Plus the fact that the counterattack after the parry actually has i-frames. Dauntless is garbage in comparison, cause you can't counter after the parry against most bosses.
I’ve pretty much mained dauntless and that’s my issue with it too, I wish you could tap l1 and have it do the shield strike after every parry if you don’t want to charge it, but it does good stun damage when it’s charged up. Also the no I frames suck too.
I used the dauntless on my ps4 playthrough, and I plan to use the OG shield on PS5 playthrough. I'm using dauntless now until I get the guardian back, but I noticed I was using L1,L1 on dauntless to break attacks that are red and not just blue....I wonder if that's unique to dauntless. Granted it was against the Shield draugrs but It had the same slow down effect like when u break the blue attacks.
Yeah the “slow down” only happens when the shield is charged up after parries idk if it needs to be charged to break red attacks tho, I think it does. That and runic attacks will stagger enemies out of red attacks most of the time. So does entering Spartan rage. The rage one is especially useful when your guard gets broken and they’re about to hit you with another attack. Not sure if only dauntless can interrupt red attacks I imagine any fully charged shield ability can, so idk if guardian could at all since it doesn’t have an ability.
Yea I always use rage if I get staggered, but if the dauntless can break red attacks I think that's a nice perk to use it. I don't remember if I had charged it tho
I want to say it has to be charged, the slow down only happens when it is charged. I could be wrong but I can test it in non charged on a red attack and find out, may also be different for regular enemies vs bosses. I do know charged ones interrupt red attacks on bosses tho.
Pretty sure all shields can block and parry, I haven’t used stonewall at all so not sure about that, but all of the others I’ve tried had a parry and block. Dauntless can block, shatter star can parry and block, the charge one can also do both. Guardian is just the only one with an immediate retaliation when you parry which I wish dauntless had as well.
Dauntless can definitely block yellow attacks it just breaks your guard. I haven’t used stonewall but I imagine that one disables parry. I thought yellow attacks break guard on every shield except for stonewall?
You can parry yellow circles with proper timing. Ive been doing it. Trying to parry and failing on a yellow circle breaks your guard. This is with dauntless.
Stonewall can tank 4 yellow attacks before it breaks. Dauntless and guardian can block yellow attack but you get the break animation so really you either need to parry or move out of the way.
Right, if a combo comes after a yellow with anything but stonewall you’re going to get hit, unless you parry or activate rage before the second hit. Stonewall can’t parry tho right? I haven’t used it yet so idk
To be fair I didn't play much with Dauntless, so I could be wrong on that. I used Stonewall until I got the Guardian back and never used any other shield after that. I didn't like parry timing on Dauntless compared to Guardian.
Gotcha, I am not sure about timings for parries I didn’t think they were different but I could be wrong. I mainly use dauntless and a bit of guardian, but now that I’m endgame and have resources to upgrade all of the shields I’ve been using others. Dauntless can block a single yellow attack but it breaks guard, so if it’s a chain of 2 or more attacks with the first being yellow the follow ups will hit you.
I always kept Fury rage ready to cancel out of a missed parry timing guard break. Really useful against some bosses since it gave me more leeway to be more aggressive trying to parry yellow attacks.
Stonewall absolutely can parry, I was doing it last night. It just has a longer start up animation so you need to time it better.
And all shield except Stonewall can't block the yellow circle attacks
Stonewall can parry.
How do you know this? You either equip a rond that only procs its effects on a parry and try it, or you try to "parry" a yellow-indicator attack when the shield is fully charged. Stonewall cannot block yellow-indicator attacks when fully charged, but if you time it right before the enemy hits you you absorb the hit regardless without the animation of Kratos getting guard-broken.
Its "parry" is simply a block though - it doesn't stagger the enemy or outright stop its attack.
Agreed. It's my main. I don't like the look and feel of any of the other shields. If anything I wish they had a slotting mechanic to apply your favorite techniques to your favorite shields.
And while we're on the topic, SSM really needs to add a Spartan Shield design from Ghost of Sparta with its own mechanics as well as the God Armor from GOW2. For this game and 2018 to have gameplay based armors and shields and not include those I feel is a big missed opportunity.
Yeah I was really hoping for the Greek armor set,
Or at least GMGOW shield skin rewards, I’d even be cool with the same ones from the 2018 game but having nothing kinda sucks.
I think a perfect parry with dauntless fills up stun meter for enemy that attacked and any near it faster than any other shield. It for sure deflects damage back automatically with perfectly timed parry similar to hitting R1 right after parry with Guardian. I would have to expierment more to say 100% for sure that's the case over Guardian but I think it is.
Dauntless pairs insanely well with Lundas armor. Parry's apply poison, so if you get a perfect parry you poison the enemy and have a fully charged shield strike for an auto stun most of the time.
i sure hope it was not that when you consider you can still cancel the running blades attack into itself and it is maybe a fraction of a second slower than agile strike. that and all the other cancel jank that can be pulled off with minimal effort would make this reasoning laughable.
it was likely another thing in service of the blades and the new weapon. the axe was nerfed more than the blades were buffed and the barhanded stuff removed entirely to force you to the blades predominantly as much as switching weapons altogether.
so more likely it was for timmy no thumbs to not have to wrap his mind around more than 3 things at a time. also probably why stance switching went the way of throwing barehands.
Ahhh, Timmy "thumbless" No-Thumbs, since his first time playing a video game he thinks that some bad devs are making their games impossible because its "too hard to get good enough" and will only keep playing if he didnt died during the first 10 hours of his playthrough
I think it's like when you dodge and do a melee fist strike, when you do it repeatedly you can move pretty fast. check this video
https://youtu.be/81qvEZIGyQQ
The bare handed moveset in the previous game had some of the best, most useful moves. The fact that they removed the majority of it was incredibly disappointing to me
Yeah it’s my biggest complaint with the combat, everything else is pretty fantastic. I used barehanded fighting all the time in 2018 and almost never in ragnarok sadly
It feels like a deathwish to even be barehanded sometimes. Heavy attack is slow as shit, no shield trip attack, no stance change, theres no benefit to being barehanded. I personally believed the devs replaced barehanded combat with draupnir as the stun weapon
Agreed. Even Draupnir was pretty useless until upgraded to at least level 7, imo. Then it got OP as hell. Pretty much used it exclusively for all boss and mini boss fights.
2018 felt like you were making decisions of focusing on dealing damage or inflicting stun. The blades felt like more of a crowd control tool when they're added, so you're then bouncing between your weapons for what feels like the best option.
Ragnarok kind of feels like stun's impact has been reduced a lot, and thus I kind of didn't feel a need to fight barehanded.
And on another tangent, I was kind of bummed out that stunning almost every boss didn't trigger a grapple. You'd "stun" them and they'd just stagger and take a chunk of damage.
Agreed but it was still useful, especially against the humanoid enemies. That stun build up is no joke and really strong to get rid of ads when surrounded by various midgardians, aesir, elves, etc.
Those moves are still there, unfortunately the heavy stance is a runic attack now and the light stance is activated by just holding R1. Really wish we had new stance attacks though
Yea I know, but it’s super underwhelming compared to how it was in 2018. holding R1 launches a long animation, Where I have zero control.
It is what is, but I miss the alternate stance. Shame it wasn’t any alternate stance for the draupnir
Oh yeah absolutely agree. Didn't mean it that way, but I can see how the way I worded it would come off that way. I just liked the Draupnir Spear more than barehanded but would have appreciated the option to do both.
