God Of War, New World And Masterpiece Adventure

I have been playing the new God Of War game nonstop and I have been enjoying every single second of it. Kratos is back, but he's not the Kratos many of us remember. He's older now with a lot less of the rage from previous games. Now Kratos is in a new world with Norse gods and he has a son named Atreus and a wife who has recently died. This is where God Of War begins its story with a bit of sadness and then a powerful bang.

This also introduces you to a new weapon that Kratos uses, the Leviathan axe and the combat system tutorial. This gives you a tutorial on how to direct Atreus to use his fighting skills as well. It is well done and battles are fun. Atreus is not just a weak sidekick, he has useful skills that complement Kratos' fighting style. In the user menu, you can level up skills for both Kratos and Atreus on their weapons. It is easy to navigate and straightforward in telling you what each skill does.

Level up skills in the user menu.

The combat is excellent and while the world isn't completely open due to some areas being locked until later on in the story, it is quite vast and there are a lot of areas to explore. Besides the main story you can do a lot of side quests that offer rare items such as runic enchantments that enhance your weapons and armor. 

There are all kinds of enemies to fight in the game and there is a lot of freedom to figure out tactics and strategy for working with Atreus to take them down. There are even a few battles where you can use the terrain or items in the area to fight. It makes things pretty exciting and when you are successful in defeating an enemy like an ice troll, it's quite a rush.

Fighting an ice troll is intense.

In order to extend Kratos' health bar and rage bar you need to find Nornir chests. These are locked puzzle chests with a set of three runes on them. To unlock them,  you need to break three pots or ring three bells with the matching runes on them. Some are easier than others, but when you unlock a Nornir chest you find either an Idunn apple (health meter) or a Horn of Blood Mead (rage meter) and you need three of each to increase the meters.

Of course all that health and rage are no good to you without properly upgraded armor. This is where the two Dwarven smiths Brok and Sindri come in. Not only can they craft armor for Kratos and Atreus, they can upgrade the armor too. The better the armor, the stronger Kratos' and Atreus' vitality are. You can also add runic enchantments to weapons and armor that enhance things such as defense and evasion.

Find Idunn apples to increase the health meter.

There is so much to see and do in God Of War. There are Norse gods naturally and a variety of mythical creatures. There are also incredible landscapes and views throughout the game. I would often just stop and look around at everything because it was absolutely stunning. The music for the game is fantastic and fits the tone of each moment. While I was disappointed that T.C. Carson was no longer voicing Kratos, I have to say Christopher Judge did an excellent job as the new voice of Kratos. The entire voice acting cast is great and they really brought the story to life. 

Discovering amazing areas like this is one of the best things in the game.

The best thing hands down for me about the new God Of War is the story itself. This isn't just a story about Kratos. This is also a story about Kratos and his son. This gives such a strong in depth look at how Kratos is slowly finding his humanity again because of Atreus and Atreus is learning how to become a man and trying to understand who his father really is and what it means to him when his father tells him to be better than him.

Some of my favorite moments in the game were of Kratos and Atreus in a boat on the Lake of Nine just having conversations here and there about Atreus' mother, about what it means to be a man, and sometimes bits of humor when Atreus tells his father he's not very good at telling stories. It was excellent storytelling and it made both characters seem more real. 

The entire story is amazing because it does not hide the fact that Kratos never really was a good person and shows that he is facing that and acknowledging it. It shows his struggle with that on top of struggling to try to figure out how to connect with his son and how to teach him to be better and do better. There are a lot of great complex layers in their story and it made an incredible game. Even after the main story of the game is completed, there are still things I have missed side quest wise and I'm having fun finding all those things. God Of War is a masterpiece adventure with great gameplay and truly excellent storytelling.

Kratos and Atreus admiring the view.

*God Of War is available to play on the following platforms: Playstation 4

The Adventures Of Pirotess: Crafting With Blacksmith

 Our next adventure in crafting is Blacksmith. Blacksmith is a great crafting class to have for your adventuring and other crafting jobs because you can make a variety of weapons for your adventurer's melee and mage job classes and make tools that are used in the crafting classes. To unlock the Blacksmith job class you will need to travel to the Blacksmith's Guild in Limsa Lominsa.

Pirotess at the Blacksmiths Guild.

As with the other crafting jobs, you have a journal with a list of recipes you can craft for your different levels. You will need your primary tool, a hammer and your secondary tool, a file to craft these items. There is a tab for tools and weapons recipes. It shows you a list of the materials needed in order to craft the item. This is where the gathering job classes of Botanist and Miner come in handy because you will need fire and earth shards to craft as well as various metals and ores. It is also a good idea to have Leatherworker unlocked because some of the items on Blacksmith involve working with leather.

List of weapons and tools in the crafting log for Blacksmith.

You can also craft housing items such as tables, chairs, and windows. This is in a separate tab and just like the items list, it shows you the list of housing items you can make and the materials needed to craft them. These are a little more challenging, but they are fun to do and you can make quite a bit of gil on the market boards with housing items.

List of housing items that can be crafted on Blacksmith.

When you start crafting, you have a set of basic skills that you can use to create your item and sometimes enhance it to better your chances of crafting a high quality item. With more challenging items, expect a few synthesis failures. One thing that helps with pretty much most of the crafting is food. Culinarian comes in handy for this because there are a lot of foods that can add things to help your crafting such as increased crafstmanship. Weaver is another good one for this job because Weaver can craft gear that has crafting enhancing skills on them.

