Eversince I made this video Mayo and I had an awesome talk about how God of War could improve kzfaq.info/get/bejne/eryilsaJravVinU.html Theres was a lot of misunderstanding from his first video so make sure to check out our talk to get a better idea about his thoughts on the game

the best part of this video is Kuba is just not blindly defending GOW ,he also accepts if the criticism is fair which is so cool to look at .cheers man

I feel like more bosses or different outcomes with the trolls was the only thing GOW 2018 was missing

The motivation behind taking the wife's ashes to the tallest peak is that Kratos and Atreus want to honor her last wish, knowing more about her doesn't change that. Also if they did add flashbacks to explain who Kratos's wife is and why we should care, Mayo would just complain that it just adds to the time wasted in the intro sequence.

What's this "you THINK you're having fun" "The game TRICKS you into THINKING you're having fun" what kinda of werid stretch is that? If you think you're having fun aren't you having fun? What's the difference? Also he says "I'm just killing these enemies because their in my way" yeah welcome to every game ever.

Valid criticisms from his video: - removal of jumping did lessen the gameplay due to lack of platforming sections and less variety for puzzles. - there was a lack of bosses in gow 2018. I think this will be a lot better in ragnarok. - there is less incentives to play different ways combat wise. The point in particular that got me was when he mentioned that you could spam runic attacks to clear rooms due to the cool down mechanism, which is true. After I beat the game, I defeated the valkyries and did some side quests. During this time the random encounters became a nuisance since it just wasted time; I just spammed runic attacks to clear the room and move onto what I really wanted. Yes, I could have played it differently if I wanted to but the point is that I wanted to get to the next section so I didn't. - RPG elements could have had better variety. I found myself wanting to experiment with certain runics but they were so bad compared to the ones that I were using. Same thing happened with the armours by a lesser degree. - more incentive to do side quests. Gow didn't ever make me feel like I should do side quests during the main part of the story. First game to do this was hzd. When I genuinely had to make an effort to play side quests and upgrade my weapons if I wanted to enjoy the main quests. Maybe gow could do something similar, because in hind sight, it is more fun to do the side quests during the main story and I didn't realize this until hzd incentivized me to play this way. Maybe the same could happen for others. - They removed certain things from other games. Like being able to seamlessly transition between weapons during combat and grappling. Glad that they brought back grappling in ragnarok. Hope they do the same for weapons switching. Overall the game was still really fun to play and one of my favourite games of all time but his criticism did have value for future games, even if he was harsh at times.

His idea about optional areas is good. (Around 1:29:30) It could be something like: Atreus goes to translate a stone plate that has something written on it: "Legend say here lies Ragnar the great who was told to have great luck in battle and was immune to fire because one time he fell into a burning rubble and came out unscathed. Some say it's because of a necklace his mother gave him before she died." So now you know at the end of this area you will get a necklace that boosts luck and fire resistance.

After playing Ascension, you can see how many mechanics they took from it, such as how the climbing working almost identically, dodging minigames like Baldur's dragon, having very few bossfights, and abilities having cooldowns. It makes sense since they were the two latest games in the franchise and Under the Mayo never references Ascension.

The only thing i felt dissapointed about was the execution anims and boss battles

Depends what the player is mostly invested in, for me I loved this Game most because of the emotional immersion, God of War 2 I believe is the biggest game in terms of world building and expanding, God of war 3 is the best conclusive game with so many pay offs, but it felt as the end of an era as I believe it was meant to be.

My biggest issue with GOW 2018 (Only noticed this after trying to replay it) is the sections in between combat such as climbing sections; they just immediately bring everything to a crawl. I understand there needs to be moments that allow conversation between Kratos and Atreus, but how they made me stop moving at a normal speed while I’m slowly shuffling across cliffs/carrying a crystal just made me so aggravated. I didn’t notice it on first playthrough because I was so entranced by the story, but everytime I try to come back I just don’t get far without feeling this way.

Do people really hate Atreus… I loved him, he was a great edition to the game. It’s a crazy development for the Ghost of Sparta to FATHER

This was a great video to listen to while working, I love the back and forth on this topic. I also randomly came up with a Ragnorak speculation. I feel that a critical story moment will be or would be a good idea is Atreus succumbing to rage and performing his own glory kill like older Kratos for the first time. This will instantly show the drastic contrast between the newer god of war and what it was previously. I feel that if it came to that it would drive more of a villanious story for Atreus though.