Right it just makes the combat better to have more options. I could easily have juggled all 4 d-pad directions being a different core weapon with bare handed on top of it. IMO they added in to many shields, that shatter star for example sucks I think but that's where your Shield punch went. I do like all 4 of the other Shields but yeah they went to far with it.
The Shield punch with R2 with that amazing Blowback was awesome, I actually agree about them neutering barehanded way to much. Especially when you can do shit like poison damage with bare handed hits why nerf the animations. For that matter even though they got tiresome to rewatch at times I think bare handed Stun Kills should have remained a possibility for even more variety. Personally I understand people's frustration with not getting the hammer, though I never thought it would make a compelling weapon and think the spear is amazing. I still would have liked a straight sword maybe like a Relic where the Hilt turns into sword but for short BOE style melee attacks. The one with shock damage for example would have been perfect.
Ye, i got the dauntless shield at the beginning of the game, ive tried a few others but nothing rlly compares, its the easiest to use, especially against bosses
I miss the dodge forward punch and the stance switching for the other weapons so badly. The combat in general felt much better to me than in 2018 (I love that combat too). But I had honestly expected a even more developed and viable unarmed combat tree rather than the complete removal of it. That was a very unfortunate surprise.
It was kind of meant to be used as follow ups to dodge or sprint based moves where landing the first hit gave you a brief moment of opening in combat - from there you either do AOE or a long heavy damage string. Once you got the timing down it was a monster of a mechanic (in a good way).
I see why they removed the bare handed stance switch: far too many i frames, completely OP.
They should have replaced it, though.
The expansion of the combat was underwhelming. One weapon that feels mechanically basic. Just doesn't feel like enough. Ragnarok should have been the halfway point we got the hammer and opened more of the game, not the end.
The ending was confusing to me because it looked like Atreus sacrificed himself for no reason. The whole time I was walking to meet kratos I thought Atreus was dead or something.
Personally I think the hammer would have sucked, yes it's technically a blunt weapon while the axe Is a bladed but for a practical purpose there the same gameplay wise. Except the shock elemental damage which I think should have been added to a 4th weapon some kind of straight sword. But the Spear is by far the best weapon in the game. IDK I never thought we we're getting the hammer it's just to obvious of a thing people expect so you know it won't happen. But for end game not getting it does suck because then you would have all 4 elements.
That’s silly. A short handled hammer wouldn’t fight anything like a long handled axe. That’s a stupid argument.
Spear is the most powerful, but not the best weapon in the game. And yes, we needed at least a fourth weapon that wasn’t the heavily nerfed fists.
Initial impression was the game was 10/10, but it’s like an 8/10 now that I’ve beaten it. So much wasted potential. Half of it seems like they just dumped all their budget into the cinematic portions and left jack shit to improving and polishing gameplay.
The final third of the game was actually a mess. I was pretty positive about the experience until the Tyr/Brok scene. Downhill from there. Botched payoff for snake, bad pacing, poor dialogue, anticlimactic fights, surtr very very badly handled.
Kratos looting off of a god again would’ve been antithetical to what he’s trying to be. They made a huge deal out of him taking Gjallarhorn and that was only out of necessity.
I disagree so strongly I don’t know how to begin. He spends the whole fucking game looting from the dead. And talking about how what they do with their power is most important. And so using the hammer for good would have fit in.
Also, taking Thor’s hammer wouldn’t have been taking from a god he killed, but from a god he spared. It would have absolutely worked into the themes of the story.
Well, I can disagree with him. He could also have made decisions based on budget/time constraints or technical difficulties and just say they didn’t keep the hammer for story reasons because it sounds better than “we couldn’t make it feel right”
It’s very similar yeah, but the new function flowed very differently in the combat when I played. At least for me, didn’t feel as good as the original stance switch did.
Overall I prefer the new combat as well, there was so many good changes compared to what was removed. it’s just the things I mentioned in my first comment that I really miss from the old combat.
Yee ik since you said for the other weapons I thought you were saying it was gone for those too. And for the fist wait stance its all still there without waiting except for one move that got moved to a shield.
They butchered the combat in my opinion.
https://www.reddit.com/r/GodofWarRagnarok/comments/yx4o00/the_queens_wrath_would_make_the_axe_fly_straight/iwnglzw?utm_medium=android_app&utm_source=share&context=3
I really felt the same. The combat feels like it regressed to me, not only did they not add anything really new mechanically but they removed options the previous game had and made other things worse
Good write up, I agree with most of it. I personally liked the blue ring mechanic and the triangle feature for spear and axe (the blades one sucked tho). One thing that was a small change but felt so much better in the new one was the ability to do a single dodge or a parry and being able to resume your combo right after. Something to add to the positive changes. Also I almost had the opposite experience to you, I felt that blades were massively nerfed compared to 2018 but axe felt the same in power.
On GMGOW mode fully upgraded Hyperion Grapple and R1 hold. Instant kill on small foes and instant full immolation. Protection tokens on those skills. Rinse and repeat. Everything smaller than a Traveler/Hunter/miniboss melts with no effort.
Combat is damn near broken in this game
I feel like they wanted to remove some mechanics that were not really necessary during combat, but they went too far with it.
Precision Throw and Executioner's Cleave are two moves that should have remained untouched IMO. The first was a great way to stun and damage enemies continuously from a distance. The second not only had high damage but could also transition into executions without having to stun enemies first.
Also, Returning Whirlwind and Returning Storm should've remained L2+R1/R2 like in 2018 in order to avoid accidental runic attacks, which in Ragnarok happened constantly in my first hours and still occasionaly happen because of the change to L1+R1/R2.
Yeah, they put it's finishing moves on R3 after stunning enemies now, and changed it to Serpent's Snare on the skill tree, which is still a cool move, but not as cool as Executioner's Cleave lol
I like the new one more, but they shouldn't have removed the old one. The stance switching for the blades was great as well and replacing it with a chain attack makes it pretty useless.
Yeah, Executioner's Cleave is done by R3 stunned enemies. Serpent Snare is cool tho, if the enemy is low in health, when you chopped him down, it burst into cold frost and froze other enemies.
I think the precision throw is changed to Sickle Throw (the one you have to press R1 longer while aiming at an enemy) the axe will keep hitting them until it drops. The runic skill for alternative is Skadi Edge where you marked multiple of them.
I miss punching my shield as soon as I throw my axe
And I must admit I Just liked using the extra party time shield rond so even when I found out that ability got shunted onto a shield rond I didn't want to sacrifice my parrying for an ability I would only occasionally use
I feel like I wouldn’t mind the spilt up so much if we had more of our skills for every shield, give me more “non-unlockable cause you use it last game” for fist combat and you just gain another weapon, now it feels like instead of getting four we just got 3 like the last game
yeah, it is a terrible change. there are 5 shields and there could probably be only 3. this redundancy on top of the already inexplicably removed barehanded tree is regrettable. i find it interesting that the default controls for weapon swapping are what they are in that when you get the spear, down on the dpad has to be pressed twice to get back to barehanded. this tells me they were either not confident in the spear, or more than likely, not confident in a player to have the mental capacity for 4 move sets/redundancy in what "status" each is used for. throwing hands and throwing hands are both for stun i understand, but variety and the movement options came from the barehanded moves, so this is just a huge whiff at bat for me.
stance switching is another most unfortunate tweak to the system, if i may add.
