Not to be confused by the very first God of War game, released on the Playstation 2 in 2005, God of War indicates a fresh beginning for the series, signified by a title which suggests more of a reboot than a sequel.
It bought with it, a very radical change in direction for a series which has specialised in fast paced, simplistic combat with big boss fight set pieces, to a slightly more tactical combat system, and a story which is less about the big boss fights, and more about puzzles and platforming.
The game also features a variety of new dynamics. The environment is now an open world, rife with exploration opportunities, as opposed to a linear journey with a defined path, and Kratos' son, Atreus, now accompanies him on the journey, and ends up playing a pivotal role in the story, whilst also adding an extra dimension to the game's combat, with options to upgrade skills, fight with and change the appearance of both characters. It does feel like a completely new game, and one that works well.
The trophy list is medium in size, with a total of 37 trophies to earn from this title. Incidentally, out of all 10 God of War titles, spread across both the Playstation consoles and the Playstation Vita, every title has between 35-37 trophies in total, so there seems to be an almost deliberate approach to the volume of the trophy list for every God of War game.
A purely Single Player experience, the story tells the tale of Kratos' journey to fulfil the last wish of his late wife, who is also, incidentally, Atreus' mother, which is to scatter her ashes at the highest peak of the Nine Realms, following her death. This is the beginning of a journey which will see you transverse a variety of different worlds, encounter a wide range of enemies and some interesting characters.
The "Last Wish" trophy, awarded for Spreading the ashes, concludes the story upon completion of the final objective, and is the primary goal of this trophy list. The game has 3 difficulty levels, which include easy, normal and hard, but none of the trophies within this list are difficulty sensitive, so you can choose how you play the game based on your own discretion. I opted for hard, and the game on the whole isn't terribly difficult, though the truest challenge of playing on the hardest difficulty does show through in a few specific parts of this trophy list, which will be mentioned later, but for the most part, it's nothing to write home about.
Although the upgrade system isn't anything new to God of War games, there is a huge level of depth within dedicated towards character development, and not only can you upgrade weapons, like you've been able to in previous God of War games, you can also upgrade a ton of armour, special powers, skills and attributes, which actually makes you incredibly powerful as the game goes on, I would argue the challenge starts to move through a gradual state of decline because, despite the fact enemies also scale in level, they start to become noticeably easier to beat with a fully maxed out armory.
It's also worth mentioning that, up to the point of finishing the game, you'll have unlocked 11 story-based progression trophies, which contributes to almost a third of the entire list, so you can make some pretty good headway by just beating the main story. The remainder of the list from this point onwards is made up of indulging in a select grouping of the game's vast amount of collectibles, side-questing and upgrading Kratos' powers and equipment.
The "Chooser of the Slain" trophy, awarded for Defeating the nine Valkyries, is one of the variety of side quests within the game, and also the toughest trophy in the list.
Throughout Midgard, there are initially eight Valkyries scattered around in variation locations, which are very powerful, heavily armored winged enemies, which you must defeat in a 1 on 1 fight, and take their crown as evidence of their demise once defeated. They come in a variety of forms, each with their own unique fighting style and set of moves, which is one of the things that makes this trophy difficult.
It can be hard to prepare for each new Valkyrie, because you'll have to spend some time with each one in order to learn and understand it's move patterns. These aren't just copy and paste jobs. There's alot of work and effort that's gone into this side quest in order to purposely keep you guessing for each fight, and at least add a slight layer of necessary mastery in order to beat all eight of the initial Valkryies through study. They also have alot of insta-death moves, which, if you fail to time a dodge or block correctly, will swiftly return you to your last checkpoint and make you start all over again. They feel like genuine boss fights.
Once you've beaten the initial eight, and gathered a trophy from each one, you'll need to head to the Council of the Valkyries, and present these eight trophies to their relevant thrones. This will trigger a final fight with the ninth Valkyrie, appropriately named the Queen.
Where I mentioned above about the fact that, even though you may not feel challenged by playing on Hard difficulty, this does come to the fore eventually, and this is exactly what I'm referring to. The Queen Valkyrie is an upgrade on every other Valkyrie up to this point, with faster, stronger attacks which will test your reactions, speed and timing. She has much more health and a larger array of insta-death attacks. I spent multiple sessions attempting to beat the Queen, and even when I felt like I'd reached a point where I'd mastered her entire move set, I would only be one badly timed dodge away from a restart. It's an extremely unforgiving boss fight, and is the peak of difficulty within the entire game. It is wise to upgrade Kratos' skills and weapons to the highest degree possible before you fight her.
