Findus Fop wrote:
And I continue to be utterly baffled by all the different upgrades, runes, enchantments and crafting that can be done. Would much prefer this side of things to be a touch simpler. All the upgrades' upgrades have upgrades.
Upgrades.
Yes I kind of covered this point earlier in the thread -
https://www.beexcellenttoeachother.com/ ... 44#p994644I think the whole system could have been refined and condensed down substantially, perhaps even just giving you specific abilities at certain points of the game (major campaign milestones that all players will have to pass through), and then incorporating them into the combat/puzzles in interesting ways from that point forward. (In the same fashion that Atreus gets his alternate arrow attack, for example.)
As it stands the game has no way of knowing what skills/upgrades/runes/enchantments the player will actually have at any given point, and as such the entire game must basically be doable with essentially the 'base' Kratos+Atreus. (So whilst the game DOES introduce puzzles and enemies that need Atreus' yellow arrows as it knows all players will definitely have them from a certain point onward, it can't do that with any of the optional stuff.)
Because I was being such a spod with finding every collectable in the game (albeit using the walkthrough....), I was able to basically max everything out, but even with such an embarrassment of riches to choose from when it came to the combat, I very often found myself reverting to the basic combat flow and beats the game teaches the player early on. I'd keep going go back to all the different screens to try and remind myself of all the button combos, but who can remember that shit in the heat of battle?
Sometimes I'd try a few different things out and it'd all look swizzy and maybe do some more damage, but the fundamentals of blocking, parrying, dodging, counter-attacking, and using Atreus wisely seemed to be by far the most important things. (And of course, following the required tactics of the fight.)
Maybe the harder difficulty levels demand it, I played on Normal - but yeah, overall I'd say that perhaps less would have been more when it came to the skills/upgrades/enchantments/specials/runes etc.