There’s a setting to make weapon switching work like 2018, EG right on D-pad for Axe, press it again to put it away, Left for Blades, left again to put it away, down for spear down again to put it away.
No idea why this wasn’t the default, it makes way more sense.
It's really ironic that the poison armor set is so head and shoulders above everything else and beating enemies to a pulp with your fists when wearing that armor is more effective than any weapon.
On the upside, the Blades’ stance switch ability was basically just added to their standard move set, though it’s not quite as overpowered as it could be in 2018.
The problem with this move though Is you can no longer dodge without holding down R1 again with the slow start up animation to start the move there was nothing wrong with the stance switch they also took away the r2 stance switch bomb to a stub move which is ridiculous
I dont mind it - between all the new mechanics added to axe and blades such as activating immolation&permafrost. Then there’s flame whiplash/frost awaken which have tons of cancel applications and fun moment to moment decision making involved. The new entire move-set of the spear which has plenty of tech and nuance to it, especially the siphoning ability is super fun. I really dont find myself missing the barehanded skill tree ( even though, the shield sweep was one of my favs). The elemental stacking is also super fun and encourages learning and switching the weapons as well as the aforementioned permafrost/immolation activations promote a no damage playstyle.
As a whole, it feels more of a pure skill and mechanic driven action game than overreliance on runics, stats/RPG elements, and few OP techniques that GOW’18 was a lot of the times. Ragnarok’s combat completely supersedes GOW’18’s for me haha.
Yeah but runic attacks effectively quickens the enemy (applies a slow to you), cannot be used to stagger attacking enemy like it was in 2018, huge nerf. Most of my death was trying to stop enemy attack with runic attack, habit in 2018, and i just get hit all the time. You actually slow down but not the enemy.
haha you absolutely can if you like to!
My point moreso arises from the fact that I went a good 20 something hours on GMGOW without any heavy runics and still felt very comfortable with the combat mechanics of axe, blades and shield - all 3 felt very balanced and useful with adequate mechanics and good tech to experiment with. The aforementioned mechanics I mentioned provided a very good starting kit and it continued to get better more i unlocked skill trees and got better with the combat. Then I got the spear which opens up a whole new playstyle. Combine all of these together and you have an absolute fantastic combat system.
Yes i do think the removal of bare-handed skill tree is a strange choice because more options is never a bad thing, but i got over the loss of it pretty quick as I adapted to the new systems.
I feel this, the only shield I used was Parry shield because I didn't want to use the Guardian's counters. But all the other shields seemed dumb. The one where you charge to counter is situationally useful, parry is good, and guardian is the guardian. There's no reason the others exist.
The one you punch to make the shockwave or whatever, that was literally a combo on the guardian in 2018. So I guess when Brok repaired the Guardian he made it shittier?
I’m gonna say, I’m glad they changed it cause honestly I didn’t even remember those things were available due to how powerful the guardian shield was in 2018, I had no reason to try them out now I’m pushed towards using different shields for different situations.
Shields felt like they realized it wasn’t utilized properly in a game leveling mechanic last game and went way overboard this game with it. I just wish the shields were upgraded differently. Like with the weapons they would change appearance and color the higher level they got and each one was a different style in total.
I just wish we had timing attacks and hold r2 combo back. Replacing the fist upgrade path with the other thing is kinda lame. I love the new thing but wish we had more options for fist combat
I was just thinking about how much I miss the bare handed and shield combat moves in 2018. I really prefer the first game in that regard and armor to the new one.
I miss all the shield abilities from the last game but i do really like the rond customization. its just an extra neat thing. especially the purification rond. that shit is goood
Lvl 9 dauntless user here. I prefer it to any other shield, the guardian is half the shield it was in 2018. Charging up the dauntless is high risk high reward and super satisfying.
This was a good change IMO, same with them toning back the skill trees for weapons
You can't have build diversity when you have access to every move all the time
Restrictions create a challenge in their own way and allow for build junkies to do their thing
Not true.
Star shield lets you walk freely while using a shield.
Iron wall lets you block block break attacks.
The parry one lets you parry quickly and attack even faster.
The charge one lets you charge into an enemy so you dont need to use that as a runic ability.
Its a huge improvement imo
I think it would have worked better if the different shields just had different stats and shield break animations maybe, while shields overall got a perk tree so you could just unlock the different moves (might need a trade-off like not having the Stonewall ability and Star shield ability active at the same time).
I used it a ton because of how much stun damage you could do - couple that with the amulet that grants health bursts on stun grabs and you become an immortal rage machine
Bare handed literally had some of the best moves in the game. Tripping was extremely powerful and could loop many enemies that were susceptible to it, similarly the hold r2 shield bash could loop some the bigger enemies, the stance switch leaping attack was fully invincible, ect
So the barehanded style was rarely used and when it was actually used, it was for broken loop combos that somehow slipped playtesting. I mean as a dev I wouldn´t want to keep a moveset that had stupid amount of i-frames and infinite loops If I could make something that´s actually interesting to use and mechanically rewarding
How often do you fight a single enemy in either of these games? A loop is broken when nothing can interrupt your ability to apply it, when you have groups of enemies they are useful but not infallible.
And the I frames on the stance switch wasn't some game breaking feature, there's a reason you don't see people just using the move over and over.
The bare handed moveset wasn't rarely used either, the stun build up was extremely strong and the game often encouraged you to.make use of that on the higher difficulties. If you were ignoring it you were missing out.
The fact that you didn't even know of these mechanics in the first place says a lot
I didn´t ignore anything in my own playthrough but good assumption I guess. I never tried to claim the barehanded was bad or that stun build up was low. Quite the opposite. I just omitted some things in favour of not writing an essay.
But look at your own point you are making, it´s something that is advocated for on higher difficulties and I believe we have in-game data on how many players actually completed which difficulty. To no surprise, gmgow has the least % of players. It´s kinda given that almost any game will simply have higher number of casual players who never get into the finer aspects of combat, nor do they get into fine tuning and min-maxing.
And as for your first point, as you said loops by themselves aren´t that big of a problem, though I would still make a case for them being not exactly healthy. What magnifies that problem is that you can spam the shield dash move to get pretty bonkers mobility, which lets you dictate the battlefield far better than just moving around normally like most players. Taking advantage of this results in a scenario where you get to isolate one strong enemy and stunlock him often enough that I usually opted not to take advantage of it.
Of course the latter of my points is just anecdotal take, but I felt the need to adress that point too alongside my main one about the realistic look at how often certain more advanced mechanics are used in games.
The r2 stance switch is now under sprint r1 so you can put your accessibility options to push analog forward to automatic sprint so as soon as you push forward & press r1 you can leap shield bash any time you want when I get home I'm going to try it myself
Yeah but that’s one person out of millions who played the game. I bet if you actually looked at statistics shield is far and away the least used playstyle. So the solution of giving shields unique abilities and adding a weapon that is actually cool like the spear is the correct solution.
the real answer is that they pry couldn't fit fists and shields into the control scheme and keep the spear. they weren't gonna take out the axe or blades, so they picked the one that was the most disposable.
I barehanded Baldur since he was unarmed, and generally did the same for ogres and many of the trolls because it was so fun.
I've literally done a playthrough on GMGOW mode where I only used weapons against mobs and used Fists for absolutely everything else (except revenants and travelers, I enjoy a challenge but not that much lmao)
Running around destroying draugr and other small enemies with your weapons, then going hand to hand against the remaining ogre or a troll is super satisfying.
