Introduction
As the final game in the God of War series before its soft reboot into Norse mythology, Ascension is also the only game I have yet to cover. A prequel set before the events of any other in the series, the story shows how the future god came to break his vow to Ares and come into the service of the other Olympians. Not only that, but it’s also the only game in the series to feature multiplayer, with the developers adding in a slew of new modes to be played with others online.
Prior to playing, this was the game I remembered the least about, despite playing it most recently. I remember thinking it was… fine, but didn’t really distinguish itself from the other games. Keep in mind that this was after marathoning all six main titles, so it very easily could have been franchise fatigue. I played the multiplayer for a bit as well, but never really got into it as much as with other games at the time, plus my online pass somehow got deleted over time.
I’ll be playing the game on the PS3 much like the other titles, meaning that if there are any issues they’re solely due to the game and not lag occurring over PlayStation Now. I even repurchased an online pass to give the multiplayer another shot, though the majority of this video will focus on the single player content. So now’s the time to finally wrap up my analysis of Kratos’s first life by taking an in-depth look at God of War: Ascension.
Development History
Ascension was announced on April 19, 2012, with a live developer interview streaming later on in May. For what was now the seventh game in a row, God of War Ascension had yet another new director, Todd Papy. The biggest question on everyone’s minds was why they added multiplayer to the game. And it was a major aspect of development. The majority of the game’s promotion was centered around and focused on the multiplayer aspect. It seems like Papy wanted to avoid the franchise fatigue that had undoubtedly set in at this point and figured multiplayer was the perfect way to do just that.
Now whether that’s true or just an excuse made after the publisher demanded a multiplayer mode we’ll never know, but it’s clear that at the very least the team wanted to experiment with the God of War formula, which is an admirable goal. The game was developed on the God of War 3 engine, which was retooled for online multiplayer. The art team also requested changes to push the graphical limits of the game without losing too much performance, including the addition of dynamic lighting.
A few details were revealed about the game after the announcement. A co-op campaign was considered at one point, but dropped to save development costs. The multiplayer characters would be nameless warriors to allow for customization (and likely to allow players to purchase new armor on PSN). The multiplayer was shown off at E3 that year and had some players confused, some excited, and many intrigued with how the mode would work out.
After more demos, a multiplayer beta, a super bowl trailer, and a tie-in comic explaining the multiplayer’s connection to the story, the game was released on March 12 2013 in North America to positive reviews. However, the reception wasn’t quite as warm as with the other games, Ascension being the lowest-reviewed entry in the series to date. Even the ‘Accolades’ section on its Wikipedia page states “Unlike previous entries, God of War: Ascension won no awards, but it was nominated in several Best of E3 20212 categories…” Ouch, kind of a harsh way to say everyone thought the game would be better than it actually was. Still, it sold well with 3 million units worldwide and was eventually added to Playstation Now, making that the only way to play Ascension on a modern system instead of a PS3.
Post-launch the game received a few DLC packs, with new maps being free. These included new armor, weapons, and even experience points. The game had its issues, with player data even being deleted at one point, but still has players going at it to this day even though the final DLC was released only seven months after the game’s launch. Clearly there are those who love this game for everything it tries to do, so let’s boot it up and find out why.
Opening Sequence
Upon starting up the game, a cutscene plays in which Gaia explains the war among the primordials and the resulting creation of the furies, ethereal punishers of traitors. Those who break their vows will be hunted down and tormented by the sisters, starting with Aegaeon the Hecatonchires after he betrayed Zeus. It’d be nice if we got the furies’ names and various traits to distinguish them, but as an explanation of the story’s setup, it works well enough. Unlike the other games, this one doesn’t start with a view of Kratos’s face, but rather a list of game updates and an invitation to go buy DLC on the PlayStation store, which is a bit forward to say the least.
The various modes are split up among the amber, each of which symbolizes a blood oath between Kratos and Ares, which is a cool way of changing things up and looks quite nice. The story begins with Kratos in chains after being captured by the furies, exhausted from his torture. The first camera shot also shows half of his face like the title screens of previous games which is a neat touch.
What’s weird is the production quality in the scene. Megaera comes and slashes Kratos up while the player gets a first person view and while the visuals are some of the most impressive on the PS3, the framerate stutters quite a bit, which is odd considering the consistent stability of God of War 3 four years earlier. The first-person view would work great for showcasing the little details, but it also makes these flaws stand out a lot more.
The fury gets a little too excited and blasts Kratos out of his neck restraint, allowing the player to dodge her attacks in a quick little minigame. He frees a blade from the wall and the player is able to attack for a while before Kratos frees the other blade and tackles her to the ground. She runs away and the game starts proper.
We fight a few bugs and arrive at a chest that the player can quickly smash open instead of slowly yanking on a handle. It’s a great change that quickens the pace and feels much more in-character for Kratos. If the older games are ever remade, this is one of the features I’d consider a must-have. Though the green and blue chests still need to be opened normally for some reason, so it’s more like a half-step in the right direction.
After nearly catching up to Meg, she smashes the floor and we see that her pet beetles are able to basically function as head crabs, turning the prisoners into our next enemies. The game also teaches that R1 is now grapple, with Kratos being able to fly over to enemies and smack them around for a bit before throwing them. It’s not made clear when you grapple over to enemies or when Kratos drags them towards himself, which makes the move a bit risky for newcomers. The game also offers the use of the rage meter, but I wanted to save it for the boss. Unfortunately rage works differently in Ascension, disappearing soon after combat ends, something I’ll be sure to touch on later.
It’s also revealed that the circle button is now used for an attack that disarms enemies, but then becomes a weapon attack when one is picked up. This is a major change- rather than finding new permanent weapons around the world that can be used for the rest of the adventure, here the weapons are found in the environment and can either be worn out until they disappear or thrown in a powerful attack. This changes a lot about the combat but right now it’s just used in a quick combat encounter to teach weapon attacks and blocking.
Eventually Meg gets annoyed and controls one of the Hecatonchires’ arms with her bugs, turning it into a giant monster. There’s a quick fight reminiscent of the fight against Poseidon’s Leviathan both in visual and gameplay design, where the titan’s arm swings the fighting platform around while Kratos dodges massive attacks and swipes at the beast before entering a QTE.
The next phase involves more dodging of the beast’s swipes, but here Kratos is tasked with hiding in these little holes to avoid the attacks rather than block or parry. Not only does it feel out of character, but it’s also not very fun considering how long this phase lasts and how easy these blows are to dodge. The particle effects are pretty and impressive, but the gameplay is really slow.
After a while Kratos is able to harm the monster and slide down the titan’s arm, dodging obstacles before reaching the sewers. There’s a quick climb out, a slide against the wall, and more climbing as these foot soldiers are wiggling behind a wall. We fight them, have a nice little seizure, and move onto a room with a cinematic view of Kratos through the bars of the prison cells which looks nice, though lacking any purpose.
Just then Aeggaeon grabs the room you're in and begins a sequence that’s so cool in concept and so mediocre in execution that it hurts. Enemies come out of the prison cells and begin to attack, with each phase being capped off with another rotation of the room. It’s a spectacle to behold, but the inconsistent frame rate, dark lighting, and zoomed out camera make the entire fight incredibly difficult to see, which sucks all of the fun out of the sequence. Eventually I turned the brightness up on the game, but then the lighter scenes and overuse of bloom gets in the way. It’s a lose-lose and a perfect example of overindulgent design.
