God of War 2 Platinum

 Hello everyone I recently platinummed the 2007 game God of War 2

The platinum itself wasn't too hard to get. Most trophies were straightforward with some individual challenges being rather tricky. My plan was to beat the game normally. Then complete the "Challenge of Titans". Then use NG+ to mop up anything I missed. Though, it is possible to skip most of the NG+ playthrough as you can complete the required trophies during the first playthrough.

I only missed the "You Know the Germans Make Good Stuff...- Collect all Uber Chests" trophy on my first playthrough despite it not being that hard because I missed the Health chest because I forgot where it was. I assumed it was further ahead than it actually was from my memory from the PS2 version I played as a kid. When I got the Magic Uber chest, I suddenly realized my mistake. Oh well, at least speedrunning NG+ with the "Cod of War" only required around 3 hours to get back to where it actually was.

The one trophy that requires you to go out of your way to grind a collectible is "Eye Sore - Collect 20 Cyclops Eyes". There are only like 5 cyclops berserkers in the entire story mode. Fortunately, once you complete the story mode, you unlock the "Challenge of the Titans". A series of 7 rather difficult challenges. The first challenge requires you to remove the eye from a Cyclops which can you can repeat though I found it didn't increase my count for some reason. But once you complete all 7 challenges (and get the "Bleeding Thumbs" trophy in the process), you unlock the "Arena of the Fates". A mode that allows you to spawn whatever enemies you want and set their AI as well as whatever buffs you want. I used this to spawn endless Cyclops berserkers and get the remaining 16 eyes I had left.

The Challenge of the Titans is a really cool addition. In addition to being a way to farm for specific trophies if you haven't gotten them yet like "Stoner- Stone and Shatter 30 Enemies", they provide some really cool and fun challenges that twist many of the rules. Stuff like "collect 500 orbs before time runs out" or "Defend the Translator" are quite fun. Plus, unlike GOW1, you don't need to beat this in one sitting to get the trophy. My one criticism is that it seems harder on VITA than it does on PS3. I noticed that in Challenge 2: "kill 10 enemies in the air", PS3 videos were able to get multiple hits in with the L1+square attack in the air. While in the VITA version, the technique resulted in fewer hits. Perhaps because the PS3 version is running at a higher framerate, your attacks which deal damage on every frame get more chances to deal damage?

There is one glitched trophy. "Boss Batch 3- Kill the Kraken and all three Sisters of Fate". Now, GOW2 has 3 of these Boss Batch trophies for killing a certain set of bosses. I assumed that the trophy essentially just pops for killing the latest boss of the batch since GOW2 is a linear game. It's not like you can do the bosses out of order. But apparently, for Boss Batch 3, if you save and quit at any point between the Kraken and the final sister of fate, the trophy might not pop. So you have to defeat these 3 bosses in one sitting. Which I found took a long time. Good thing the VITA can enter rest mode at least but it's weird the trophy seems to actually check if you've defeated all 3 bosses. My guess is that there's a flag in the game's code for when you defeat one of these bosses and once it hits a certain number (i.e when you defeat all the bosses), the trophy pops. But turning off the game resets that flag back to the default?

 

Also, one of the Bronze Trophies is  "Swinger - Cross the collapsing Grapple Bridge". I hated that section. I died 40 times on it. That trophy should be Gold 

 

As for the game itself, I really love it. GOW2, in terms of combat and general gameplay, is a huge improvement over GOW1. The new L1 + Square, O and Triangle moves give you a lot to work with. Later Enemies are pretty nimble so you can't "Square, Square Triangle" your way through the game as much as you progress through the game so all your other options are more useful. All 3 sub weapons fulfill different niches and are fun to use (though, having to go the menu to swap them out does kill the flow. I recall reading that was because of hardware limitations because the PS2 couldn't load the assets for all the weapons simultaneously and the menu trick was a way of buying the PS2 enough time to load and de-load the assets). The different magic abilities are much more refined. For example, Typhon's Bane is a lot more useful than Zeus' lightning from GOW1 because you can move while aiming and have more kinds of attacks like rapid fire blasts and mini hurricanes. Cronus Rage allows you to spawn lightning orbs, making it a more active version of Poseidon's Rage from GOW1. The game also speeds up the animations for moving around crates and makes movement and platforming a lot smoother so it's a lot of fun to play through. I also really like how the game handles its NG+ with how it allows you to use bonus costumes and urns (special gameplay modfiers) that allow you to entirely break the game if you want. Really gives you a lot of variety.