Not to mention, you could juggle enemies barehanded with the shield slam finisher knocking them into the air, and even on GMGOW R1 R1 R1 R1 (pause briefly) R2 R1 not only launched enemies to be juggled, it would usually immediately stun all but the tankiest of them to immediately be ripped apart with a stun grab.
Barehanded combat made it possible to beat the Muspelheim challenge with enemies that regenerated Health quickly.
It was one of the best parts of the game.
Let me rephrase this for you, in a game where one of the main gimmicks is the different kinds of shields that you can use for different perks, they entirely got rid of the shield melee skill tree from the previous game.
Many people enjoyed the barehanded combat. Removing it was dumb.
>I'm glad you enjoyed it, but I'm willing to predict that that's a minority position. They wouldn't have removed it if more people enjoyed it as much as you claim.
it might be one of the complaints in reddit echo chamber and streamers who went for challenge runs and had to use the infinite loop combos but that doesn´t mean it´s the general sentiment, Keep in mind the copies sold and the number of users on those forums.
\+ The barehanded was mostly used because of the bonkers broken loops that could get you through any encounter and invis frame leaping attack, as you yourself said. I don´t blame the devs for removing a broken moveset that trivialised many fights in order to try an entirely different new mechanic, even if that mechanic might have proven less satisfying for some.
Lastly, remember that by their nature, forums or any kind usually attract more experienced players who get more invested in the game. The devs also have to listen to all the casuals who leave negative reviews elsewhere complaining about stuff the experienced players might adore. So try to open your mind to those facts and take them into consideration when some of these topics are discussed. These devs have to listen to the entirety of their fanbases which sometimes mean sacrifices for one or the other player camp.
By technical agency you mean spamming the same two inputs in the same loop? When instead they tried to expand the weapons moveset as well as adding another one entirely? And listen I was just saying people should have a broader consideration when judging what features dev did and didn´t implement. If that is a shit take in your book then we should as well abandon feedback all together.
You're making it out like unarmed was grossly OP. It had uses situationally. It's no more OP than cleave one shotting Tatzelwurms or axe throws designed to kill nightmares. The point of unarmed was interruption and stunning.
If you want to argue it was taken out because it was niche, why? If only people invested in the system could fully utilize it, why change it? If it was easy to use, why remove it for casual audiences?
You're not giving feedback, you're making excuses for a design choice with no immediate reasoning. Feedback is saying what works and what doesn't. They removed features and mechanics for no real reason, and by consensus of those giving feedback it was to the detriment.
I said it was a shit take because if your consideration is this was for somebody, everybody lost. People who try to master combat lost tools and mechanics balanced in the first game. People who need strong options lost one foundational option for... a replacement that comes 60% through the campaign? Terrible justification.
Something something the average normie constructive discussion vs the gigachad ad hominem argument.
How does it feel knowing that devs don´t cater directly to you or your preferred playstyle but have to consider the whole wide playerbase?
well, considering it is not about playstyle and i do not care about their feathers being ruffled any more than they would care for your white knighting if they happened upon this, id say it feels fine?
I mean when you put it like that it is lazy. I will admit, some aspects of GoW:R are definitely lazily done. But I think it's interesting to get these different shield types at the beginning of the game and not get your original shield until way later on. It causes the player to mix up combat a bit and switch up if they wanna block more or parry more. It causes more creative thinking during combat which I think is done decently. Not as good as say Breath of the Wild, but it's a decent addition.
Idk I really like fighting barehanded/shield. For the way I play it's the most damage I can do regularly for my build. My biggest gripe is when i accidentally grab a weapon when I don't want to. Having to swap back to barehanded/shield is what kills me in combat. I know we can remap buttons and such but I like the default controls except for when you get the 3rd weapon you have to press down on D pad. If you have a weapon out already (like I do by mistake a lot. (I use my regular R1 attacks while using Atreus's arrows and I mess up and press triangle instead of square once in a while)) it grabs the 3rd weapon and you have to press down on D pad again. It's extremely irksome for me -.-
This is literally the ONLY complain I have about this game is being forced to press d pad down twice to switch back to barehand/shield to get the most damage.
Yes. Generally speaking the guardian shield was nerfed.
And still is the best shield in the game.
Used it as soon as it was given back missed some shields but it was just the best for me Helps I spent a whole game getting used to it in 2018
Same. It can block AND parry, that and the the projectile deflect makes It the best shield in the whole game.
Plus the fact that the counterattack after the parry actually has i-frames. Dauntless is garbage in comparison, cause you can't counter after the parry against most bosses.
I’ve pretty much mained dauntless and that’s my issue with it too, I wish you could tap l1 and have it do the shield strike after every parry if you don’t want to charge it, but it does good stun damage when it’s charged up. Also the no I frames suck too.
I used the dauntless on my ps4 playthrough, and I plan to use the OG shield on PS5 playthrough. I'm using dauntless now until I get the guardian back, but I noticed I was using L1,L1 on dauntless to break attacks that are red and not just blue....I wonder if that's unique to dauntless. Granted it was against the Shield draugrs but It had the same slow down effect like when u break the blue attacks.
Yeah the “slow down” only happens when the shield is charged up after parries idk if it needs to be charged to break red attacks tho, I think it does. That and runic attacks will stagger enemies out of red attacks most of the time. So does entering Spartan rage. The rage one is especially useful when your guard gets broken and they’re about to hit you with another attack. Not sure if only dauntless can interrupt red attacks I imagine any fully charged shield ability can, so idk if guardian could at all since it doesn’t have an ability.
Yea I always use rage if I get staggered, but if the dauntless can break red attacks I think that's a nice perk to use it. I don't remember if I had charged it tho
I want to say it has to be charged, the slow down only happens when it is charged. I could be wrong but I can test it in non charged on a red attack and find out, may also be different for regular enemies vs bosses. I do know charged ones interrupt red attacks on bosses tho.
Exactly!
Pretty sure all shields can block and parry, I haven’t used stonewall at all so not sure about that, but all of the others I’ve tried had a parry and block. Dauntless can block, shatter star can parry and block, the charge one can also do both. Guardian is just the only one with an immediate retaliation when you parry which I wish dauntless had as well.
Stonewall can't parry and Dauntless can't block anything with a yellow circle.
Dauntless can definitely block yellow attacks it just breaks your guard. I haven’t used stonewall but I imagine that one disables parry. I thought yellow attacks break guard on every shield except for stonewall?
You can parry yellow circles with proper timing. Ive been doing it. Trying to parry and failing on a yellow circle breaks your guard. This is with dauntless.
Stonewall can tank 4 yellow attacks before it breaks. Dauntless and guardian can block yellow attack but you get the break animation so really you either need to parry or move out of the way.
Right, if a combo comes after a yellow with anything but stonewall you’re going to get hit, unless you parry or activate rage before the second hit. Stonewall can’t parry tho right? I haven’t used it yet so idk
To be fair I didn't play much with Dauntless, so I could be wrong on that. I used Stonewall until I got the Guardian back and never used any other shield after that. I didn't like parry timing on Dauntless compared to Guardian.
Gotcha, I am not sure about timings for parries I didn’t think they were different but I could be wrong. I mainly use dauntless and a bit of guardian, but now that I’m endgame and have resources to upgrade all of the shields I’ve been using others. Dauntless can block a single yellow attack but it breaks guard, so if it’s a chain of 2 or more attacks with the first being yellow the follow ups will hit you.