After escaping the prison box, Kratos encounters his first cyclops. The fight is pretty standard, but it ends with a fun ride as he’s able to grab onto its head and use the beast to take out some enemies on the ground, much like in God of War 3. Then he frees a prisoner before the giant bug reappears and attacks, leading to a ham-fisted tie-in to the multiplayer. The man (who is, by the game’s own logic, likely there for breaking a vow to the gods) asks the gods for strength and is teleported to the rotunda of Olympus before he can be killed. It’s not offensively bad, just a pointless addition that feels like a weird non-sequitur out of context.
Kratos fights the monster in another dodging-based battle, but this time bugs surround him, acting as a distraction from the big guy’s attacks. After a few good blows the beast is killed and Kratos proceeds through the prison of the damned before reaching a brothel. He’s tempted by one woman in particular, but upon seeing the ring on her finger, tackles her through an illusory door revealing the woman to be Tisiphone in disguise. Megaera then charges in saying that she’ll take down Kratos before immediately running off and leaving more minions to take down Kratos.
She then reanimates Aegeon’s head into a horrifying monstrosity, starting the final encounter of the opening. Here, the player just has to dodge some basic attacks while hitting the two limbs holding up the battle platform and finishing off the enemies spawning in. It’s really cool to have the platform shifting around like this, but once again the camera is so zoomed out and there’s so much going on that it can be really difficult to keep track of the action.
From there he’s tossed to another platform where we have a tug of war battle between the head and another hand monster. It’s not all that challenging since it’s just a matter of running back and forth while getting a few hits in every now and again. Afterwards Kratos jumps onto the hand monster and Ratatouilles his way to victory in the largest-scale version of yelling “stop hitting yourself” I’ve ever seen. This part is all about scale and spectacle rather than gameplay, but it does indeed look really cool as Kratos plunges the hand into the Hecatonchires face. Meg appears and the two have another tether fight on poor Aegeon’s eyeball before plunging to the ground. Kratos kills her and steals her amulet, the story cuts back a few weeks, and the opening concludes.
And it’s… fine. I like the changes such as the red chest smashing, the idea of grappling opponents, and as always the spectacle is still top-notch, but the beginning is easily the slowest of all the games thus far before reaching the main boss and when you do it’s mostly just a copy of the first fight from God of War 3, but not as interesting.
When you do make it to the head, it’s a bit unsatisfying to just fight minions, then have an easy battle running back and forth with the hand, and conclude with a tethered slapfest to finish the fury off. Controlling the hand is really just a fancy toy since it’s impossible to fail and the back and forth with Meg doesn’t even show a health bar, leading me to think that it’s either almost impossible or entirely impossible to lose the fight. It’s a lot less satisfying since there was no actual boss fight against the fury herself.
This opening isn’t terrible by any means and in most franchises it’d be considered outstanding, but it feels like the developers prioritized spectacle over substance and thought the changes to the core gameplay would be enough to mask the lackluster combat encounters and boss fights. There’s plenty of effort put in for sure, but I’m not sure their focus was in the right place.
Top that off with the iffy framerate and brightness, the vast majority of enemies just being beetles, and the odd choice to start the story from the middle, and it simply doesn’t live up to the standard set by past games. And I have no issue with the story being nonlinear, but so far there doesn’t appear to be a reason for it, with the game giving this grand opening only to immediately cut away. I know these stories are usually light, but I’m not sure this format was the best choice. So let’s take a look at the plot in its entirety before making a final call.
Story
Flash back a few weeks. Shortly after breaking his bond to Ares, Kratos is seeing illusions. He’s approached by a shadowy man who tells him that these visions aren’t real and gives him a bracelet and ring to reveal the truth, with the ring being the one on Tisiphone’s finger in the opening. He tells Kratos that the furies are hunting him (which I guess is supposed to explain the illusions, but that’s kind of unclear). The furies approach and he offers to draw them away, telling Kratos to find the oracle Aletheia in Delphi for answers.
There’s a long trek to the temple using a bunch of mechanical snakes before reaching the inside. Here a horny pair of conjoined twins, seen earlier tormenting their slaves, decide that Kratos can’t see the oracle without a gift. He takes them down in a fight, but the oracle is crushed in the process. She stays alive long enough to show Kratos that the shadow man was telling the truth about the furies being after him. The man is named Orkos, a fury himself. She says that Kratos has to kill the one who holds onto his bond and the key to doing so can be found in the statue of Apollo. She dies and Kratos heads out.
On the way, Kratos runs into Orkos again, who reveals his backstory. Orkos is the son of Ares and Alecto, conceived as part of Ares’ plot to take over Olympus with the perfect warrior. When Orkos failed in his role, Ares left him to the furies who made him the oathkeeper, with each oath burned into his skin and encased in amber.
Kratos has unknowingly forged 3 oaths to Ares. The first when the god destroyed his enemies, the second when Kratos spilled the blood of the innocent, and the third when he slaughtered his family. Of which only the first seems like an oath that Kratos would need to keep, but either way Orkos saw Kratos’s oaths as an illegitimate trick and decided to help him escape the injustice. Of course, Kratos cuts him off before he mentions the murder of his family, which is strange considering his amnesia shouldn’t have taken effect yet. Kratos refuses his help and takes a giant-powered boat ride over to the statue of Apollo.
The story goes back to the present day where in the aftermath of Megaera’s defeat, Kratos uses the re-obtained Amulet of Uroborus to proceed on his journey. Tisiphone attempts to trick him with an illusion of glory in which he is praised as a great spartan general, but upon seeing the ring on her finger he breaks out of the trick in an undeniably overt reference to 300. Then she just kinda leaves, so he’s free to carry on.
He finds the Scribe of Hecatonchires, the first man to be placed in the prison. He reveals that Orkos truly has pure intentions, wanting to help all of his mother’s prisoners, himself included. The scribe never really shows up again, so this mostly feels like overt exposition. Outside, Kratos is attacked by Tisiphone’s energy pterodactyl and rips out its heart, which becomes relevant later.
For now, the story cuts back to the past where Kratos explores the statue for a while before being attacked by Tisiphone and Megaera. Here we see that he’s the one who cut off her arm and the game takes part in everyone's favorite pastime in which the player beats the boss and then immediately loses in the following cutscene when Alecto appears and traps Kratos in Venom symbiote. She tells him to return to Ares, but he refuses before Orkos appears and saves the Spartan, giving him the power to create duplicates of himself before heading out.
Kratos goes on to restore the statue of Apollo to its former glory, nearly reaching the eyes of Aletheia. Orkos reappears to explain that he and Aletheia were lovers and she told him about a vision of Ares and Alecto plotting the downfall of Olympus. The two set out to warn Zeus, but the furies captured them, ripping out Aletheia’s eyes and hiding them in the destroyed temple as the only proof of their plan. He also says that Ares needs Kratos to bring those plans to fruition. Kratos refuses to help the god of war and Orkos leaves him to his task.
He goes on to solve the puzzles and reactivate the tower, opening the path to the eyes, but the furies are already waiting with Orkos in captivity. They proceed to capture Kratos as well and steal his magical belongings before bringing him back to the Hecatonchires in an attempt to get him to return to Ares’ service.
In the present, Kratos moves forward. walking into a building where he finds Calliope sleeping. He kneels beside her and kisses her before encountering his wife Lyssandra. As the two begin to kiss he notes the ring on her finger, discovering the illusion cast by Alecto. She promises that he can be with his wife through her, but he denies the illusion, rejecting her reality and substituting his own by using the oath stone of Orkos to reach the eyes of Aletheia on her hip.
