"Save the world get the girl" Most games involve some sort of a noble goal for its story reason but God of War 3 flips this on its head by making the main character the villain. All of Olympus is in arms to stop you as you tear through them. Every dead god irreversibly leaves the world damaged. When Kratos channels the super magic power of hope by the end he uses it simply to smash Zeus's face in rather then actually help anybody. Near the end of the game when you look at the visage of the ruined world, it a near splitting image of the pits of Tartarus, it's genuinely haunting. When the game starts with an inspiring speak from Zeus about saving humanity and the Greek gods line up like the justice league of Olympus you know the score. Its a game which starts with you killing Poseidon, shaker of the earth, and ends with you ending the whole world.
Its understandable then that such a trajectory would mess up the game's pacing but it does so more the nessicary. Once you kill Poseidon you are dropped straight into Hades, which is considerably more generic looking then the past 2 mainline games. You spend most the latter half of the game wandering around the same generic cave area. Despite the god deaths being the primary image of this game there are shocking only 3 gods which have a proper boss fight, with the rest being dispatched in cutscenes, puzzles, or platforming sections: most of these being concentrated in the front half of the game. There are some heavy hitters like Hercules and Chronos which do round out the bosses, but its so lop sided that the last boss before Zeus is a random giant scorpion, which is odd as plenty of heavy hitters like Apollo aren't fought in this game at all, despite being mentioned. Honestly the whole second half feels unfinished like its mostly padding to sustain the jam packed bit of gameplay once you leave Hades.
The combat gives you some sleek new moves and weapons, but is far too easy compared to its predecessors. The plume of Prometheus combo is insanely OP now and can stun lock most major enemies leaving magic to be a "I don't wanna bother with combat right now" nuke. The new weapons are filled with redundancy with the the gauntlets in particular feeling very limp compared to the ones in PSP's Chains of Olympus. Despite this the gauntlets are quite OP here due to being able to easily add stun to most enemies any time.
The story itself, despite being insanely simple, also is a shockingly bad, retcon filled mess compared to its predecessors. The new Pandora's Box lore is unessicary and nonsensical at best and actively undermines the games premise at worst. There is no reason from some ancient fear to infect Zeus since all of Olympus had plenty of reasons to be weary of Kratos, a very unstable and powerful warrior, becoming a god on top of him going on a rampage through Greece with his powers. These evils were also very clearly seen in GOW 1 and its prequels so the idea of them still being trapped in the box doesn't make sense. Really all this just seems like an attempt to try and skew the story towards Kratos by making all of Olympus possessed instead of just assholes seeking to protect their dominion. In this direction there is also Pandora who represents a disgusting kneel to 7th gen design trends with you being forced to give this obnoxious girl boosts to high ledges or Pandora zipping around the battlefield crying for help despite being invincible like a TLOU companion or Bioshock Infinite's Elizabeth. Its a feeble attempt to add humanity to a character who had already and continues to cross that line.
When GOW 3 hits it hits. Wit it continuing the series trend of having some of the most addictively cruel violence in mainstream gaming. There really is nothing like it. Its just a shame so much of it is a whimper rather then a bang. While the Norse series makes reference to these games, it may as well be a different Kratos with how much they avoid the specifics linking the ending of GOW3 to the new series (seriously wtf was up with that Athena tease) leaving this to be the true grand finale to the Greek series.
Its understandable then that such a trajectory would mess up the game's pacing but it does so more the nessicary. Once you kill Poseidon you are dropped straight into Hades, which is considerably more generic looking then the past 2 mainline games. You spend most the latter half of the game wandering around the same generic cave area. Despite the god deaths being the primary image of this game there are shocking only 3 gods which have a proper boss fight, with the rest being dispatched in cutscenes, puzzles, or platforming sections: most of these being concentrated in the front half of the game. There are some heavy hitters like Hercules and Chronos which do round out the bosses, but its so lop sided that the last boss before Zeus is a random giant scorpion, which is odd as plenty of heavy hitters like Apollo aren't fought in this game at all, despite being mentioned. Honestly the whole second half feels unfinished like its mostly padding to sustain the jam packed bit of gameplay once you leave Hades.
The combat gives you some sleek new moves and weapons, but is far too easy compared to its predecessors. The plume of Prometheus combo is insanely OP now and can stun lock most major enemies leaving magic to be a "I don't wanna bother with combat right now" nuke. The new weapons are filled with redundancy with the the gauntlets in particular feeling very limp compared to the ones in PSP's Chains of Olympus. Despite this the gauntlets are quite OP here due to being able to easily add stun to most enemies any time.
The story itself, despite being insanely simple, also is a shockingly bad, retcon filled mess compared to its predecessors. The new Pandora's Box lore is unessicary and nonsensical at best and actively undermines the games premise at worst. There is no reason from some ancient fear to infect Zeus since all of Olympus had plenty of reasons to be weary of Kratos, a very unstable and powerful warrior, becoming a god on top of him going on a rampage through Greece with his powers. These evils were also very clearly seen in GOW 1 and its prequels so the idea of them still being trapped in the box doesn't make sense. Really all this just seems like an attempt to try and skew the story towards Kratos by making all of Olympus possessed instead of just assholes seeking to protect their dominion. In this direction there is also Pandora who represents a disgusting kneel to 7th gen design trends with you being forced to give this obnoxious girl boosts to high ledges or Pandora zipping around the battlefield crying for help despite being invincible like a TLOU companion or Bioshock Infinite's Elizabeth. Its a feeble attempt to add humanity to a character who had already and continues to cross that line.
When GOW 3 hits it hits. Wit it continuing the series trend of having some of the most addictively cruel violence in mainstream gaming. There really is nothing like it. Its just a shame so much of it is a whimper rather then a bang. While the Norse series makes reference to these games, it may as well be a different Kratos with how much they avoid the specifics linking the ending of GOW3 to the new series (seriously wtf was up with that Athena tease) leaving this to be the true grand finale to the Greek series.