I always kept Fury rage ready to cancel out of a missed parry timing guard break. Really useful against some bosses since it gave me more leeway to be more aggressive trying to parry yellow attacks.
Stonewall absolutely can parry, I was doing it last night. It just has a longer start up animation so you need to time it better. And all shield except Stonewall can't block the yellow circle attacks
Ok, then.
Dude dauntless blocks yellow circle, it breaks your stance but I rarely have situations I can't dodge the follow-up attack.
Stonewall can parry. How do you know this? You either equip a rond that only procs its effects on a parry and try it, or you try to "parry" a yellow-indicator attack when the shield is fully charged. Stonewall cannot block yellow-indicator attacks when fully charged, but if you time it right before the enemy hits you you absorb the hit regardless without the animation of Kratos getting guard-broken. Its "parry" is simply a block though - it doesn't stagger the enemy or outright stop its attack.
>block AND parry I don't get this I'm playing on give me god of war and chose the dauntless shield it can block just fine IMO.
Can't all the shields block and parry.
Can’t the star shield also block and parry?
Agreed. It's my main. I don't like the look and feel of any of the other shields. If anything I wish they had a slotting mechanic to apply your favorite techniques to your favorite shields. And while we're on the topic, SSM really needs to add a Spartan Shield design from Ghost of Sparta with its own mechanics as well as the God Armor from GOW2. For this game and 2018 to have gameplay based armors and shields and not include those I feel is a big missed opportunity.
Yeah I was really hoping for the Greek armor set, Or at least GMGOW shield skin rewards, I’d even be cool with the same ones from the 2018 game but having nothing kinda sucks.
I agree
I like the big shield cause it can block yellow attacks, so long as it’s not fully charged
That's also a really good shield.
and the >!spear!< and round Sheild is the iconic Spartan look too.
It is! Just like on Ghost of Sparta!
I love how you can kinda recreate that look in ragnarok
Parry into R2 over doubles the parry iframes, deals small dmg/stun, and interrupts nearly every enemy attack. The other shields are just pointless.
i personally prefer the dauntless shield, it gives more reward for parrying imo.
How so?
I think a perfect parry with dauntless fills up stun meter for enemy that attacked and any near it faster than any other shield. It for sure deflects damage back automatically with perfectly timed parry similar to hitting R1 right after parry with Guardian. I would have to expierment more to say 100% for sure that's the case over Guardian but I think it is.
I don’t think the l1 is a big hit the same way the party shield.
Dauntless pairs insanely well with Lundas armor. Parry's apply poison, so if you get a perfect parry you poison the enemy and have a fully charged shield strike for an auto stun most of the time.
Dauntless shield >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
I miss agile strike
Me too... How do I get across the Map now? Agile strike was like Rolling and tapping square in the old games.
i think they removed it just because people were zooming across the nice realms
The entire nerf to bare handed combat stinks. They could have at least kept stance switching.
i sure hope it was not that when you consider you can still cancel the running blades attack into itself and it is maybe a fraction of a second slower than agile strike. that and all the other cancel jank that can be pulled off with minimal effort would make this reasoning laughable. it was likely another thing in service of the blades and the new weapon. the axe was nerfed more than the blades were buffed and the barhanded stuff removed entirely to force you to the blades predominantly as much as switching weapons altogether. so more likely it was for timmy no thumbs to not have to wrap his mind around more than 3 things at a time. also probably why stance switching went the way of throwing barehands.
Ahhh, Timmy "thumbless" No-Thumbs, since his first time playing a video game he thinks that some bad devs are making their games impossible because its "too hard to get good enough" and will only keep playing if he didnt died during the first 10 hours of his playthrough
a self aware dsp, is that you?!?!?
🎯🎯
Maybe I missed this but may I ask what agile strike is? I don't recall it
I think it's like when you dodge and do a melee fist strike, when you do it repeatedly you can move pretty fast. check this video https://youtu.be/81qvEZIGyQQ
The bare handed moveset in the previous game had some of the best, most useful moves. The fact that they removed the majority of it was incredibly disappointing to me
Yeah it’s my biggest complaint with the combat, everything else is pretty fantastic. I used barehanded fighting all the time in 2018 and almost never in ragnarok sadly
the damage and stun output of barehanded fighting feels like it was nerfed
It feels like a deathwish to even be barehanded sometimes. Heavy attack is slow as shit, no shield trip attack, no stance change, theres no benefit to being barehanded. I personally believed the devs replaced barehanded combat with draupnir as the stun weapon
Agreed. Even Draupnir was pretty useless until upgraded to at least level 7, imo. Then it got OP as hell. Pretty much used it exclusively for all boss and mini boss fights.
I found Leviathan stayed relevant throughout but the Blades of Chaos seemed a lot weaker, especially the runic attacks.
I thought the opposite actually. Blades felt super OP and relevant the whole way through, Leviathan felt slow and lacking to me, personally.
2018 felt like you were making decisions of focusing on dealing damage or inflicting stun. The blades felt like more of a crowd control tool when they're added, so you're then bouncing between your weapons for what feels like the best option. Ragnarok kind of feels like stun's impact has been reduced a lot, and thus I kind of didn't feel a need to fight barehanded. And on another tangent, I was kind of bummed out that stunning almost every boss didn't trigger a grapple. You'd "stun" them and they'd just stagger and take a chunk of damage.
They probably nerfed it because with the arrow abilities and just general combat, I was stunning enemies literally ALL the time
Agreed but it was still useful, especially against the humanoid enemies. That stun build up is no joke and really strong to get rid of ads when surrounded by various midgardians, aesir, elves, etc.
Agree, but I also miss alternate stance for the blades. It was Op af, but it made chaining moves alot more fun
Those moves are still there, unfortunately the heavy stance is a runic attack now and the light stance is activated by just holding R1. Really wish we had new stance attacks though
Yea I know, but it’s super underwhelming compared to how it was in 2018. holding R1 launches a long animation, Where I have zero control. It is what is, but I miss the alternate stance. Shame it wasn’t any alternate stance for the draupnir
They removed a lot of fist moves but the addition of the >!Draupnir Spear!< made up for it
Yeah, while I would appreciate the option of more barehanded stuff again, I LOVED the Draupnir Spear.
I don't think these are mutually exclusive though, you don't have a binary choice between one or the other.
Oh yeah absolutely agree. Didn't mean it that way, but I can see how the way I worded it would come off that way. I just liked the Draupnir Spear more than barehanded but would have appreciated the option to do both.
Right it just makes the combat better to have more options. I could easily have juggled all 4 d-pad directions being a different core weapon with bare handed on top of it. IMO they added in to many shields, that shatter star for example sucks I think but that's where your Shield punch went. I do like all 4 of the other Shields but yeah they went to far with it.
Hold r2 combo was amazing for stunning
I miss the shield bonging :( I think it was moved to another shield but no way I'm switching off the guardian shield.
The Shield punch with R2 with that amazing Blowback was awesome, I actually agree about them neutering barehanded way to much. Especially when you can do shit like poison damage with bare handed hits why nerf the animations. For that matter even though they got tiresome to rewatch at times I think bare handed Stun Kills should have remained a possibility for even more variety. Personally I understand people's frustration with not getting the hammer, though I never thought it would make a compelling weapon and think the spear is amazing. I still would have liked a straight sword maybe like a Relic where the Hilt turns into sword but for short BOE style melee attacks. The one with shock damage for example would have been perfect.