He then battles the two remaining sisters with Alecto turning into a giant sea monster. Eventually, he snaps Tisiphone’s neck after overcoming more illusions and kills Alecto to finally end his torment. He returns to Sparta where Orkos comes to visit, remarking that he would’ve accepted the furies’ offer to live in an illusion with his loved ones. He then says that before their deaths, his mothers made him Kratos’s oath keeper as punishment. He begs for an honorable death and after initially refusing, Kratos concedes, killing Orkos and restoring the memories of his family’s murder. He burns his home and moves forward as the credits roll.
And damn this story is a mess. In concept it’s fine, but there are so many plot holes, lazy explanations, and vague details that the whole thing falls apart. At its core, the story is kind of a mix between God of War 1 and 2. Kratos needs a special power to defeat 3 sisters, so he goes through a temple to obtain it. The central plot is simple, straightforward, and entertaining as an excuse to run through ancient Greece yet again.
It’s the finer details that cause the story to unravel. It leaves so many questions and any attempts to answer them just create more. Much like Chains of Olympus, why is Kratos able to take down 3 primordial beings, but requires the power of Pandora’s box to defeat Ares? How is he able to breathe underwater and use elemental magic now, but not in the future?
And if we want to get really nitpicky, why doesn’t Kratos have his elemental abilities in the opening sequence? This means that Kratos goes from being powerless to immediately regaining all of his skills after killing Megaera. It’s a tiny detail that could be considered too meta to be a legitimate complaint, but the fact that they didn’t even attempt to explain this shows the lack of effort put into the writing.
Then there’s the gimmick of the nonlinear narrative. In sequential order, the events of the story make plenty of sense, have a solid setup, twist, and fun conclusion. The only reason I can guess that they’d present the story this way would be to have the bombastic battle with Meg to kick things off and while I understand that reasoning, it really adds nothing to the story and makes for some awkward pacing. Rather than pressing forward and feeling the relief of being saved by Orkos only to experience defeat soon after, we know all of the story’s twists and turns beforehand, leaving the game without any of the suspense or tension typical of a true adventure.
Worst of all is the oath magic. There are so many issues with this plot device that I’m not sure where to begin. As far as creating a bond goes, I don’t see how Kratos spilling the blood of the innocent or killing his family count as taking a vow of service to Ares. The oath should have been created when he pledged his life on the battlefield, no need for three stones. And then there’s the most nonsensical aspect of the story- his amnesia.
The writers couldn’t seem to decide whether Kratos knows that his family is dead. If so, we also have no clue if he knows that he’s the one that killed them. It’s possible that the stone was just keeping away the nightmares, but if an oath to Ares could remove them from his mind, why couldn’t he have gotten the same treatment from Athena or the other Olympians?
The reason is that the writers don’t want you to think about it. It’s a bunch of vague nonsense with no thought behind it used to drive the plot forward and nothing more. And while this series is no stranger to random plot macguffins used for motivation, they’ve always had a clear and distinct purpose. Here the amnesia and oaths exist to try and create character development, and we’ll discuss that in the next section, but in all reality they come off as lifeless and lazy without a proper explanation.
Of course, none of this is to say the story is irredeemable. It’s a God of War game, so much like with every other narrative thus far it takes a back seat to the spectacle and gameplay. But the team’s desire to make a game that could appeal to newcomers and fans alike results in a plot centered around something meaningless to the rest of the story. We as an audience learn nothing new about the lore and it only does the bare minimum to set up a structure for the events that follow. It serves its purpose, but that’s all it does.
Characterization
When it comes to how Kratos is portrayed, Ascension is a difficult game to pin down. On one hand, we get to see him in a more sympathetic light since he isn’t haunted by the nightmares of killing his family. On the other hand, it’s this very illusion that makes his motivation questionable. The entirety of Kratos’s drive throughout the series has been to rid himself of the nightmares of his past and get revenge against those who betrayed him, but since he doesn’t have that motivation in this game he becomes a more passive protagonist and it shows.
This entire game he just kind of rolls with the punches as others provide him with an opportunity to move forward. Orkos tells him to see the oracle, the oracle sends him to the statue, the furies capture him, Okros releases him, the furies capture him again, Megaera sets him free, Kratos gets his stuff back, kills the furies to learn the truth, and hell, Orkos even has to beg Kratos to kill him.
There are very few moments where Kratos feels like he’s actively pursuing a goal because he wants to, a direct result of his amnesia. It just seems unnecessary since Kratos’s motivation to stop working for Ares after being tricked into killing his wife and daughter is more than enough, proven by his determination in the first game. In the end, he comes off as being bored most of the time.
The biggest question to ask is why Kratos broke his bond with Ares in the first place. If his bond hid the nightmares from his head along with the knowledge that he killed his family, why would he have been so adamant about leaving Ares’ service, especially after getting amnesia from the furies’ torment? And if he doesn’t remember why he’s fighting, why would the player care about his fight?
Though that’s not to say they completely failed his character. It’s actually interesting to see a kinder side to Kratos. Worrying about the Oracle when she was crushed and seeing the bond between him and Orkos grow over time into true respect feels natural, showing that without the nightmares and thirst for revenge Kratos can actually be a good person, expanding upon something we’ve seen in previous games’ flashbacks.
As such, he’s kind and gentle when interacting with the illusions of his wife and daughter. He knows that the most important thing about loving someone is being able to give your love to them, which is why he never seriously considers Alecto’s offer. While they never really dive deep enough to connect the player to his family’s bond, we do at least see how important they are to Kratos.
However, the end result feels like a half measure. We don’t actually get to see Kratos contemplate or accept the reality of his family’s deaths. The writers clearly wanted to make him more compassionate and human, but when he immediately snaps back to being his typical short-tempered, violent self on a whim the inconsistency makes him even harder to relate to and his actions feel more scripted for plot convenience as a result. I get the feeling this was to avoid the kind of initial backlash that the 2018 game received, with fears that fans would deem his humanization as a betrayal of his character and as a result Kratos feels more unnatural and stagnant than ever before.
On a much more positive note, Orkos is the best NPC to exist in the entire Greek saga. A man tormented his whole life, risking everything to fight injustice even in opposition to those who once saved his life. He may appear mysterious at first, but he’s always relatable. In many instances I found myself in his shoes, frustrated at Kratos’s inability to listen to reason. And his noble sacrifice in the end and bond with Kratos over time only serve to endear him even more to the player. He may not have much of a character arc and is definitely used as a plot device over all else, but that’s what makes the fact that he’s so compelling even more impressive. My only complaint is that he should have been in the story more, especially his mission with Aletheia.
Though I really wish I could say the same about the furies. While they do exhibit minor traits that might differentiate them, they’re barely characters. It’s a real shame since as the manifestations of vengeance itself the writers could have done a lot to differentiate them even more. We’re told about these traits from the scrolls on the ground and NPC dialog, but they’re never shown. Not to say that they need fully fleshed out backstories and motivations and as antagonists they serve their purpose well enough, but when compared to the gods in the previous game they almost feel amalgamous by comparison.
I feel that Ascension wanted to be more ambitious in its character writing than it actually is. The foundations for interesting characters and new developments for Kratos are all here, but they’re never expounded on in any meaningful or interesting way. Orkos is a great addition, but he can’t provide enough humanity to shoulder the entire story. It’s what happens when you want to try something new while still playing it safe.
Presentation
Where the team decided to show its ambition the most was the visuals. Ascension’s scale and amount of detail manage to match the level of God of War 3 and in many cases, exceed it. The intricacies on each character’s face and the effects used when up close and personal with an enemy are some of the best on the PS3 bar none. The animations are fluid and responsive, with impressive effects and lighting adding more and more to every scene. Unfortunately, that’s where my praise ends because in order to achieve this level of detail, concessions had to be made and the trade-off was not worth the reward.