The "Darkness and Fog" trophy, awarded for Retrieving all treasure from the Workshop's centre chamber, contributes a slightly grindy element to the list, through another side quest which becomes available later into the game.
Located in Nilfheim, the Workshop is home to a sort of labyrinth, clouded in poisonous gas and containing a series of chambers with increasingly difficult enemies to surpass into the subsequent chamber. The goal is to collect Mist Echoes, which can then be used to unlock the various treasures contained within the centre chamber. This includes 5 legendary chests and 3 realm tears, for a combined total of 68,500 mist echoes to unlock all of them and along with it, the above trophy.
You start within the main chamber, and can work your way around each chamber in the labyrinth, collecting Mist Echoes from chests along the way. The catch is, if you're either killed in combat by enemies, (which you must clear in each chamber to reap it's rewards from chests first), or you spend too long in the Labyrinth and succumb to the poisonous gas, which will gradually zap your health, you lose all progress and restart from the beginning.
The earlier chambers are filled with easier to deal with enemies, but the rewards are lesser. Each additional chamber you decide to take on will spawn harder to beat enemies, but more Mist Echoes, so it's a challenge of risk and reward and knowing when to cut your losses and get out of the maze to secure the Mist Echoes you've already possessed.
It will take around 5-10 hours for this trophy alone, but is also dependent on which difficulty level you're playing at. Some of the deeper chambers within the Labyrinth include Ogres, Higher Elves and even a Valkyrie (which you'll also need to beat as part of the "Chooser of the Slain" trophy mentioned at the top of this piece). All of these enemies have the capability to beat you very quickly on hard difficulty, and this is where the risk and reward element truly shines through. Do you really want to take on a Valkyrie for a few thousand extra Mist Echoes? Or do you just return to the beginning and protect what you already have? Each failed attempt will add to that original 5-10 hour estimate too, and 68,500 is still alot to collect.
A final thing that's important to note, and this relates to the games boatload of collectibles, which are scattered absolutely everywhere you look. Not all collectibles reward a trophy, but this list still has it's fair share, and whilst not difficult, per se, much like most collectible trophies aren't, there is one thing that this game doesn't do well that has a big knock on effect when it comes to securing these trophies.
The map. The world map is terrible for navigation, and it makes hunting down some of these vast array of collectibles you'll need for certain trophies way more arduous than it should be. There isn't a mini map located on the HUD and the overview map of the world is nice to look at, and pinpoints major locations clearly, but there is no perspective of depth or clarity of route you need to take when navigating through areas and hunting down these collectibles.
A guide will help to some degree, but it'll be mostly down to your own intuition, and some of the larger areas in the game were so confusing to trace back through, I ended up aimlessly running around trying to find out where I needed to go without adequate guidance from the game, which was extremely frustrating, and drew these out to be way longer than they should have been. Ironically enough, the game actually does a nice job of checklisting the collectibles for each area, so you can always reference what you need from said area, which is really useful when you're down to the final few collectibles, but it's just a shame when you feel like you lose that time from deficiencies elsewhere in the world map.
This list has a mixture of everything, which ultimately strikes a good balance. There is a genuine challenge from the nine Valkyries, a little bit of grind from Ivaldi's workshop, some patience-testing collectibles and, most importantly, a very good story-driven experience.
The list can be completed in full without any necessity to play on a higher difficulty level, though the challenge is there for those that want it, and you can realistically achieve the Platinum trophy within 30-35 hours. You could argue it can be finished in even less time than that, but my estimate also takes into account the fact I opted to play through from start to finish on hard difficulty, which led to some extra padding on time, especially with the amount of replay value involved on the higher difficulty level through death, when killing each of the Valkyries and collecting Mist Echoes especially.
However, on Hard difficulty, the main story, for all it's big battles and boss fights, isn't where the challenge lies. It's within the Valkyrie fights and the grind of Ivaldi's workshop. The poor game design when it comes to maps and navigation through some of the game's vast environments when hunting for collectibles also deserves a mark up, but even then, this is no more than a mid-range Platinum.
Notable Trophies -
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| Last Wish - Spread the ashes Chooser of the Slain - Defeat the nine Valkyries Darkness and Fog - Retrieve all treasure from the Workshops' centre chamber |
Choose of the Slain
Defeat the nine Valkyries
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