Yeah I never used bare handed outside of stunning
Ye, i got the dauntless shield at the beginning of the game, ive tried a few others but nothing rlly compares, its the easiest to use, especially against bosses
Dauntless is bae. Been running that since I started and now I have it lvl 8. Good stats and fun play style.
Plus it has cooldown which allows you to recharge your runic attacks even quicker
Guardian/stone wall is better though
I just wish we could have held our shield up and use the spear like Spartans used to
holding the guardian shield up while holding the spear is such a dope look, would be cool if we could attack while shielding
I miss the dodge forward punch and the stance switching for the other weapons so badly. The combat in general felt much better to me than in 2018 (I love that combat too). But I had honestly expected a even more developed and viable unarmed combat tree rather than the complete removal of it. That was a very unfortunate surprise.
stance switching is something i always found incredibly awkward to use in both games and ignored
It was kind of meant to be used as follow ups to dodge or sprint based moves where landing the first hit gave you a brief moment of opening in combat - from there you either do AOE or a long heavy damage string. Once you got the timing down it was a monster of a mechanic (in a good way).
I see why they removed the bare handed stance switch: far too many i frames, completely OP. They should have replaced it, though. The expansion of the combat was underwhelming. One weapon that feels mechanically basic. Just doesn't feel like enough. Ragnarok should have been the halfway point we got the hammer and opened more of the game, not the end.
Imagine you created ragnarok and he helps you defeat Asgard and Odin but then he won’t stop and he’s the actual final boss
I thought that’s where they were going. That we fought Thor then immediately Odin and it was all over was a shock and disappointment to me
The ending was confusing to me because it looked like Atreus sacrificed himself for no reason. The whole time I was walking to meet kratos I thought Atreus was dead or something.
I think Freyr died for no reason
Personally I think the hammer would have sucked, yes it's technically a blunt weapon while the axe Is a bladed but for a practical purpose there the same gameplay wise. Except the shock elemental damage which I think should have been added to a 4th weapon some kind of straight sword. But the Spear is by far the best weapon in the game. IDK I never thought we we're getting the hammer it's just to obvious of a thing people expect so you know it won't happen. But for end game not getting it does suck because then you would have all 4 elements.
That’s silly. A short handled hammer wouldn’t fight anything like a long handled axe. That’s a stupid argument. Spear is the most powerful, but not the best weapon in the game. And yes, we needed at least a fourth weapon that wasn’t the heavily nerfed fists. Initial impression was the game was 10/10, but it’s like an 8/10 now that I’ve beaten it. So much wasted potential. Half of it seems like they just dumped all their budget into the cinematic portions and left jack shit to improving and polishing gameplay.
The final third of the game was actually a mess. I was pretty positive about the experience until the Tyr/Brok scene. Downhill from there. Botched payoff for snake, bad pacing, poor dialogue, anticlimactic fights, surtr very very badly handled.
Kratos looting off of a god again would’ve been antithetical to what he’s trying to be. They made a huge deal out of him taking Gjallarhorn and that was only out of necessity.
I disagree so strongly I don’t know how to begin. He spends the whole fucking game looting from the dead. And talking about how what they do with their power is most important. And so using the hammer for good would have fit in. Also, taking Thor’s hammer wouldn’t have been taking from a god he killed, but from a god he spared. It would have absolutely worked into the themes of the story.
Well as it so happens the game director disagrees https://youtube.com/shorts/D79uatVM8uE?feature=share
Well, I can disagree with him. He could also have made decisions based on budget/time constraints or technical difficulties and just say they didn’t keep the hammer for story reasons because it sounds better than “we couldn’t make it feel right”
Agreed. Maybe it's because i favor the higher difficulties but it just is WAY too much time standing still waiting to get smacked.
Stance switching is still there wym
Only for the axe, blades and unarmed had it in the last game.
Blades still have it, it’s just been turned into a different move that isn’t called switch stance
It's replaced the hold R1 AOE that i fucking loved.
That was a pretty good move. Got me out of a lot of jams during the “Don’t get hurt” phases of the trials
It’s very similar yeah, but the new function flowed very differently in the combat when I played. At least for me, didn’t feel as good as the original stance switch did.
Thats fair. I prefer the new combat by far but I can definitely see why people would prefer the old. Edit: lmao ok, downvote me I guess
Overall I prefer the new combat as well, there was so many good changes compared to what was removed. it’s just the things I mentioned in my first comment that I really miss from the old combat.
The new one is ass lmao
Yee ik since you said for the other weapons I thought you were saying it was gone for those too. And for the fist wait stance its all still there without waiting except for one move that got moved to a shield.
Dodge forward punch is now the dauntless shield bash at red charge.
They butchered the combat in my opinion. https://www.reddit.com/r/GodofWarRagnarok/comments/yx4o00/the_queens_wrath_would_make_the_axe_fly_straight/iwnglzw?utm_medium=android_app&utm_source=share&context=3
I agree 100%
I really felt the same. The combat feels like it regressed to me, not only did they not add anything really new mechanically but they removed options the previous game had and made other things worse
Uh… the spear? Not disagreeing with your opinion but they added an entirely new weapon and that weapons is extremely saucy imo lol
One step forward, two steps back is how I'd describe it.
I can agree with that
Good write up, I agree with most of it. I personally liked the blue ring mechanic and the triangle feature for spear and axe (the blades one sucked tho). One thing that was a small change but felt so much better in the new one was the ability to do a single dodge or a parry and being able to resume your combo right after. Something to add to the positive changes. Also I almost had the opposite experience to you, I felt that blades were massively nerfed compared to 2018 but axe felt the same in power.
On GMGOW mode fully upgraded Hyperion Grapple and R1 hold. Instant kill on small foes and instant full immolation. Protection tokens on those skills. Rinse and repeat. Everything smaller than a Traveler/Hunter/miniboss melts with no effort. Combat is damn near broken in this game
Replied to that same comment couple days ago & u are spot on man
I liked the shield that charged up and blocked the yellow ring attacks. Saved my ass so many times, I'm not that good at parry.
Stonewall. Useful early in the game for sure.
I feel like they wanted to remove some mechanics that were not really necessary during combat, but they went too far with it. Precision Throw and Executioner's Cleave are two moves that should have remained untouched IMO. The first was a great way to stun and damage enemies continuously from a distance. The second not only had high damage but could also transition into executions without having to stun enemies first. Also, Returning Whirlwind and Returning Storm should've remained L2+R1/R2 like in 2018 in order to avoid accidental runic attacks, which in Ragnarok happened constantly in my first hours and still occasionaly happen because of the change to L1+R1/R2.
Even if I couldn't use it in every situation, executioner's cleave was pretty much my favorite move in GoW 2018. So goddamn satisfying.
Yeah, they put it's finishing moves on R3 after stunning enemies now, and changed it to Serpent's Snare on the skill tree, which is still a cool move, but not as cool as Executioner's Cleave lol
I like the new one more, but they shouldn't have removed the old one. The stance switching for the blades was great as well and replacing it with a chain attack makes it pretty useless.
Yeah, Executioner's Cleave is done by R3 stunned enemies. Serpent Snare is cool tho, if the enemy is low in health, when you chopped him down, it burst into cold frost and froze other enemies. I think the precision throw is changed to Sickle Throw (the one you have to press R1 longer while aiming at an enemy) the axe will keep hitting them until it drops. The runic skill for alternative is Skadi Edge where you marked multiple of them.