For one, this game decides to pay homage to God of War Betrayal by occasionally matching its framerate. Cutscenes, large battles, running through empty hallways, this game is a mess. I tried playing God of War 3 again to see if this was an issue with my PS3, but no- Ascension is terribly optimized, with frames constantly dropping, making many scenes difficult to see and annoying to watch. I mean, look at the epilogue cutscene, it’s like my PS3 is gasping for air!
The strangest thing is that God of War 3 has a similarly variable frame rate, but while 3’s was likely lower overall, it was far more consistent, typically running between 30 and 40 FPS. Ascension can reach as high as 55, but also falls as low as 12 in cutscenes and promptless QTEs. If I were to guess, I’d say this might be caused by switching to higher-resolution textures to show more detail up-close, but even the fine folks at Digital Foundry were stumped. Either way, it causes the game to feel choppy far too often.
Compounding that issue is the camera. For the most part, it works fine, just like in God of War 3. Unlike in the PSP games it’s not limited to a small section of the battlefield, making offscreen enemy attacks a thing of the past. Instead, they sprinted to the opposite end of the spectrum. The camera in this game occasionally decides to zoom out to an absurd distance.
With the camera so far away, players are able to see the entirety of the setpieces taking place. It can be jaw-dropping, but it also means that Kratos and all of the enemies become extremely difficult to see, having major repercussions on combat. While God of War 3 had a few moments like this, they were rare and more importantly, not as extreme. This would be the equivalent of putting Gaia’s entire body in the frame during the opening rather than just focusing on the action.
Remember those fancy lighting and particle effects I mentioned? Well they may look pretty, but they’re incompetently overused and can often get in the way of combat. The extreme bloom lighting on the blades and outdoor areas, little elemental effects flying off of the blades or enemy attacks, it all looks nice, but also blocks your view and clutters the screen during a fight. When compounded with the camera and framerate, it often feels like the game is actively fighting against the player’s enjoyment.
And in case it wasn’t already evident, there’s a distinct lack of polish that wasn’t present in any previous entry. Minor animation bugs, clipping, blurry backgrounds, they’re all minor, but considering how rare they were in the other games and the level of detail here, they stand out much more and take away from the experience.
Even the music takes a backseat here. While the soundtrack is typical for the series and works well enough there are a few cutscenes and gameplay sequences where it cuts out like in Chains of Olympus. It leaves this awkward emptiness that’s practically begging for a score, but feels unfinished without one, such as in the scene preceding Kratos’s capture.There are even times that an encounter’s music will fade out before the fight is over.
However, one notable improvement comes in the acting. Ascension is the first game in the franchise to use simultaneous voice and motion capture and it really pays off. With Terrence Carson returning and the talents of Troy Baker and Jennifer Hale as Orkos and Alecto respectively, the performances are top-notch. The entire cast fits their roles perfectly and the acting feels more natural due to the shift in capture method.
I don’t want to give the impression that Ascension isn’t aesthetically pleasing. The acting, music, visual design, and art direction are all some of the best seen thus far. The only issue I have is that it appears the team focused so much on achieving their ambitious goals that they neglected to determine whether those changes actually enhanced the experience of playing the game. This may have been fixed with more development time and it wouldn’t surprise me if this was rushed to avoid competing with the PS4’s launch, but this lack of polish and over-designing causes the game to underperform, making me wish Icarus were in this game because he would have made for an apt metaphor.
Combat
The combat in Ascension pulls its roots directly from God of War 3. The main square and triangle attacks remain largely unchanged. However, the developers decided to take that system and modify it in various ways, both in an attempt to shake up the typical formula and make the single player combat more closely resemble the multiplayer. After 6 videos I’m sure you don’t want me to go over the basics again so let’s focus on what changed… and why nearly every decision was either poorly conceived or poorly executed.
Core combat has a few major changes. The best (in concept) is the grapple. Using his grab, Kratos can now attach himself to enemies and either beat them down, pull them close, or fly over and attack. However, this comes with some downsides. For one, it’s hard to tell when Kratos will pull a creature in and when he’ll fly towards them. And a lot of the time, he’ll just leave the enemy tethered which, with the restricted movement and mediocre power of the blades in this state, can be frustrating and kill the pacing of a combat encounter.
I really like the crescent moons above the enemies’ heads indicating whether they’ll be grabbed or killed when grappled, but with the number of enemies in each battle it can be difficult to grab the right one, leading to even more frustration. Still, I like what this brings to combat, I just think it needed more time in the shop before it was ready for prime time.
The next change is the replacement of the traditional grab button with a barehanded attack. As mentioned earlier, this allows Kratos to disarm enemies, but that’s not really useful since enemy attack patterns don’t change all that much after losing a weapon. However, I do like its ability to knock over enemies with shields, leaving them vulnerable to attack. Though this button is better known for using environmental weapons when you have one equipped.
There are five alternate weapons in the game- the sword, shield, sling, spear, and club. Each one has two moves- either attack or toss the item with an ability that stuns enemies. Gameplay-wise they all feel very similar, with only the spear having a ranged attack and shield being able to charge to differentiate themselves. Either way, the player has more useful tools available at all times in the blades, so using these equipped items is pointless. They can’t be upgraded, they aren’t fun to use, and their combos are limited and boring, meaning the best use for them is to toss them for a stun attack whenever you see fit.
This wouldn’t be a big issue if it weren’t for the third change- no new weapons. Instead of getting new toys to play with along the adventure, Kratos now gets elemental power ups for the blades. This is baffling considering how much focus was put into avoiding franchise fatigue since this choice forces players to use the one weapon that’s been in the series the entire time and I guarantee that even if this is someone’s first experience with God of War, they’ll be tired of using the blades by the end.
Well, is it worth the trade-off? The four elemental powers that can be found are fire from Ares, lightning from Zeus, ice from Poseidon, and “soul” from Hades. And when thinking about how the elements could come into play in the God of War series a lot of ideas come to mind. Ascension capitalizes on none of them. Nothing about the elements is taken into account in the gameplay in any meaningful way.
Each upgrade gets its own version of the basic combo, a spell to activate, two block attacks, and a rage attack. The issue is that since the blades are used for every element, the means of activating those powers is identical and as a result they don’t feel all that different to use. What’s worse is how these abilities are unlocked.
Fire is the first element obtained and has all of its abilities aside from the block attacks available from the start, which is great. I love having a bunch of new tools to use and it almost feels like unlocking new abilities for the blades of chaos. The Destruction of Ares spell is really useful as an AoE attack that can disperse enemies and the rage attack plants a sticky bomb on opponents like the combos in Ghost of Sparta. It doesn’t revolutionize the gameplay, but it’s fun to use.
The other elements have a few problems though. Instead of unlocking all of the basic abilities from the start and improving as the element is levelled up, each element only provides a standard combo move at first, then a block attack, the rage attack, the strong block attack, and then finally the spell when fully upgraded. This system is a nightmare. Players aren’t going to want to use an element when they’re locked out of using magic and the element itself doesn’t offer much benefit out of the box. Not to mention that they don’t know what a spell will do before upgrading, meaning that pouring hard earned orbs into a single weapon until its fully upgraded always feels like a gamble.
Plus since the blades of chaos need to be upgraded separately, they become the default right away since dealing increased damage with every attack is invaluable when compared to the benefits of upgrading the other items. They should have made the upgrades cost more, but affect all elements equally with damage boosts being included. That way unlocking a new level feels rewarding and opens up a variety of new tools to experiment with. As the system is now, the game pushes players towards specializing in one or two elements for the majority of the campaign, making the already monotonous combat even more bland.