I do wish the game had more animations for the QTEs as they do get repetitive after a while as there's only one per enemy.

I also love how GOW2 leans into Greek mythology with many of the characters you meet. Such as Theseus and how he's overconfident after his successes and has respect for Kratos. Or how Perseus is now much more villainous and desperate since he couldn't save Andromeda since he couldn't kill Medusa because Kratos killed her first in GOW1. In fact, many of the side characters and bosses in GOW2 have a lot more personality and are more memorable than bosses and side characters in GOW1 despite them having so little screentime. GOW2 really makes the most out of its interactions.

My one gripe with the gameplay is its pacing. Or rather, how it approaches puzzles. I remember as a kid always getting stuck on GOW2 more than any other GOW game because of how many puzzles the game has. I remember getting stuck in the bog of the forgotten as a kid for a few years because I never realized you could put the body into the stream and have it navigate around the area. Not having internet access at the time really made stuff like that annoying but I would just play the game until I got to that area, try for an hour to solve the problem and then restart the game from the start and play through until I got to the Bog again and repeat the cycle. I think I once accidentally dropped the body into the water and was so surprised that I could actually progress. Only to be stuck again on the statue after Perseus, I never found the statue you'd use to block the light for another few years. Once I did, I never realized you could put Perseus' shield on it.

Fortunately, as an adult and on this most recent playthrough, speedruns were kind enough to show me that you could do that. Though, I did get stumped on the Phoenix Puzzle were quite a while because I missed there were ice shards on the ceiling and on the 3rd sister because I missed where one of the blades were.

I fully embrace the possibility that I just missed the hints (probably didn't help that the smaller VITA screen probably made it harder to see the detail of the environments) so I won't complain the game was unfair. But even so, I do feel like the abundance of puzzles like this do make the experience drag a bit more than usual, especially if you happened to get stuck at any point. I don't recall any of the other classic GOW games being like that and being much more fun and fast paced.

 

A minor thing, but I dislike how GOW2 (and GOW3) remove the player's red orbs after the opening. I get the purpose of it. It's to give the player a taste of how strong they will be early on. But I feel resetting the player's red orbs to 0 sorta discourages playing the cool opening. I remember whenever I play GOW2 or 3 now, I rush through the cool opening since my performance doesn't matter until after the opening level. I feel it would be better if the player's health, magic and upgrades are all reset but the number of red orbs obtained during the opening remained the same.

As for the story of the game, I'm mixed on it. On the one hand, I like the moral ambiguity and set up it has for Kratos and Zeus' conflict. Like, the story of Kratos is designed such that in GOW1, he's this kinda sociopathic antihero but you end up sympathizing with him because you see how he's motivated by his guilt and self loathing. That all he wants is for the pain to end. And in GOW3 he's become the villain and monster he was always angry at. His personal vendetta against the Gods and how they hurt humans has become a more destructive version of what the Olympians have done. GOW2 acts as that transitional step between sorta sympathetic antihero GOW1 Kratos and full on monster GOW3 Kratos. GOW2 is cleverly set up so you root for Kratos to succeed but has plenty of hints to make you start to see that things aren't so black and white. For one, there's the obvious stuff that Zeus kills Kratos and later all Spartans. We also see how the Gods tortured Prometheus. This gives the audience plenty of reason to root for Kratos and root against the Gods. But at the same time, the game points out how Zeus kinda has a point and that Kratos isn't all innocent. Kratos did disobey the protocols of the Gods to destroy cities for his fellow Spartans which increase tensions on Olympus. Like, Kratos is doing the exact things that made Athena justify killing Ares back in GOW1. From Zeus' perspective, Athena skirted Olympian protocol to make this God killer a full on God. This God Killer shows no respect for the other Olympians, if not outright hates them, and destroys Greek cities. And Zeus knows that Kratos is his son and could attempt to kill him. Like, Kratos has the means and motive to want to kill Zeus and thus destroy Olympus and is inching closer to realizing that. It makes sense for Zeus to want to take some action (albeit extreme).