His review was scathing and he has no love lost for the upcoming sequel. That being said I agreed with alot of his critique I wonder how you will react to it. Can't wait!

Mayo did have some valid and good suggestions about improving traversal, combat and levelling mechanics, and boss fight designs. That being said, his comments about the camera angle and boring combat are very misleading and subjective. I have never experienced any major problems with the camera and the combat became so much more fun when you learned combos. He said that the game was "tricking you into having fun" with its combat. Who are you to say that I am or am not having fun with my experience? Where he really pissed me off was this dissing of the characters, dialogue and story when it is clear he had no interest in any of those elements from the get go anyway? - "Atreus proves his stupidity by picking up a burning knife and dropping it". ATREUS IS A CHILD! Children do foolish, rash and stupid things because they are learning. The scene establishes that Atreus needs to learn, that he misses his mother, and that Kratos cares for him (in bandaging his hand). - "Why do we care about this mother-son drama?" Because it is a reflection of Kratos and Atreus, and a warning of what could become of their relationship if handled improperly. - "Why do we care about this woman who we don't know". Because Kratos has lost his wife, and he clearly cared about her. Everyone loses someone, so we should be able to sympathise with another's loss. - "Atreus is a cocky little brat". At one point he is in the story, and he is intentionally written that way to show how easy it is for someone to go down the path that gods like Magni, Modi or Baldur often follow. It's intentionally infuriating and unsettling. The other part in Alfheim is focuing on Atreus and Kratos' strained relationship. Kratos has made choices that Atreus didn't agree with. Atreus also thought that Kratos had abandoned him, and that he never cared for him. Remember, Atreus was mainly raised by his mother. Why is he playing a story-driven game if he has no interest the story? He calls the story "boring" when he clearly was not paying attention to it anyway. Elements of the story could use improvement, like how they spend a lot of time chasing after mcguffins, but his judgement is very subjective.

I do appreciate the multiple edits to make some points you didn't talk about in the raw reaction, and showed some examples for some things, instead of just taking the basic reaction video approach and just do the recording of you watching the video, makes watching an hour and a half video more enjoyable to sit through

I loved Kratos since day one. He was a badass killing monsters, taking names and when I first started GoW 2018 I felt different but really good at the same time. Story of Dad and Boiii reminded me of my late father. Kinda distant, hard, former millitary abut warmly loving his son.

Ironically, despite the fact that games want to be more like films, yet the original God of War trilogy was way more cinematic

When Mayo talks about the old games having emotional scenes, I laughed my ass off when his examples were all scenes that you get AFTER you’ve beaten the game. Not during the game no, you have to beat the game to get to the emotional scenes lmao. GOW 2018 has dozens upon dozens of emotional scenes throughout the game, but like you said, Mayo hates the story so of course he would ignore most of those scenes. He doesn’t even mention Atreus killing a human for the first time, and it’s the first time we see Kratos try to comfort the kid.

I cannot. WAIT. BRO.

A lot of his criticisms are very valid, same with your rebuttals. But, I think one major flaw in his argument is the fact that he’s comparing one game trying new things, to an entire franchise of games allowing for variation and years of improvements and trial/error fixes.

On the Atreus part the only thing I will say is I love every interaction they have, and Kratos I think shows a lot of emotion when trying to guide his son; It’s subtle like a real father but it’s there. It isn’t out of his league to be a father also because it’s his second child, with that said Kratos always loved his daughter, same with Atreus he isn’t the perfect father; but he always portrays that he is trying and it’s beautiful. A neat thing I noticed in the game when Kratos gets to far from Atreus Kratos actually says Atreus’s name with the emotion a real parent would have. “Atreus, follow me.” Even in the sections they aren’t trying to attract attention Kratos says it in a whisper, clearly showing concern for his son and not wanting him to wander off; possibly into danger where Kratos cannot help.