And while we’re on the subject of upgrades, the blades get a special ability when levelled up for the first time- parrying and deflecting enemy projectiles. This is something that required the golden fleece in God of War 2, but here it’s tucked away in the upgrade menu. This move does not work.
In every other game with a parry, it was activated by blocking at the appropriate time. It felt great, kept the flow of combat going, and allowed for some fun back-and-forths with enemies. Here, the timing aspect forces the player to stop to block before parrying and has a small delay that was created to compensate for lag in the online mode. The issue is that it feels awful since your actions aren’t in time with the enemy attacks, making fights feel awkward.
However, the worst impact on pacing comes from the finishers on large enemies. While smaller enemies still have their bloody and gruesome fatalities, with many being the best in the series, the larger opponents get a tether minigame like the fight against Megaera in the beginning. These simply show Kratos holding the monster down and attacking while occasionally dodging its blows. For the life of me I have no clue why these were added to the game.
Dodging enemy attacks is a joke since time slows down whenever they make a move. Not only that, but I’m pretty sure there aren’t any cases where the dodge direction matters, just requiring the player to tilt the stick. These little asides are more or less a shitty version of Punch-Out. They also add onto the existing question of why other enemies don’t dogpile Kratos while this is happening. The fight just stops for the entire duration. It’s not fun, not challenging, and completely kills the flow and pacing of combat.
Even the changes to the rage system are ill-conceived. In the other games, the rage meter charged up over time and could be used whenever the player was in a pinch to get a boost of power. Here, it’s still a meter that goes up with bigger combos, but it also goes down if the player gets hit and by a huge margin at that. With the number of tiny enemies on screen, the player is bound to get hit every once in a while, making the rage meter barely usable.
Even if the player does manage to fill it up, it has to be used quickly. No strategizing or deciding the best time to use it, instead the player is forced to activate it quickly or the meter drains on its own. I don’t mind the addition of a challenging meter to fill up, but if it’s going to be this strict, the player should basically become a god when it’s turned on, but I can barely tell the difference. And when the gameplay is already so unvaried making this tool even harder to use was not a wise choice.
There are also some new items that Kratos can utilize in combat. The Amulet of Uroborus can be pointed at enemies and used to slow them down, even lifting smaller enemies into the air. It’s a cool idea, similar to the head of Helios in God of War 3 as a stun attack. I didn’t use it all that much since enemies in the game tend to surround Kratos so a directional beam isn’t the most useful tool, but it’s not a bad idea and I could definitely see some players getting a lot of use out of it.
The oath stone of Orkos is actually great. In combat it allows Kratos to escape the black goo spit out by enemies, but even more importantly it creates a doppelganger that fights by your side for a while. It’s a really cool way to distract opponents and it’s fun to fight side-by-side with your clone. It kind of makes me wish the campaign had full co-op, but as a new tool it’s a great addition. There’s also the eyes of truth, but those are only used to get rid of the illusory walls in the final boss fight.
So is the combat in God of War Ascension terrible? Absolutely not, but every change seems to have been made without understanding why the gameplay works so well in the first place. At its core, the God of War combat system is fun and Ascension utilizes just enough of it to maintain that spirit, but every single change works against the system in favor of working for multiplayer. So no, it’s not terrible, it’s just the worst in the series.
Enemies
The enemy variety in Ascension has a lot of ups and downs. On one hand, they really chose the cream of the crop for this roster. Some of the best enemies make their return like the centaur, chimera, and cerberus, all of which are nearly identical to their God of War 3 counterparts, and just as fun to fight. Enemies like the gorgon also got a redesign, looking more like a fierce cobra. There’s even a new variety of the cyclops called the elephantaur that, while confusing as an enemy in ancient Greece, makes for a cool new design of the classic monster.
I also like the new version of the wraith, able to conjure spirit versions of themselves to fight, which is a great way to connect their abilities to the illusions Kratos experiences on his journey. The empusa is great in regards to both design and gameplay. They’re really agile and able to attack on all fours, on two legs, and dive forward to grapple the player. They can be frustrating in the moment, but add some much needed tension to fights whenever they show up.
On the other hand we have the encounter designs and the elemental talos. The talos is a giant metal statue like those found in God of War 3, but here there’s no special weapon used to deal damage. Instead they cycle between vulnerability and invincibility, forcing the player to constantly wait until they’re allowed to attack. Yet another example of awkward pacing. Plus, while the talos specialize in one of three elements, this only affects their move pool and not their vulnerabilities, an obvious missed opportunity to add some depth to the combat while forcing players to try out different weapons, something that holds true for all elemental enemies in the game.
The biggest issue is one that I’ve mentioned in other videos- encounter variety. While a lot of God of War’s best enemies are present in Ascension, the majority of the fights will be against various foot soldiers, harpies, and SO. MANY. BUGS! Having all of these fantastic creatures means fuck all when they’re rarely put into use. The repetition is mind-numbing and almost invalidates all of the effort put into the positive changes to the opposing forces.
Once again I’m left asking if the designers knew why people enjoy playing God of War or if anyone playtested the game from start to finish. It’s the simplest issue in the world to solve, just change the lineup around every once in a while, but they couldn’t even do the bare minimum with all of the necessary tools right at their fingertips. The entire campaign just feels like an afterthought where a designer threw in fights for the sake of it rather than to create a unique and dynamic experience for the player. Which is why it’s so confusing that the boss fights clearly have so much thought and effort put into them.
Bosses
The first fight after the opening is against the manticore. A mini boss that’s alright, but far too similar to other quadrupedal enemies to feel impactful. It starts off by grabbing a man seeking the Oracle and burning him to a crisp before attacking. At first, the beast is able to fly around shooting out fireballs and charge forward while leaving a trail of flames in its wake. In the air the manticore isn’t tough since its attacks are easy to dodge and it doesn’t react to getting hit or try to counter in any way.
Once on the ground it becomes a bigger threat, able to stab with its tail to leave Kratos stunned by the venom, flap its wings to create an air blast, and stomp forward with its claw. After taking enough damage, Kratos grapples the beast and plays through another boring minigame before taking it down and ripping off a wing, keeping the rest of the fight on the ground. Its only new ability in this state is to summon tiny versions of itself to fight on its behalf while it hobbles around the arena. I’m not sure why it doesn’t use fire moves anymore, but eventually it gets too weak and Kratos finishes it off for good in yet another tether game.
Later on, there’s another manticore, but this time Kratos cuts off the monster’s arm before the fight even starts. It has more health, a wing attack, and flame breath, but it’s mostly the same fight. I’m not sure why the developers decided to ground it from the start and why there aren’t more enemies this time around, but on the whole these fights do serve their purpose of breaking up typical combat, even if they do feel a bit too similar to the cerberus and chimera.
The next major fight is against Pollux and Castor, the gemini twins and guards of the Oracle. They stole her powers of time manipulation, which apparently offers them telekinesis and teleportation for some reason. The fight begins with a platforming challenge, but it’s not quite clear what the player’s supposed to do a lot of the time. It’s a really long sequence, bordering on gratuitous, but at least it gets us to the real fight.
And this battle is legitimately fantastic. The twins have a plethora of moves such as a psychic blast through the arena, energy beams, sword attacks, ground slams, all well telegraphed and engaging. Soon he’ll destroy sections of the platform and leave energy around the arena to slow Kratos down. He also destroys the pillars, leaving debris that can be thrown at him. The entire fight is dynamic and a ton of fun.