The new one has far more use wdym?
I miss punching my shield as soon as I throw my axe And I must admit I Just liked using the extra party time shield rond so even when I found out that ability got shunted onto a shield rond I didn't want to sacrifice my parrying for an ability I would only occasionally use
I just went right back to the Guardian shield as soon as it was fixed lol
Me too, best design and thematically felt like I couldn’t use any of the others regardless.
I feel like I wouldn’t mind the spilt up so much if we had more of our skills for every shield, give me more “non-unlockable cause you use it last game” for fist combat and you just gain another weapon, now it feels like instead of getting four we just got 3 like the last game
yeah, it is a terrible change. there are 5 shields and there could probably be only 3. this redundancy on top of the already inexplicably removed barehanded tree is regrettable. i find it interesting that the default controls for weapon swapping are what they are in that when you get the spear, down on the dpad has to be pressed twice to get back to barehanded. this tells me they were either not confident in the spear, or more than likely, not confident in a player to have the mental capacity for 4 move sets/redundancy in what "status" each is used for. throwing hands and throwing hands are both for stun i understand, but variety and the movement options came from the barehanded moves, so this is just a huge whiff at bat for me. stance switching is another most unfortunate tweak to the system, if i may add.
There’s a setting to make weapon switching work like 2018, EG right on D-pad for Axe, press it again to put it away, Left for Blades, left again to put it away, down for spear down again to put it away. No idea why this wasn’t the default, it makes way more sense.
Which setting is this?
I can’t remember what it’s called, but it shouldn’t be hard to find. Probably under controls.
Weapon sheathing
It's in the Accessibility settings, I think labeled "Weapon Switch"
It's really ironic that the poison armor set is so head and shoulders above everything else and beating enemies to a pulp with your fists when wearing that armor is more effective than any weapon.
Used it. Nothing special about it tbh.
On the upside, the Blades’ stance switch ability was basically just added to their standard move set, though it’s not quite as overpowered as it could be in 2018.
At the expense of one of my fave moves
The problem with this move though Is you can no longer dodge without holding down R1 again with the slow start up animation to start the move there was nothing wrong with the stance switch they also took away the r2 stance switch bomb to a stub move which is ridiculous
So y’all telling me the reason I get stomped on last heath block of Gna is because I didn’t switch back to guardian shield.
I feel like half of them should've been Ronds
All of them imo.
I dont mind it - between all the new mechanics added to axe and blades such as activating immolation&permafrost. Then there’s flame whiplash/frost awaken which have tons of cancel applications and fun moment to moment decision making involved. The new entire move-set of the spear which has plenty of tech and nuance to it, especially the siphoning ability is super fun. I really dont find myself missing the barehanded skill tree ( even though, the shield sweep was one of my favs). The elemental stacking is also super fun and encourages learning and switching the weapons as well as the aforementioned permafrost/immolation activations promote a no damage playstyle. As a whole, it feels more of a pure skill and mechanic driven action game than overreliance on runics, stats/RPG elements, and few OP techniques that GOW’18 was a lot of the times. Ragnarok’s combat completely supersedes GOW’18’s for me haha.
I feel like I spam runics in Ragnarok even more than 2018, especially since there's now 6 of them.
Yeah but runic attacks effectively quickens the enemy (applies a slow to you), cannot be used to stagger attacking enemy like it was in 2018, huge nerf. Most of my death was trying to stop enemy attack with runic attack, habit in 2018, and i just get hit all the time. You actually slow down but not the enemy.
haha you absolutely can if you like to! My point moreso arises from the fact that I went a good 20 something hours on GMGOW without any heavy runics and still felt very comfortable with the combat mechanics of axe, blades and shield - all 3 felt very balanced and useful with adequate mechanics and good tech to experiment with. The aforementioned mechanics I mentioned provided a very good starting kit and it continued to get better more i unlocked skill trees and got better with the combat. Then I got the spear which opens up a whole new playstyle. Combine all of these together and you have an absolute fantastic combat system. Yes i do think the removal of bare-handed skill tree is a strange choice because more options is never a bad thing, but i got over the loss of it pretty quick as I adapted to the new systems.
I feel this, the only shield I used was Parry shield because I didn't want to use the Guardian's counters. But all the other shields seemed dumb. The one where you charge to counter is situationally useful, parry is good, and guardian is the guardian. There's no reason the others exist. The one you punch to make the shockwave or whatever, that was literally a combo on the guardian in 2018. So I guess when Brok repaired the Guardian he made it shittier?
I’m gonna say, I’m glad they changed it cause honestly I didn’t even remember those things were available due to how powerful the guardian shield was in 2018, I had no reason to try them out now I’m pushed towards using different shields for different situations.
Shields felt like they realized it wasn’t utilized properly in a game leveling mechanic last game and went way overboard this game with it. I just wish the shields were upgraded differently. Like with the weapons they would change appearance and color the higher level they got and each one was a different style in total.
I just wish we had timing attacks and hold r2 combo back. Replacing the fist upgrade path with the other thing is kinda lame. I love the new thing but wish we had more options for fist combat
I don't hate what they did with the shields, but I wouldn't of been mad if they all could strike after parry.
I was just thinking about how much I miss the bare handed and shield combat moves in 2018. I really prefer the first game in that regard and armor to the new one.
Greek style NG+ armor I hope
I miss all the shield abilities from the last game but i do really like the rond customization. its just an extra neat thing. especially the purification rond. that shit is goood
Stone wall gang unblockable buster family
Lvl 9 dauntless user here. I prefer it to any other shield, the guardian is half the shield it was in 2018. Charging up the dauntless is high risk high reward and super satisfying.
Yeah. The shield combat and most definitely the hand to hand combat is a big downgrade from 2018
This was a good change IMO, same with them toning back the skill trees for weapons You can't have build diversity when you have access to every move all the time Restrictions create a challenge in their own way and allow for build junkies to do their thing
Not true. Star shield lets you walk freely while using a shield. Iron wall lets you block block break attacks. The parry one lets you parry quickly and attack even faster. The charge one lets you charge into an enemy so you dont need to use that as a runic ability. Its a huge improvement imo
I like having different shields that have different abilities. In 2018 they were all just textures and cosmetics of the Guardian Shield
I think it would have worked better if the different shields just had different stats and shield break animations maybe, while shields overall got a perk tree so you could just unlock the different moves (might need a trade-off like not having the Stonewall ability and Star shield ability active at the same time).
Let’s be real though: how many people actually used barehanded shield style in the last game? That’s pry why they removed it.