But at the same time, the game shows us how the Gods aren't entirely at fault. Kratos for example, disregards the well being of his fellow Spartans just to pursue his vengeance against Zeus which does result in nobody being there for Sparta. Kratos here has been both the mortal ignored by the Gods, and the God ignoring the Mortals for his revenge. We also see how Kratos brutalizes people like Perseus and Icarus who also have genuine reason for seeking the Sisters of Fate. This shows how even if Kratos were to succeed, it wouldn't mean things would get better for people. Plus, we see how the Titans are manipulating Kratos to keep going just for their sake. Like, During the times when Kratos was cool with dying and being done with his quest, Gaia tells him to keep going because "only cowards accept death" and "Zeus will torture your soul forever in the underworld. You will never know peace".

All this is kinda why I dislike that in GOW3, it's revealed that the Evils of Pandora's box are what infected the Gods. I prefer it without that since it better communities this moral ambiguity.

But as much as I like all this going on in GOW2's story, I can't help but feel it is a lot less consistently engaging compared to GOW1. In GOW1, Kratos' progression through Athens and his flashbacks peppered through the game allowed the story and character to develop throughout the game. In GOW2, Kratos himself doesn't really change or grow. He does arguably become more brutal and sociopathic in subtle ways but much of his interactions with other characters feel more disconnected. Like, it feels that you could rearrange in which order Kratos encounters characters and which challenges he does in GOW2 and little would change. Wheras, that was less apparent in GOW1.

Plus, much of the game is getting to the Sisters of Fate, but the story spends more time building up to fighting Zeus and treats the Sisters are more of a Stepping Stone which makes progression feel a bit unsatisfying at times. Wheras in GOW1, the game builds to getting to Ares, and before that, Pandora's Temple and how that would lead to Ares.

Still, I enjoy the individual interactions in GOW2's story but the overall story of GOW1.

Also, even though I really love the cool time travel scenarios in GOW2, I have to do some small nitpicks and point out the time travel is a bit inconsistent.

For starters, when Kratos is fighting the second sister of Fate, she takes him to the events of GOW1 just before past Kratos grabs the giant statue's sword to be able to fight Ares. Her plan is to destroy the sword so past Kratos couldn't use it to kill Ares so that means present Kratos wouldn't be here. So the time travel seems to work on Back to the Future rules since Present Kratos has to stop her from destroying the sword to keep himself alive.

But later on when Present Kratos time travels to before Zeus kills past Kratos, he tackles Zeus and takes the Blade of Olympus before Zeus can deliver the killing blow to both his timeline's Kratos and Spartans. But shouldn't this create a paradox? If Past Kratos doesn't die here and get motivated to go reach the Sisters of Fate, then present Kratos can't be here because his Past Self didn't take the same steps he did. So now the Time Travel seems to switch to Avengers Endgame Rules where you can interact with the past without it affecting the time traveller. Especially later on when Present Kratos Time Travels further back into the past to bring the Titans to "his time" (or rather the timeline he was in earlier). Which should affect the events of GOW1, Chains of Olympus and Ghost of Sparta and 2.

So does that mean there's now a timeline where Kratos dissapears after using the Loom so the Zeus and co of that time are disposed of him, and a timeline where there are no Titans after the Great War, in addition to the timeline where there's 2 Kratos and an injured Zeus that the Titans make their attack on?

Hey, that could be an interesting point for the next GOW game. Imagine Kratos and Boy ending up in Kratos' original timeline where the Greek Gods are still alive and thought Kratos was dead the whole time.

So in conclusion, GOW2 was a really fun time and I enjoyed my time with it and getting the platinum. Next up for me on the VITA is probably Sly 4: Thieves in Time. See you then. On the PS4/5 end, I've been trying out this cool indie game called Elden Ring. It's pretty fun.