In his next phase, the prophet restores the pillars and starts sending out psychic blasts. I thought these were meant to be reflected at first, but instead the pillars must be destroyed while the stage crumbles beneath your feet. Not the most exciting phase, but when he returns to the ground it’s with a new ability to teleport, adding even more speed to the fight. After a while, he’ll get weak and destroy most of the stage, leading to a really out of place first-person sequence in which Kratos blocks an attack before rendering the man exhausted in the center of the stage. He runs forward and the player gets a short QTE before knocking Castor out.
Unfortunately, his little buddy is still alive, and he’s the one with the psychic powers. Pollux now starts the final phase of the fight, sending out more blasts en masse from a distance and slamming the sword down with a ton of power up close. He’ll also destroy the arena and surround himself with more time-slowing energy. In the end, the duo knocks Aletheia off her pedestal, Kratos gives them a fifty percent off discount on surgery, and the game awkwardly pauses to allow the player to finish off the little mongrel once and for all. This fight is one of the best in the entire series. While some phases can be overly long and the beginning is a little tedious, the variety and pacing on display are top-notch.
The fury fights are a bit different. The first of which is a bout against Megaera and Tisiphone on the gauntlet of Apollo. Tisiphone begins with a bunch of illusory spartan soldiers, which can be tricky to deal with due to their shields. They can get annoying over the course of the fight, but their weakness to magic makes them manageable.
Soon, Meg appears and joins the Spartans in battle. She attacks with strikes from her massive claws. Nothing really groundbreaking and really easy to dodge. She can also jump from the rooftops to cause an energy blast along the ground, but once you know it’s there it’s not much of an issue.
She then crawls back up to the rooftops and begins summoning her bugs to fight for her, requiring Kratos to steal spears from the Spartans to attack. This phase is pretty boring and repetitive since minions are never that interesting to fight. When the fury falls, Kratos runs up for a QTE in which he cuts off her arm, explaining that little detail from the start of the game. This also prompts Tisiphone to attack with her spirit bird, starting yet another tether minigame.
This leads into the next phase, where Tisiphone attacks with her bird before taking to the sky and sending down energy beams. This attack is just an annoyance since the beams aren’t that hard to dodge and Tisiphone is invulnerable in this state. After more damage is done, Meg comes down to help, with the two sisters teaming up for a final phase.
This phase is hard to analyze. It’s just… a lot. There are a ton of attacks from the sisters, but they mostly consist of basic strikes to be blocked and charges to be dodged. Tisiphone can make Meagara invincible in a bubble, which is annoying since it just prolongs the fight, and the combo attacks often feel like more of the same. Even so, there’s so much going on that it can be tricky to decide between getting hit and fighting or going through the monotony of dodging attacks until an opening shows up. There’s a lot of effort here, but the pacing of the fight makes it a complete slog.
Oddly enough, this is also the only place in the entire game with a QTE that requires moving the stick. It’s so late in the game that it feels completely out of left field and more out of place than surprising. Either way the QTE ends, Alecto traps Kratos, Tisiphone and Meg reveal that they’re alive, and Orkos saves the day. The fight itself is okay, but never really grants that sense of excitement experienced in other God of War fights. The section with Tisiphone is pretty solid and the team up is frantic, but tense so overall it’s a passable boss.
Lastly we have the end game- Alecto and Tisiphone. Alecto transforms into a sea monster and the game loads for a bit before showing Kratos outside, sliding down her tentacle in a massive storm, so I guess they didn’t have the budget to show this illusion being created. The first phase just involves attacking Tisiphone with more Spartan illusions on a ship. Her attacks are pretty similar to the previous fight, making for a repetitive start to a final boss.
After she’s taken care of, Alecto grabs the ship and begins attacking with her tentacles. The appendage grabbing the ship needs to be destroyed, but keeps getting protected by illusions that need to be removed by the eyes of truth. This phase is incredibly boring since every attack is easy to avoid and it goes on for way too long.
In the end we get a QTE and learn a new move- the blade impale. This charges up the blades for one massive attack and allows Kratos to destroy an entire tentacle. This move is literally only used in this fight and could have been replaced with a normal QTE instead of being a full move that interrupts the action for a tutorial. I have no clue why this is in the game.
The final phase involves Alecto revealing her entire body and using her massive tentacles to attack the small platform on which Kratos stands. There’s more goop and a bite attack as well. It kind of feels similar to the Kraken fight from the first game, both in choice of monster and in game mechanics, but it’s different enough to be entertaining. Tisiphone soon shows up to do the same god damn attacks as usual, which means more aimless running around and waiting for an opening. But then she just flies away at some point and stays gone for the rest of the fight for some reason. Kinda noticing a pattern with her...
The fight with Aletco continues, she’s defeated, Kratos kills the two furies in a QTE, and the game comes to an end. This fight is odd. Everything with Tisiphone is a repeat of the previous boss, the tentacles on the ship are tedious, and the final fight is okay, but really familiar for the series. While the spectacle is there, the gameplay is not and though it’s an acceptable way to finish off the game, Ascension goes out with neither a bang nor a whimper, just a middling party popper.
It’s really strange. There was clear effort put in here, but it looks like the developers either didn’t have enough time or focused on the wrong aspects of development. They added a lot to the fights, but repetition, awkward pacing, and overdesigning makes the bosses feel a little self-indulgent at times. With more restraint these could have all been fantastic, but as it stands the only notable fight is the Oracle’s guard, with the others being the game design equivalent of mixing your crayons and getting the color brown.
Platforming
One thing that’s been left largely untouched is the platforming. It’s been simplified and reduced a bit, but otherwise it’s still here. For one, the climbing still exists, but it’s been modified to allow for 3D movement, like the Uncharted games. I never realized it before, but yeah, the other God of War games only allowed for climbing along a single plane, so this is an improvement. Plus, climbing combat has been removed altogether, which should make for some much faster pacing.
...Except it doesn’t. The combat may be gone, but the climbing sections are much longer and more prominent to compensate. The issue is that unlike in the Uncharted games, Kratos has no one to talk to and doesn’t think out loud, so these segments serve no purpose. They rarely pan out to show a beautiful vista or break the tedium with a surprise, it’s just a slower way of getting from point A to point B. It’s a shame because removing the combat is a smart change, but apparently the team thought panning out during combat was better than when climbing.
There are also rope climbing segments that work just like in the other games, though the tutorial doesn’t let players know they can grab onto a rope until they already have, likely a minor frustration for those new to the series. Or those who thought the rope was part of the scenery like me. When on the ground, traditional platforming sequences are mostly a thing of the past. Instead, these segments transition between regular platforming and QTEs on the fly. A good example being the first phase of the oracle guard fight and similarly, the other platforming sections can be fun, but usually go on a bit too long. I also wish they had let the player take control more often. This isn’t a major issue. I just miss the typical challenges, especially with the dash ability being yet another missed opportunity.
For some reason, Kratos now has a dinky little run he can perform. It doesn’t go very far or all that fast. It’s completely useless in the game and was only added in for multiplayer. But why not have Kratos use this ability to run through an obstacle course? Between this and the 3D climbing there definitely could have been a better use for the mechanics than set pieces and QTEs. Even the underwater platforming segments make a return and no one wanted them back, it just feels like these ideas were an afterthought instead of a focus.
Puzzles
The puzzles in Ascension are at least more thought-out. The first major challenge is actually optional. I like the idea of tucking away this giant room with collectibles for those wanting to find them. It’s a great reward for some minor exploration. In this room there’s a giant spiked cylinder rolling around with three hooks in the center. Each hook pulls out a section of the wall that stops the cube for a short time. The solution involves pulling out the stairs to stop the cylinder just long enough to pull out the other stoppers, giving plenty of time to reach the stairs. It’s not incredibly complex, but for an optional treat it’s a welcome addition.
