of it on lower difficulties.

@humanity: Exactly. These critical modes are more common nowadays. It's really hard for me not to choose a hard mode for challenges in almost any game, but I make damn sure to do my due diligence know that what I picked is a challenge in the right ways, and to avoid critical modes. I think it's great that they're included for the people that want them but as you said, these modes require the most specific types of play, skill builds, and foresight. Everything is thrown out of the window in critical modes because the games just aren't designed with them in mind, and an effect from that is the possibility of insane difficulty spikes.

@humanity: This is something I remember strongly from the PS3/360 FPS boom. I would always play these campaigns on the hardest difficulty, and would often find they actually exposed flaws in the gameplay. Very often I would no longer be thinking "how do I defeat this section?" But instead " how do I exploit weaknesses in this game's AI in order to sneak past this otherwise impossible section?" GoW difficulty in this game seems fairly similar. I am no longer Kratos, fighting the undead, but instead it's me, trying to decipher how to cheese my way through the way enemies engage to defeat them.

In this case, it's been a lot of throwing my axe at enemies in the back-line and then calling it back. That over and over and over again.

Who's the Boy now.

Quote from the difficulty setting menu of the game: "requires god-like reflexes and strategy", that to me translates to one-hit kills, if not dodged. The strategy part in this case would be knowing your way around the game, including the forced weapon use or sidekick absence - things players would know after beating the game once. I guess it would be reasonable to unlock this mode after completing the game on any other difficulty, but I have had this happened before: coming back to a familiar game, wanting to play on the hardest setting but being unable to due to missing save, which suck.

I think this one is on you, I get you are frustrated but one must see that coming, when selecting the hardest mode from the get go.

Start a new game or beat the challenge, you can do it!

@humanity: I agree on some points, the axe stance combo is unusable because the animations are too long and you can't block or dodge out of it, specifically the third R1 is way too long. The blades combo lets you interrupt it and is okay as a single target attack.
I think the Valkyries are the best the combat can offer though (except for Kara), I had more fun with 1-on-1 boss fights than any other combat scenario because I didn't have to worry about fireballs flying in from the back of the pack or homing lunge attacks ruining my day.
The fast pace of the Valkyries is great and the back and forth of dodging attacks and retaliating with a Runic Attack or (admittedly) short combo is very satisfying.

I touched on this in another post, but the lack of I-frames in long animations kills some of the momentum. I get that they don't want people to abuse Runic Attacks, but I'm pretty sure you're also vulnerable during the damn parry, or at least the latter half of the animation, and the projectile parry definitely doesn't have I-frames, which is hilariously bad.

I also wish the notificator was 360 degrees so that when I'm knee deep in draugrs I can see the attack that's coming from three rows back and through the crowd. I got domed in the first Muspelheim Impossible challenge by an ice lance that was thrown from straight ahead inside one of the spawn doors. The draugr hadn't even left the fog so I didn't know it was coming until it was already zooming at me at the speed of light.

Edit: The combat reminds me of Yakuza. At times it feels like the devs didn't realize where the strength of their combat system lies and they keep throwing mobs into boss fights, either that or they purposefully let difficulty precede fun.

@briarpack: I agree they are the most satisfying combat encounter because they challenge you the most in a one-one-one situation. They're also the worst because combos become almost useless apart from the few quick ones like sprinting and R2 for the big splash hit. Everything else that is lengthier goes right out the window because some of the Valkyries are absolutely relentless in their attacks. Also yah, the way you take damage during some canned animations is absolutely ridiculous. I know I once got my entire lifebar taken off because a Valkyrie (one in the maze I think) did an AoE attack while I was pummeling her in Spartan Rage mode. The fact that she didn't get stunlocked and that I still took full damage while in that mode is kinda ridiculous, as is taking damage during runic animations. Thats why I say they really highlight the weaknesses in the combat system, while admittedly also being probably the most engaging fights in the game.

It's almost like they designed the combat and skills for the early half of the game, and then added a bunch more enemies but were already committed to the slow combat from the start. The new Kratos is definitely not nimble enough for some of those faster more frantic encounters, where you're forced to spam AoE runic's as a get out of jail card.

Only thing that I hated about the combat in this game: early on I got into what I like to call a pinball situation; got hit, staggered... rinse and repeat for 10 seconds until dead....