Fights humanoid Troll: "He's just a dude" Fights humanoid Cyclops: "This is the stuff"

Mayo says: "Some people say GoW 1 is just a button masher and you only press square - when it really isn't - there are a lot of combos [...]" Basically defends the game from people not "enjoying" the game as it should be with all the variety of combos that you UNLOCK while playing the game. And then proceeds to apply the same logic as the people he is bashing in regards to GoW 1 as he is doing now with GoW 2018. "Ugh, you just press R1 and that's it, you can finish the game like this and it's soooo boring" Ok, then how about using combos you so dearly like? Yeah, he is just cherry picking examples that suits his narrative while utilising a double standard when it comes to comparing the games.

Mayo: "You are just an animal, passing on your cruelty and rage. You will never change." Kratos: "then you do not know me"

This dude hates GOW 2018 so much. He even said that Resident evil village was ruined because of it 😂😂😂

The whole using the exact same button presses for attacks in Gow combat really depends on what game difficulty you’re game is set to. You can easily just spam square for easier difficulties but in harder difficulties it will punish you. Souls games don’t have a difficult option so mixing up attacks is always the best way to go. Using different attacks also makes the combat of the game way more fun as you aren’t using the same attacks the whole time.

Thanks for reacting to this, I tried watching Mayos video sometime ago and couldn’t get past how condescending he was towards this new game, how he talked in absolutes was infuriating like he knew everything, there was no way I was gonna give him more of my watch time and while I agree with him on some stuff his know it all energy seriously put me off

For me, Marvel's Spiderman PS4 had the best difficulty system. I did beat it on the hardest difficulty and what is different from other games is that, the enemies DON'T have more HP, they just have more damage and some can instakill you. I enjoyed it the most this way and hope more games would do this in the future (I am looking at you GOWR).

For me when it comes to gameplay and story, it depends on the game. If a game's story is very simplistic like a fun excuse for gameplay or just makes up like 10% of the game, then I couldn't care. A game like GOW however, is at least 40% of the game. It's a big part of the package and I can't just ignore it. Even the previous game's were, at least I would argue, 25% to 30% of the experience. It's a noticeable chunk.

There are combos they are just slowed down and spread out in a way. Like having to throw the axe and use magic and there are combos you can unlock by learning how to do the different stances it just takes some time. And yeah you have to get good at how you manage each enemy and you know maybe use Atreus who has his own uses. He's playing dumb on purpose to hammer his point in more so than it is. Does he make SOME good points sure, but he's definitely playing things up. He can have his opinion of it he's not wrong for not liking it he just has a shitty argument style about it.

To be fair to the lack of boss designs, the original God of War has literally 3 boss fights, one is a couple of heads, the other is an armoured dog/bull thing that can be easily exploited and the last boss is more or less a narrative moment with the actual fight being about 5 minutes.

I agree with most of the points Mayo says, but a reboot of the series was much needed at that point specially after ascension.

For the jumping part, in the recent ragnarok trailers we can see Kratos doing slam attacks with the axe and blades; with the blades he jumps off on an edge that isn’t a marked auto jump part I believe. I think it’s awesome and I don’t think these slam attacks will be the only jumping attacks in the game if I know GOW but we don’t know anything till we see more.

I respect when someone has a different opinion and is willing to share it, but his take on some elements of the story were a little childish in my opinion. Like how they didn't show Faye, which I thought was clearly deliberate to get you wondering what she was like, how she died, etc. Like who was this woman who managed to tame the ghost of Sparta after everything he's endured? Same goes for Thor and Odin. All we interact with is the broken remnants of their actions in the Norse realms, and it gets you wondering. Maybe sometimes its better to leave things to the imagination than it is to under develop characters given a lack of time/resources,, which is what I think Santa Monica chose to do, and instead focused on Baldur and the parallelism between him and Kratos. Now, his critique of the story not withstanding, because that is subjective and he clearly HATED Atreus, the combat was where I disagreed with him most. The combat system is amazing, and what I think is awesome is they didn't just give you a predetermined list of combos, with combos taking more button presses to complete as you unlock them. They very much leave it up to the player to make their own combos. I think he is objectively correct that the older games incentivize long combos more with the orb system, but you can cheese that system too if you really want to. If one wants to combo like a master, at the end of the day the combat system must make it SATISFYING, which I think all the games have done, and GOW 2018 even more so imho. As far as the the talisman that recharges all your runic attacks, I never used it, but I thought a great idea for a talisman would be one that randomizes your next runic attack after your use your current one, or something along those lines, along with some other bonus (cool down, whatever)