The next conundrum takes place in the temple of the oracle. This is a multi-room, multi-stage puzzle that’s a lot simpler than it appears. In the first room there’s some green mist that causes the room to decay when entered. This causes the hanging platform above to droop and the hourglass at the end of the room to form a crack. The player can reach the top of the platform at any time by climbing the ladder to the left, but it takes too long to reach before the decay wears off. On the platform there’s a prompt to yank the entire structure forward, setting the goal- find a way to reach the top of the platform before the decay wears off.
Stepping on the hourglass reveals that it needs to drop in order to access the elevator and progress while also leading to the next room. Here they must step into a different mist dispenser and go down to the next floor to retrieve a platform. By placing it on the broken pallet when decayed, the pillar will rise with it when the effect wears off. From there just push it over to the oversized chandelier, jump on when it’s decayed and yank it into the hourglass to move on.
This puzzle is simple, but fun enough. It’s not likely to leave many players stumped due to separating the objectives into two rooms, but there are a couple of hidden hallways used to collect more orbs and upgrades if the player activates switches or reaches a decayed door in time plus the block pushing speed is really fast, which is much appreciated. I do think some aspects like pulling down a pillar to reach the platform ladder and having a lever to activate the first mist dispenser are superfluous, but it’s a well-designed puzzle for sure.
Outside of the oracle’s temple there’s a water wheel that needs fixing. Here, the player simply has to jump to the ground, lift the debris blocking this lever’s path by healing the wheel, pull it back, lower the debris to stop it from receding, and free it again when safely on the platform. Conceptually it makes a lot of sense, but while it could work there’s a major flaw that holds it back. See, I thought of the solution shortly after getting to this area, mostly because there’s a prompt to use the amulet when you show up. Normally I’d say that this was too easy due to the overeager hint, but the amulet is so strict about when it can be activated that the puzzle becomes frustrating.
There are a few specific areas in which the amulet can be used, but they aren’t always placed where the player might be upon completing the puzzle, meaning that some players might think they need to stand on the wheel to use the amulet, which would make the puzzle impossible. Also, the relic doesn’t allow the player to freeze items whenever. While that would be pretty cool, it instead only lets them stop at predetermined points. And while the debris does slow down at the middle point when healing, it doesn’t stop to let the player know that this is a valid stopping point, likely leaving many players questioning their solution to the puzzle. It’s still not a difficult problem, but it definitely could have been playtested a bit more and adjusted to make these less obvious mechanics of the amulet known to players.
Speaking of the amulet, the game never seems to trust the player to know when to use it. I can’t remember a single time that the power was required that the game didn’t pop up a message telling players what to do. It just feels really pandering and turns puzzles into set pieces. Hell, sometimes the amulet is only there to create a fancy effect in a sequence that slows the player down.
Many applications of the oath stone are similar. They’re not so much puzzles as they are speed bumps, painfully obvious in how they’re approached and not very interesting to get through. You need something to stay still? Get it into position and use the stone, like in the final challenge to obtain the eyes of truth. The one exception is in the head of the statue where the player has to place their clone on a treadmill while they run over to pull out a mechanism to catch a gem that their clone will then drop. It’s a solid puzzle and while I wish the treadmill didn’t have these gears and just let the player run ahead of their clone to jump towards the chain, it’s a solid use of the clone mechanic and I wish we had gotten more puzzles like this.
Lastly, there’s the furnace puzzle. It’s somehow both the simplest and most obtuse puzzle in the entire game. Allow me to walk you through my thought process while solving this problem. When the player enters this room, they aren’t really given an objective. There’s no hint showing what the goal might be. The player has already entered the arena earlier, so the task now has to involve this strange pile of coal.
Well in order to enter the room they needed to activate the flint, so it seems natural to ignite it. So far so good. Then there’s this space about the same size as the coal cart, but nothing happens when the player moves the cart into place. With no reaction, there’s no indication that this area is anything but a dead end for the cart.
On the other end, the player retrieved the fuel from one spot, so it makes sense that the other spot would be used in the next part of the puzzle, especially since rotating the nearby gear opens up the vent at the top. Bingo, just freeze the gear with the oath stone, then ignite the flames with the amulet. Except the gear doesn’t allow Kratos to hold it in place, making me think the game had glitched out. Eventually I dragged the coal back into its starting area, ignited it, and had the kiln going.
From there, it seemed obvious to add the liquid to the fuel, but not obvious why. It didn’t seem all that helpful until I reignited the fire out of curiosity. The fire was now huge for some reason, so I brought it back into the starting room thinking it would cause the kiln to overcharge or something before running around and eventually igniting it in the hole over by the flint to restart the furnace.
This puzzle is flawed in many ways. Mainly, the camera angles and unusual use of the environment. Since the camera is so far below the furnace, the player can’t see what they’re activating from down below, meaning they have no clue why they’re doing what they’re doing. If you can’t see the whole mechanism, then the game relies entirely on the clarity of its visual hints and puzzle design to guide players in the right direction.
Though that fails as well. For one, game design convention would likely suggest to players that needing to drag this big hunk of coal from one place to another, only to bring it right back would be unreasonable, since the designers could have put the flint closer to the container, so it’s just pointless running around. Plus the idea that gold somehow makes flames larger is not intuitive, mostly because that’s not how fire works.
These two issues take this entire puzzle and make it more like a task of interpreting the game designer’s intentions than using the tools at your disposal in clever ways to proceed. It’s the kind of thing that happens when a designer gets an idea in their head, but doesn’t take the time to consider how the player might think about the situation. A great example of bad design, leaving the player feeling cheated rather than impressed by the solution.
Furnace aside, Ascension is one of the more puzzle-heavy games in the series and many of them are solid. I think the tools available to the player could have been better explained and their full potential is never really utilized, especially considering that they’re never used in tandem with one another, but for the most part the designers did a decent job of keeping puzzles interesting overall.
Level Design
Speaking of keeping things interesting, the way different areas loop back onto themselves is handled better in Ascension than anywhere else in the series. The snake path leading to the Oracle’s temple is fun to watch as the devices interweave and move around one another. The statue of Apollo is a marvel. And of course the Hecatonchires is every bit as impressive and fun to explore as Pandora’s temple. The team really went all-out in designing locations that felt grand and created with intent, and I really appreciate that effort.
That having been said, that praise only applies to the spectacle of the design. It unfortunately doesn’t extend to the gameplay. You might remember that in my retrospectives on Chains of Olympus and Ghost of Sparta I noted that the chests were too easy to find and the invisible walls made them annoying to look for, but it was understandable. The PSP’s limited hardware didn’t allow for too many nooks and crannies in which chests could be hidden. So I ask you, what’s the excuse for Ascension?
This game, despite being the latest in the Greek saga, despite having the most advanced hardware and the most experienced development team still suffers from these basic issues. Long walkways that lead nowhere, invisible walls making the search for hidden chests a complete chore since half the time you think you’ve found a clever secret it’s just a hole in the environment the devs forgot to patch, and even with all of that the chests are still incredibly easy to find! It’s not a fatal flaw, but it is indicative of how little thought was put into these levels. Which is more or less the running theme here. Development was clearly split up rather than doubled, with a large portion of the team working exclusively on multiplayer. So I guess that means it’s finally time to talk about it.