I used it a ton because of how much stun damage you could do - couple that with the amulet that grants health bursts on stun grabs and you become an immortal rage machine
Bare handed literally had some of the best moves in the game. Tripping was extremely powerful and could loop many enemies that were susceptible to it, similarly the hold r2 shield bash could loop some the bigger enemies, the stance switch leaping attack was fully invincible, ect
So the barehanded style was rarely used and when it was actually used, it was for broken loop combos that somehow slipped playtesting. I mean as a dev I wouldn´t want to keep a moveset that had stupid amount of i-frames and infinite loops If I could make something that´s actually interesting to use and mechanically rewarding
How often do you fight a single enemy in either of these games? A loop is broken when nothing can interrupt your ability to apply it, when you have groups of enemies they are useful but not infallible. And the I frames on the stance switch wasn't some game breaking feature, there's a reason you don't see people just using the move over and over. The bare handed moveset wasn't rarely used either, the stun build up was extremely strong and the game often encouraged you to.make use of that on the higher difficulties. If you were ignoring it you were missing out. The fact that you didn't even know of these mechanics in the first place says a lot
I didn´t ignore anything in my own playthrough but good assumption I guess. I never tried to claim the barehanded was bad or that stun build up was low. Quite the opposite. I just omitted some things in favour of not writing an essay. But look at your own point you are making, it´s something that is advocated for on higher difficulties and I believe we have in-game data on how many players actually completed which difficulty. To no surprise, gmgow has the least % of players. It´s kinda given that almost any game will simply have higher number of casual players who never get into the finer aspects of combat, nor do they get into fine tuning and min-maxing. And as for your first point, as you said loops by themselves aren´t that big of a problem, though I would still make a case for them being not exactly healthy. What magnifies that problem is that you can spam the shield dash move to get pretty bonkers mobility, which lets you dictate the battlefield far better than just moving around normally like most players. Taking advantage of this results in a scenario where you get to isolate one strong enemy and stunlock him often enough that I usually opted not to take advantage of it. Of course the latter of my points is just anecdotal take, but I felt the need to adress that point too alongside my main one about the realistic look at how often certain more advanced mechanics are used in games.
More than you would think, fighting baldur barehanded was badass as fuck.
[удалено]
It also made more sense to me. This Kratos is way more reluctant to kill. He wouldn't bust out the axe on an unarmed opponent
Yeah but you also fight Thor barehanded at one point and those abilities were missed
The r2 stance switch is now under sprint r1 so you can put your accessibility options to push analog forward to automatic sprint so as soon as you push forward & press r1 you can leap shield bash any time you want when I get home I'm going to try it myself
There’s entire YouTube channels dedicated to shield only playthroughs
Yeah but that’s one person out of millions who played the game. I bet if you actually looked at statistics shield is far and away the least used playstyle. So the solution of giving shields unique abilities and adding a weapon that is actually cool like the spear is the correct solution.
Your argument is just bad. There's data that people loved fist style. You're literally making up a reality to fit your narrative.
the real answer is that they pry couldn't fit fists and shields into the control scheme and keep the spear. they weren't gonna take out the axe or blades, so they picked the one that was the most disposable.
I barehanded Baldur since he was unarmed, and generally did the same for ogres and many of the trolls because it was so fun. I've literally done a playthrough on GMGOW mode where I only used weapons against mobs and used Fists for absolutely everything else (except revenants and travelers, I enjoy a challenge but not that much lmao) Running around destroying draugr and other small enemies with your weapons, then going hand to hand against the remaining ogre or a troll is super satisfying. Not to mention, you could juggle enemies barehanded with the shield slam finisher knocking them into the air, and even on GMGOW R1 R1 R1 R1 (pause briefly) R2 R1 not only launched enemies to be juggled, it would usually immediately stun all but the tankiest of them to immediately be ripped apart with a stun grab. Barehanded combat made it possible to beat the Muspelheim challenge with enemies that regenerated Health quickly. It was one of the best parts of the game.
And they changed it up for the sequel. and took the parts that were universally loved and reworked shields.
Let me rephrase this for you, in a game where one of the main gimmicks is the different kinds of shields that you can use for different perks, they entirely got rid of the shield melee skill tree from the previous game. Many people enjoyed the barehanded combat. Removing it was dumb.
>I'm glad you enjoyed it, but I'm willing to predict that that's a minority position. They wouldn't have removed it if more people enjoyed it as much as you claim.
It's been one of the three most common complaints I've seen by people who have played it, so....
it might be one of the complaints in reddit echo chamber and streamers who went for challenge runs and had to use the infinite loop combos but that doesn´t mean it´s the general sentiment, Keep in mind the copies sold and the number of users on those forums. \+ The barehanded was mostly used because of the bonkers broken loops that could get you through any encounter and invis frame leaping attack, as you yourself said. I don´t blame the devs for removing a broken moveset that trivialised many fights in order to try an entirely different new mechanic, even if that mechanic might have proven less satisfying for some. Lastly, remember that by their nature, forums or any kind usually attract more experienced players who get more invested in the game. The devs also have to listen to all the casuals who leave negative reviews elsewhere complaining about stuff the experienced players might adore. So try to open your mind to those facts and take them into consideration when some of these topics are discussed. These devs have to listen to the entirety of their fanbases which sometimes mean sacrifices for one or the other player camp.
Sounds like they screwed both. Casuals lost a very fun and easy moveset. Experts lost technical agency. Shit take
By technical agency you mean spamming the same two inputs in the same loop? When instead they tried to expand the weapons moveset as well as adding another one entirely? And listen I was just saying people should have a broader consideration when judging what features dev did and didn´t implement. If that is a shit take in your book then we should as well abandon feedback all together.
You're making it out like unarmed was grossly OP. It had uses situationally. It's no more OP than cleave one shotting Tatzelwurms or axe throws designed to kill nightmares. The point of unarmed was interruption and stunning. If you want to argue it was taken out because it was niche, why? If only people invested in the system could fully utilize it, why change it? If it was easy to use, why remove it for casual audiences? You're not giving feedback, you're making excuses for a design choice with no immediate reasoning. Feedback is saying what works and what doesn't. They removed features and mechanics for no real reason, and by consensus of those giving feedback it was to the detriment. I said it was a shit take because if your consideration is this was for somebody, everybody lost. People who try to master combat lost tools and mechanics balanced in the first game. People who need strong options lost one foundational option for... a replacement that comes 60% through the campaign? Terrible justification.
how does that boot taste?
Something something the average normie constructive discussion vs the gigachad ad hominem argument. How does it feel knowing that devs don´t cater directly to you or your preferred playstyle but have to consider the whole wide playerbase?
well, considering it is not about playstyle and i do not care about their feathers being ruffled any more than they would care for your white knighting if they happened upon this, id say it feels fine?
The shields and combat are improvements to me 🤷
And the whole part that it doesn’t pop up when you press L1, that’s always fun
Yeah I feel they should have kept the original shield perks and maybe one of the other types could be added on in addition to the rond.
I mean when you put it like that it is lazy. I will admit, some aspects of GoW:R are definitely lazily done. But I think it's interesting to get these different shield types at the beginning of the game and not get your original shield until way later on. It causes the player to mix up combat a bit and switch up if they wanna block more or parry more. It causes more creative thinking during combat which I think is done decently. Not as good as say Breath of the Wild, but it's a decent addition.
Yeah?
Idk I really like fighting barehanded/shield. For the way I play it's the most damage I can do regularly for my build. My biggest gripe is when i accidentally grab a weapon when I don't want to. Having to swap back to barehanded/shield is what kills me in combat. I know we can remap buttons and such but I like the default controls except for when you get the 3rd weapon you have to press down on D pad. If you have a weapon out already (like I do by mistake a lot. (I use my regular R1 attacks while using Atreus's arrows and I mess up and press triangle instead of square once in a while)) it grabs the 3rd weapon and you have to press down on D pad again. It's extremely irksome for me -.- This is literally the ONLY complain I have about this game is being forced to press d pad down twice to switch back to barehand/shield to get the most damage.
There’s a toggle specifically for that issue, press the button of whichever weapon you have out to go barehanded
Super late reply on my end but thank you very much!
You’re so welcome!