Okay So probably my biggest issue with his review, is how he claimed that gow 2018 doesn't encourage you to use combos on higher difficulties like the older games This is just straight up wrong Try playing the game on give me god of war See if you will get throught the game with mashing R1 What gmgow difficulty basically does is encourage you to use different combos

52:06 To be honest I don't mind the on screen indicators because I would never look at them. Atreus and mimir would always call out where someone would attack you. For example, mimir would say "behind you brother" whenever you were about to get attacked and Atreus would always yell "Behind you". I also liked the change in camera because instead of just pressing the attack button to kill what is around you, you can often feel overwhelmed by the number of enemies coming to attack you. This is what i found difficult and u may agree if you played it on God Of War difficulty. One of my favorite things about the camera was needing to gain as much information as possible to not allow yourself to make no if not any mistakes when you are in a battle was difficult to the player needing to controll the camera but that's what made it fun. 1:00:05 i do miss that certain enemies work drop certain orbs but using the brutal kills to help kill others is still in god of war. Here's a list 1. throwing nightmares to stun and dmg enemies 2 using the ogre to absolutely destroy everyone 4 using the poison ranged reavers to explode and dmg others 5 using the tanky drauger to do stagger dmg and to push others off the edge 6 throwing the dark elf's lance to dmg others. etc,

Imo the only thing holding this series back is all the hand holding, some of us played the original trilogy and the modern games come off as a technical graphics showcase with greatly reduced combat mechanics.

So this is something I hate and I think it’s in the Witch’s cave. There’s a point where you are right next to another ledge and the only thing stopping you is a drop that is the size of one of Atreus’ legs or something. But you need to go all the way around to find a different way to get up to that ledge when you should be able to just drop right down.

We can’t deny he makes good points obviously but in the end he still got a bunch of stuff wrong not to mention a lot of his game reviews are just plain wrong

When Mayo was talking about the enemy designs, I agree it was mostly a copy and paste with it. However, when he was bringing up different enemies from past games. It doesn’t work; because they are different mythologies we aren’t going to have a Gorgon or Cerberus in this mythology.

Reason why Last of Us was mention, is because it was the first of its kind in its franchise. God of War established itself as a gameplay heavy game, not so much as .....interactive experience as Last of Us. So thats how I see Mayos critic on the atmosphere shift. God of War always had combos of a hack and slash element. He doesnt want that taken away from God of War.

the pain in his eyes towards the end, he was too tired to even care.

I'm so glad you did this video I've been looking for a rebuttal to this since I saw it. I even considered starting a KZfaq channel just for that. I love Mayo's content but for some reason he loses all objectivity when it comes to GOW 2018 and Halo.

In regards to no grab button, I feel like it wouldn't make sense. The leviathan axe is a very decent size and it would realistically be kinda hard to fight with it while holding it as well as enemy

I would like to see you and Under the Mayo discuss the current state of the games. I think it'll be very entertaining.

Everything has to be a movie now.

Cant wait for this video, Im curious to see your response to his criticisms of the game

I can’t stand how he says the game is boring have you seen game breaker god

I didn't think it mattered about the back story characters like Faye and what happened. It set everything up on the adventure and then you went along for the ride. Also I think the exploration was one of the games strengths and learning about the world on that journey was super enjoyable.

"Why is it taking so long to kill these enemies early on in the game?" Well your the git who decided to go with give me a challenge mode, you tell me.

I wonder what Mayo is going to whine about in Ragnarok. “Why is Thor so fat?” “Why are there so many types of enemies?”

I Wonder if there were some sort of accident in under the mayo's Brain.

Bro I have a Theory (which is very Unlikely), Theory: When Atreus heard angry voices of people in his head, i think those voices are of greek people after GOW 3, Athena could be behind these voices.

His video is unbearably bias. He makes points like "playing on normal makes the game a literal button masher. You can just screw around and succeed without doing anything intelligent at all." while showing footage of one of the first combat encounters in the game. Ah yes, because everyone knows that in the old trilogy, on normal difficulty, it took a genius to mash square while blindfolded to defeat most encounters in the first quarter of the game.