Multiplayer
I’m honestly not sure if my timing is awful or perfect. See, in order to play online Ascension has an online pass system that requires players to either use a code that came with their copy of the game or purchase one on PSN. It was an old-school way of ensuring the publisher got paid, even if the player bought the game used. Of course, this is no longer practiced both because of consumer backlash and the switch to digital downloads by most consumers.
That said, I replayed this game back in early March. With my old online pass no longer working after the servers experienced issues with deleting player data, I may be the last person to ever purchase the online pass for God of War Ascension. So in order to actually try out the multiplayer, perfect timing. In terms of covering the multiplayer to let others know if they should give it a shot… Not so much.
That little anecdote aside, the biggest surprise I got when starting up the mode was the active player base. I mean, it’s not like there were thousands of players online, but even on a random Tuesday afternoon I was able to hop into a few matches and give the game a shot- 8 years after the game’s release (something I can’t say about Destruction All-Stars). Maybe the others were using Playstation Now where the online pass is included, but I like to think that there’s a small hardcore fanbase for Ascension’s multiplayer doing their best to keep the game alive.
So how’s the multiplayer itself? It’s unique to say the least. Upon booting it up you’re presented with a choice in the Rotunda of Olympus. Here you select your godly patron, basically the equivalent of a sponsorship in NASCAR. The choices are Zeus, Hades, Poseidon, and Ares. Each god has their own advantages and disadvantages, such as Zeus giving his patrons less strength in exchange for more powerful magic. Nothing that changes the game immensely, but it could influence how you play going forward. The choice can also be changed later on and it’s a really unique and creative addition.
From there players get a lengthy tutorial in combat and objectives, much of which is repetitive if you’ve played through the single player. I understand the team not wanting the online modes to be swarmed with players who don’t know what they’re doing, but I do wish this were optional. Still, from there we go to the main menu and it’s incredibly intimidating. There are just so many pieces of armor, spells, boons, and such to unlock and equip, goals to achieve, DLC to buy, if anything this is where the game needs a tutorial.
And I’ll be honest, with the small player count and age of this game I don’t think the multiplayer needs a super in-depth analysis so I can guarantee I won’t be able to explain all of the nuances here, but what I can confidently say is that players who have more experience and items or those who bought upgrades as DLC have a pretty big advantage over new players. In other words, you need to pay money or spend dozens of hours unlocking trinkets or you’ll be at a disadvantage. It’s not pay-to-win, but it’s still discouraging for new players and unacceptable. And given the professional-level play of those still in the lobbies, I knew that I was going to get stomped either way, I just wish it were on fair terms.
Alright, so how’s the gameplay? Well first thing to do is select a mode of which there are quite a few. I couldn’t play them all since some require more players than there are active players online, but I did as much as I could. As far as I can tell none of them feature local multiplayer either, which is a shame since the game definitely would’ve been a great fit for it, but c'est la vie.
The main modes players can try out involve fighting arenas, a co-op horde mode, and the Bout of Honor 1v1 matches. Generally speaking the combat is almost identical to the campaign, which makes sense given that the campaign’s gameplay was modified to fit the multiplayer. What that boils down to when you get a bunch of players in the arena together is… a slower, more tactical version of an arena fighter you might experience in a typical anime game.
It’s literally just tossing the players into an arena to play in a deathmatch, capture the flag, or point battle. It’s nothing new, but each mode works well enough, even if a battle royale mode with 8 or so players would’ve been cool to see. The co-op mode just tasks players with running around a colosseum taking out enemies until a timer runs out. By killing monsters and opening chests players are able to add to the timer. In the Bout of Honor, two players are pitted against one another in a fighting game-like battle to the death. After a player wins four rounds the match ends.
Each of these modes has its merits and the potential for fun. None of them were ever destined to be the next big multiplayer craze, but there’s certainly plenty to do. The main issue however, is with the gameplay. I’ve already mentioned the overpowered items, but some combos are just insane. Players shouldn’t be able to demolish two thirds of their opponent’s health without the opponent being able to fight back, but they can. The number of game modes is commendable, but since the play style is the same for all of them, it doesn’t feel tailored or balanced for any one in particular. It’s not a bad experience, just a mediocre one.
I honestly feel bad. The team clearly worked their asses off trying to make this pan out, but in the end they were trying to fit a square peg in a round hole. God of War’s gameplay is at its best when players are able to tear through hordes of enemies or go one on one against a focused and measured boss fight. The issue is that two opposing players can’t have that same experience simultaneously- one will always get beat down. The modes are entertaining, but fall short of expectations and with the plethora of DLC and online pass, it’s abundantly clear that this mode was likely a demand from Sony rather than an idea bred out of passion. What’s worse is how these resources could have been used to improve the single player instead, so in the words of Todd Papy himself…
Final Thoughts
If it seems like I spent a lot of time in this video nitpicking small issues or even looking for problems, I assure you that wasn’t my intent when I first booted up the game. I was actually looking forward to trying out Ascension again and I was ecstatic when I found out others were still playing the multiplayer. But after playing every other game in the series it’s difficult to not get a sense of disappointment when going through this one. It’s less about it being a good game or a bad game and more about its split development showing in most facets of its design and how it fails to understand what makes a God of War game enjoyable.
With so much attention put into the multiplayer aspect, it makes me wonder why the campaign didn’t reflect the new gameplay. Maybe make a story about Kratos’s quest to find the Ambrosia to save Calliope from her illness mentioned in the comic book, have the barbarian king come back for revenge, then give Kratos the blades after he begs Ares for help, and finish the game with him killing his wife and daughter. This would allow the developers to familiarize the player with the multiplayer weapons and gameplay while also avoiding franchise fatigue since the player wouldn’t be using the blades of chaos until later in the game.
Of course, that’s not what happened. Instead, the designers made a bunch of changes to the controls that don’t work in the single player since they disrupt the flow of combat and the lack of staff on this mode likely led to the problems with design and the low frame rate. All to create a multiplayer with an online pass and pay to progress mechanics that turned out to be more about quantity than quality. It feels like the developers were forced to make this game with publisher interference at every turn. Hence why the campaign that was supposed to be “shaking up the God of War formula” is the one that feels like the safest entry to date. I don’t have proof of interference of course, but you can feel it when playing through the game. It’s palpable.
And obviously all of this makes Ascension a bad game… right? Well, no. Ascension is still a game with plenty of redeeming qualities and most fans would probably have a lot of fun with both the campaign and multiplayer. It is, however, the worst game in the series to date (at least in 3D). I don’t recommend playing it in a marathon with the other games, but if you play through the main trilogy and still want more God of War action, then this, and the PSP games are well worth checking out.
With Ascension, the team did what they could with the tasks handed to them. Todd Papy had an ambitious vision and while it didn’t quite pan out as well as everyone hoped it would, he and the rest of the team at Sony Santa Monica should still be proud of the final product. If it weren’t being compared to such esteemed colleagues, God of War Ascension may be remembered more fondly today, but it’s certainly not an experience that I, nor many others regret having in the slightest.
And now I’m finally able to say that I’ve covered every God of War game in some capacity, be it a retrospective, review, or existential April Fool’s Day joke. It’s certainly a series that I hold near and dear and will always respect for its ambition and ability to continue to entertain to this very day. Perhaps I’ll return to the series for more when the Norse saga concludes, but until then I’ve said all I have to say about God of War.
I appreciate you all being so patient with my release schedule. I put these out for fun as a hobby to engage with others in the community. And while I wish I could put out more videos on a regular basis, I will say that it’s going to be a while before the next retrospective. I do have a few video essays planned for this year, but aside from that I’m shifting focus onto developing a game of my own. Either way, I look forward to reading your comments, I hope to see you all soon, and as always, have a mighty nifty day today!