Use the crafting skills on Blacksmith to create items.

For some of the basic materials needed and regular things like sheets of metal or brass plates, you can buy these from the suppliers at the blacksmith's guild. This is cheaper than buying items from the market boards. For fancier items you will need to buy from the market boards or use gathering classes such as Miner and Botanist.

Buy supplies for blacksmith from the guild suppliers.

When you reach certain levels such as level 25, you can talk to the guild master NPC Brithael, to do a quest for Blacksmith. This requires you to craft a specific item and present it to him. For completing the quest, you receive the tool or gear of your choice for your Blacksmith.

Talk to Brithael for job specific quests.

There you have it. Blacksmith is great for helping to gear up crafting classes with the right tools and giving adventurers the weapons they need for their melee and mage classes. Blacksmith can also help adventurers take some time to decorate their houses with furniture and other housing items. Blacksmith is a lot of fun and it's a nice break from adventuring. There's a great variety of items you can make that are useful all across the board. So if you're interested in checking out Blacksmith, head to Limsa Lominsa and start crafting. See you at the next adventure!

See you at the next adventure everyone!

*Final Fantasy XIV is available to play on the following platforms: PC and Playstation4

Ni No Kuni II: Revenant Kingdom A Fun Fantasy Adventure

 I had been excitedly waiting for the sequel to the first Ni No Kuni so when I got Ni No Kuni II I started playing right away. The story is set hundreds of years after the events in the first game and begins in the kingdom of Ding Dong Dell. This introduces you to the characters Evan who is from Ding Dong Dell and Roland who is from the same world as Oliver in the first game. Roland gets transported to Evan's world and the two meet just as a coup is happening in Ding Dong Dell.

This helps lead into the tutorial on how battle system works. No longer turn based, it is now action based and you can equip up to three melee weapons which you can swap in and out. You can also equip one ranged weapon. The items menu is easy to navigate and this is also where you can equip armor and accessories.

Roland and Evan escaping Ding Dong Dell.

Another thing that is different with the battle is that there are no more familiars. You now have adorable elemental beings called Higgeldies. Higgeldies can help you in battles. You can have 3 different groups of Higgeldies with you and you can direct them to use their attacks on enemies. There are a variety of Higgeldies to choose from with powers ranging from water based attacks to dark based attacks. You can also recruit Higgeldies when you come upon Higgeldy stones. If you give the correct item that a Higgeldy wants they will join you.

Recruit Higgeldies from these stones.

The battle system is not the only thing that has changed. On the world map, your characters are in chibi form as they run around exploring everything. It is very cute and does make exploring a lot of fun. You also have fast travel via trip doors. When you unlock a trip door you can fast travel to that area. It is a good idea to find all the trip doors to make traveling a little easier because there is a lot of back and forth between areas. 

Explore the world in chibi form.

As the story progresses, you also get introduced to skirmish battles. Skirmish battles are a fun distraction from the main story because you plan out tactics with up to four units and have a mini battle that lasts from 3-7 minutes. Evan can lead his army in these battles and give commands to use abilities specific to them. My personal favorite was a unit that could build siege towers because those came in handy in some more difficult battles. You can enhance your army's abilities before battles start by buying power ups like enhanced might. There are skirmishes all over the world map, some are story based and others are fun little side quests. Even if you lose a skirmish, your army still gains experience and levels. This does encourage repeating a lot of the same skirmishes, but it is worth it.

Skirmish battles are a fun distraction.

As the story progresses, Evan and Roland meet new allies and Even tells them his dream of building a kingdom where everyone can be happy and live happily. This is a great lead in to introducing the kingdom building function. Throughout your travels, you can request that people move to the kingdom of Evermore and each citizen has an ability that they're good at such as farming so you can put them in a building suited to their abilities in order to grow your kingdom. You can recruit citizens with the Swift Solutions side quest guy or doing specific quests for citizens and when you complete them they move to your kingdom. This is another fun aspect of the game as you level up your kingdom and add more buildings.

Have fun building your kingdom.

One thing that amused me was Leafbook. I thought this was a fun nod to social media because Leafbook shows pictures of your adventures and citizens you can recruit for your kingdom with commentary from the people in your kingdom and all over the world. There are also hints for various treasure hunts and elite monsters you can fight. There are also a ton of side quests you can do that offer rewards like rare weapons and armor.

Take a look at Leafbook.

As for the story itself, I liked it a lot. It was interesting and it felt nostalgic visiting the towns while discovering some new areas as well. I liked Evan, but I did not feel the same emotional connection to him that I did to Oliver in the first game. I did take issue with some of the skirmishes as well because they aren't as balanced as they should be. Some can be easy while others are ridiculously hard. I also did not like the fact that there are story driven skirmishes especially with the final leg of the journey so if you fail the skirmish you have to try again until you actually beat it in order to progress. That is really frustrating.  In some parts of the story the characters felt a little underdeveloped, but everyone is charming and the game play is good so it is forgivable.The artwork is beautiful and the music for the game is great as well. Ni No Kuni II is a fun fantasy adventure and I had a good time exploring all of it.

The artwork in the game is great.

*Ni No Kuni II: Revenant Kingdom is available to play on the following platforms: PC and Playstation 4