My main problem with this guy's analysis is hes comparing 9 games worth of material to one fuckin game that's all love the vids

what I love about GoW 2018 is that you can clearly see the development between Atreus and Kratos and that you’re there too see it from the start to the end. The only thing me and most of the GoW community thinks the game lacks in is the variety of enemies and bosses (which I believe will be fixed in ragnarok with the asgardian warriors, centaurs, the crocodile boss?, as well as the enemies in the dwarves’ town)

Wouldnt the part about too many cooldowns be solved with an armor set to prioritize everything BUT cooldown?

What are you talking about? Kap gow 1 has an AMAZING story. The beginning is a cliffhanger. The main character kills himself as far as we see. The WHOLE time you play you’re wondering how you get to that point. What happened. You can see kratos desperate to forget about his sins. People call him ghost of Sparta reminding and shunning him for the same thing he hates himself for. The old man digging the grave that turned out to be Zeus. Returning from the dead. Finding and setting prometheus free from torture. Being the first to complete pandoras temple. Killing the god of war as a mortal. Becoming a god. Finding out the answer to the question you’ve had since the first 10 seconds of the game. It was NOT just back story. I know this is an old video I hope your not as bias towards the new games still cause this is wild.

The main problem that I had with god of war was what Kuba agreed with him on. The amount of health the enemies have is a lot for what you're given. Two games that come to mind that had a really good solution to this problem is Doom Eternal and Sunset overdrive. At the beginning of those games, it starts really slow because you have no variety in your weapons so enemies will take much longer to kill. But later once you've acquired more weapons, you were rewarded for playing with a variety and not just having a single crutch weapon. This is something that should be added in the next god of war to make the player much more involved with the combat. For example, using your axe to do some freeze damage and then quickly switching to your blades to melt them and weaken them by doing so.

Imagine seeing your son being distraught cause his mother just died, and then calling him an idiot.

Saying that stuff will be fixed in Ragnarok only proves his point

i very much preffer cooldowns. same in dark souls, i always end up hoarding all the consumable items and never use them.

Kuba, I highly recommend you watch Joseph Anderson's video on God of War. His critique was actually fair, and he also took time to point out the great moments in the game. A much better critique video than UndertheMayo's imo. Do note that the video is 3 hours long though lol.

I used to watch his stuff on Doom Eternal. It went from reasonable opinions/love for the game to a straight up simp fest for it. Basically bragged how it was one of the best games ever made.

I definitely can get how fans of the original trilogy can find some dislikes with GOW 2018, and he makes some good points to help his case, but probably 80% is nitpicking. I could go through the original trilogy and do the same thing he did, and pretty much make the same exact points about the original trilogy such as “lack of emotion” and “repetitive gameplay”.

A personal opinion on runic magic. Sense they replaced the combo orb meter with the frost/imulation aura, and the mana meter with a timer, why not just have the Frost/Imulation aura you build up be used for your Runic Abilities?

Arguably 2018 has the best backstory because all the previous games are its backstory

Atreus: exists mayo: triggered

I love how he uses the same argument he criticized (attack system repetition) to favor his own point. It's such a lol moment

I’m on your side Kuba watched every second of your video bro keep doing your thing.

He says that the story is boring and then doesn't tell why.

While his review of GOW 2018 was put together well, his recent style meter analysis of games like DMC5 Ultrakill, Bayonetta Ninja Gaiden and others was a total incoherent mess. I just can’t take anything he says seriously after that. He completely lies about the combo meter in OG GOW in that video saying that “stylish play is vital for progression” unlike DMC5. When in reality, the orb gains from stylish play are negligible especially when you take into consideration the Red orb chests.

I agree with like 10% of this guys criticism the 90% of it it’s just wrong, disingenuous, or could be easily countered

Just feels like he isn't capable of being immersed in a game and just wants action

Mayo's point about the story being just "find a place to spread her ashes": isn't that just the goal? The story is stuff like finding out that chopping down the tree disrupted the protection stave, kicking off a chain of events. You find out the gods are after you, you help a few people along the way, end up interfering with a war because need a key power source to navigate the path, and so on and so forth.

Joseph andersons video is a lot better. A lot less bias and he is wayy more fair. Its long af but it is way more in depth than UTM's video, UTM clearly exaggerates a lot and it obvious what he is really trying to accomplish.

