God of War -- Final Opinion.

There's been a change of plans. I was supposed to cover puzzles this time around, but I've gone ahead and completed God of War. Clocking in at one minute over nine hours at the final save. There is an awful lot to like here, and a little not to like. Let's start with what's to like. The graphics are gorgeous for a PS2 game. GoW pushes the PS2 to its limits. The game features arguably the best FMV ever seen. In both visuals and concept. They blend 2D art with CGI and they mix and morph characters between the two styles seamlessly. The voices are as high quality as you'll likely to ever find. The sound effects are crisp and clear. The score is huge and bombastic orchestral music that pounds away fittingly to the nature of the fantastical visuals. Heavy on the percussion in battle. It may not be something you can hum, but you certainly feel it while playing. The puzzles used in the game are great. They are greatly varied and heavily seeded throughout the entire game. Most of the major puzzles are very clever and never reach being frustrating. They're entirely enjoyable. The story is very well done. They've come up with a story fitting Greek mythology as if it were from the gods themselves. The main character's character deserves special mention. He's the first main character I've ever seen in gaming that truly is beyond liking. He has absolutely no redeeming values whatsoever. It's a very different vibe than any other character in gaming. I felt no sympathy for him at all. Another thing that should be noted is the level of nudity within the game. The game prominently features breasts complete with nipples in both the realtime game and the FMV. It's not really gratuitous given it fits right in the era and setting of the story. It is walking a fine line though. Something not everyone is going to be able to do. It's going to be interesting to see how other companies deal with it as it is most assuredly the future. Another positive for the game is the amount of extras. You get the standard harder difficultly level, but you also get a making of feature, a bunch of concept art covering a bunch of facets to the creation of the game, deleted concepts and levels, and a bonus game consisting of specific challenges. The challenges and the hardest difficulty mode unlock new outfits and you'll get scenes that further explain the ending and the fate of a certain character will be revealed. The last thing to note that's really well done are a couple of the boss battles. The game features two of the best bosses in recent memory. Sadly the final boss isn't one of them. Which leads us into what's not so good about the game. Some combat issues arise that keep the game from taking its place among the truly great games and keep it stuck at really good. The final boss battle is the most glaring example. The game becomes cheap for the sake of difficulty.  It's something that ramps up throughout the course of the game. The hit priority is broken. The weakest of enemies break your combos while you can't break theirs no matter what once the animation has started. It's never overly frustrating until the final boss. For most of the game it's just a slight annoyance. It's only slight because the rest of the game is just so well done. In a more mediocre title the annoyances might be a little more annoying than slight. I'm giving it a 9.0

I have a few days before the next must own title arrives again, so I'm going to take this time to play Ancient Ys Vanished Omens. The Famicom version with an English patch. We'll see how it shapes up to Ys on the SEGA Master System and the version on the Turbo Duo.