As far as I know (I finished the game on normal with all the Valkyries and once on hard mainline story only) when you are in rage mode, all damage received is taken from your rage bar, once that is gone, you return to a normal state and continue taking health damage. Also my understanding is some of the runic attacks provide invincibility while others don't, which is a balance thing as well.

I really don`t see why taking damage during runic attacks is ridiculous. It just means you have to wait for an opportunity to use them instead of just spamming them as soon as they recharge which in my opinion at least makes them an interesting tool instead of just a crutch.

@odinsmana: because the animations for most of them are so long that getting hit is inevitable, which kinda stinks if you ask me but maybe I’m asking too much. I was never a fan of animation priority.

Taking damage during runic attacks is fine but having no idea if your enemy is gonna get stunlocked by the runic attack or not is not fine. It just turns into a random gamble if you are gonna take damage or not.

I'm playing on Give Me God of War too, and flaws that are probably barely noticeable on lower difficulty settings really are amplified in this mode. Not only have I gotten stunlocked for three hits in a row a bunch of times (in a mode where that's enough to take all of your health), but what's even worse is that there are a bunch of moves with long animations that give you invincibility for most of the duration, but still leave you vulnerable right at the end of the move, before you can block or dodge. These include some of the most useful moves in the game, like the executioner's cleave and the projectile parry. And since these moves' animations are longer than those of enemy attacks, what this means is that in any situation where you're facing more than a single enemy (i.e. almost all of the encounters in the game) you're almost never completely safe to use them. Once I parried a projectile, then got hit and stunlocked at the end of the animation before I could block, and went from full health to dead in a matter of seconds.

"That's what you get for choosing the hardest difficulty setting" is nothing more than a shitty excuse for poor design. There are plenty of very hard games (certainly harder ones than God of War) that are perfectly balanced and free of bullshit, and if this one isn't, then that's entirely on the developers.

Oh, and don't get me started on some of the checkpoint placement. Like that section in Alfheim where every time you die on a certain fight you have to go through two cutscenes and a segment where you get scripted Spartan Rage and just mash for while before you get back to the fight that actually matters. I cannot fucking believe that there are developers that to this day are placing checkpoints before cutscenes and the like. It's like they've never played a video game in their lives!

Overall it's still a pretty great action game though. Some of the encounters have been truly brilliant, and I think I still have plenty of game left so I'm looking forward to what's coming.

@icemael: Yeh its incredible that picking up the counter ranged skill makes you worse off since you take dmg when countering a shot. Wtf????

@icemael: I don't think people are saying "thats what you get.." as a means to excuse bad balancing, which this game as plenty of. I think people are quite literally saying, hey man, thats what you get. I played it on normal because I cared more about the story than stretching every benign encounter into a grueling endurance match of Kratos VS the beefed up AI, and even then some of those encounters were not all that fun. At those times I thought that boy, people who play this on the harder difficulties are going to be in for a ride, and not a fun one at that.

Everyone's different and stuff but I really had no trouble in that boss fight. The boss telegraphs his movement a bunch and there are also like a dozen health pickups in the game. Just lower the difficulty if the combat is really that troubling.

As much as I LOVE the God of War series I've always been annoyed that Kratos is a god but get knocked out of combos and moves by peon enemies but you (previously) could never do the same. At least know you can interrupt enemy combos. I do think the combat can be cheap, sometimes, but generally it is just a matter of crowd control and keeping your gear upgraded. I got some legendary gear a while ago from one of the realms you open up and I doubt I'll be finding anything better anytime soon.

That said you did just say you were on the hardest difficulty so I'm not sure what you were expecting :p

@werupenstein: I would pay an additional sub if that were the name of a Brad GoW feature.

and the trend of "setting the difficulty high and then complaining about the difficulty" with this game continues

What irks me is that hearing people talk about this it sounds like, as with many games nowadays, yiu have to make it a full time career almost to understand all the nuances. Funnier still is how many people already sound like zen like experts on every mechanic already, and thus I feel shamed to play it in give me a challenge to prove that maybe I can actually be good at something for once and of course failing miserably. Then I also feel I am missing out on something if I drop it down a notch, as well. Don't know if it's the game's fault, my own insecurity, or typical internet bravado getting to me.

Then again, I am taking 30 mins or more to get through each encounter so obviously I am doing something wrong.