Kuba just said everything i would have said in response to this so-called “review” of the game. I mean cmon man !! His bias is just so clearly out there. You are suppose to be impartial and fair and his review is anything but that …

The talisman that refills your runic attacks is good for Valkyrie fights it makes it better

The fact that he had to turn down the dialogue volume before encounters due to Atreus is absolutely hilarious. What a freaking ridiculous person.

“The enemies take to long” also picks give me a challenge

I watched your wife’s video of playing the first God of War she started the game on easy mode, that is why she could get away with mashing square 4 times the entire game.

I think this "critique" of God of War boils down to "it's not like the old games so I've already decided I hate it and will now attempt to justify it through whatever reasoning I can find, who cares if I use poor logic and flimsy arguments?" He makes a few valid critiques, but that is going to happen when you're throwing out every negative idea you can think of. The best point he makes is unintentional; because this is a damn fine example of confirmation bias rewriting reality while also robbing him of the opportunity to enjoy the game of the generation.

Can't wait till you get to part 2.

Im pretty sure the grapple attack is already there in gow 4 as a runic attack.

classic god of wars are way better to ME, it just really depends on what your after, i'm a big fan of devil may cry and just hack and slash in general so it's only natural il sway towards the more combo heavy point scoring action game, regardless god of war 2019 was still awesome and i'm happy for the folks that liked the change.

Hey kuba i just wanted to ask if you could bring back your gameplay playlist with like 800 videos or so cause i just loved your commentry while playing the games and hyped to see the video

I don't like the "trolls are not bosses" argument, because they are treated like bosses throughout the game. Not to even mention the ends of levels that obviously needed bosses that got trolls instead, the the literally introduces "boss health bars" with trolls. Yes, they call them that, "boss health bar". Maybe I'm just being too much "death of the author" here, but I don't really care about what cory has to say about them being bosses when the game treats them as bosses in almost every way you can treat them as bosses. They call them bosses, they have unique names, unique designs, boss-style health bars, boss-style placement, boss-style story importance. They even have move variety/weakness variety, although limited, it is there. If the team's intention was that they were not bosses, that means they failed, not that they are not bosses.

The camera is shitty in gow 2018 the fact that you have to control the camera which the enemy's constantly get out of view the old sliding camera was way better

elden ring is kind of a "walking"/riding "simulator" too but so many people loves it

12:20 from where is that cutscene with atreus playing with toys? i don't remember it being in the game

He's not complaining about a good story. Its about sacrificing gameplay over being cinematic

The rpg system is what made me play the 2018 game 9 times and thats not possible with other gow games, btw i hate most rpg games since im super impatient but this system is so carefully crafted that you'll get rewarded for everything

I disagree with story and game having to be 50/50. While a good story is appreciated, I think gameplay is the most important thing. I love Mario games because of how good the moveset is. Just because it doesn't have a Last of Us story doesn't make me dislike it.

hey kapitan kuba, are you gonna react to the second part of his video ?

A 7 hour story in cutscenes in a video GAME isn't necessary especially not at the expense of having a good GAME

I played every major GOW game when they released , and I'm a big fan since the first one came out back in 2005 it blow me away back then and it has a special place in my heart . you have no idea how many times I finish that game when i was 15 . the same with 2 and 3 . BUT i like GOW 2018 much more than the trilogy combined . for me it has a better combat system and better level design and puzzles and better world and atmosphere and lore . the only things they need the truly improved in ragnraok are the enemy variety and better bosses .

52:16 I mostly agree with what Mayo is about to say. In old GoW, you don't have these OSI because *you* the player are Kratos' 6th Sense and it is your own ability to manage the chaos happening around him that separates a noob from a master. In new GoW the game is actively making up for information you cannot see on your own, but, wants/needs you to be able to react to. Yes, "They serve their purpose" but their purpose is a little stupid. This is, actually, something that could've been left entirely to Atreus and Mimir

Your first agreement at around the 7:30 mark was just a misunderstanding. On lower difficulties I’m sure square square supremacy or whatever works. But he specifically said on higher level difficulties you’ll get punished I doubt your girl played on the highest level

She must've played the game on normal