AKheon | God of War: Ascension - Trial of Archimedes optimization (NG+) @AKheon | Uploaded January 2023 | Updated October 2024, 7 hours ago.
In the past, I didn't have much eye for combat tactics and didn't really bother refining many of the fight sections in my old RTA. Now, as I'm revisiting Ascension, I'm trying to rectify this error by inventing more reliable and fast tactics for combat sections around the game.
The first fight of Trials of Archimedes in Chapter 28 is arguably the hardest of them all. No matter what you do, this fight will have a degree of RNG to it. The game's dubious design choices and blatantly buggy coding hit you especially hard in this battle, making some of Kratos' best damage dealing tactics unavailable or risky:
- Falling Helios is Kratos' biggest dps attack, but in an RTA, it's quite risky to use here because of a magnetic ledge side effect - sometimes Kratos gets sucked in through the cracks of the floor and he falls to his death. You can get rid of the magnetic ledge effect by retrying, but I actually want to keep it in order to do a small skip in the next chapter. Therefore, my intention was to create a reliable fight tactic without the use of Falling Helios.
- Oath Stone creates a shadow Kratos that deals heavy damage to enemies for a time. Unfortunately, he can randomly stop functioning. It seems this can happen if enemies are too far away and/or he misses? At any rate, he is not a 100% reliable damage dealer as a result.
- Freezing with ice is neither a reliable or quick option.
- Stonefreezing IS an option if you stun a Gorgon and use her mini-game. However, this rarely seen mechanic seems pretty rough around the edges. For one, the Gorgon mini-game can rarely fail to stonefreeze anything. Secondly, the statues themselves have a surprising amount of health and their hitboxes can be quite wonky, so it's not 100% guaranteed you can break them in time. Still, although only maybe 90% reliable, I decided to use stonefreezing in my combat tactic since the Gorgons are so tanky otherwise.
- Ring-outs work on the Sirens. However, with most attacks like Fire Magic or Eyes of Truth, knocking Sirens over the edge seems inconsistent at best. Wulf2k9 helpfully suggested the sprint uppercut, which works reliably enough that I incorporated it into this combat tactic. Thanks!
Alright, so as for the fight tactic itself...
0:12 - you can get a Gorgon stunned by 2x Fire Rage or by discarding your sub-weapon. Using Shield discard is faster, but it can be helpful to save the Shield as a contingency plan. The plan for these first Gorgons is to keep mini-gaming the same Gorgon over and over and keep shattering the newly spawned ones.
0:24 - although I use ground Cyclone of Chaos for shattering the statues, using the air version might overall be more reliable, although this comes at the expense of decreased mobility for a few seconds.
0:40 - after shattering two Gorgons, Sirens start appearing. This is a critical point in the fight. On the video, I stun the original Gorgon for the third time with two Fire Rages, then get into a good position and wait. Since the Siren spawn location is determined by Kratos' position, you can get them close to the edge and then uppercut one or two right as they spawn. Kratos' position and angle matter a lot.
Then, IF you're quick enough AND the newly spawned Gorgon does not attack right away AND the original Gorgon is close enough, you can mini-game her and stonefreeze the new Gorgon. If not... well, this is where the Shield discard can be a good contingency to do a quick stun on the original Gorgon without wasting too much time or dealing with too much enemy RNG.
It's probably worth it to do the Gorgon mini-game no matter whether you succeed or fail at the ring-outs. The mini-game does a heavy knockback to nearby enemies, and so it gives an additional opportunity to ring-out or even shatter the nearby Sirens, if they're close enough to the new Gorgon that is about to be shattered.
I'm not sure what else you could do during this time than stun the original Gorgon a third time. Casting lingering damage effects like Soul Rage makes the new Sirens start dodging, which is not great for doing those ring-outs. Overall, stunning the original Gorgon seems more useful than doing nothing, even if you do miss the opportunity to actually utilize the mini-game after performing the ring-outs.
If all else fails, damage killing from this point on with Soul Rage and Oath Stone is a mostly RNG-free option, but it's not the fastest way to do things.
0:52 - one of the Sirens is killed on this attempt by getting stonefrozen while it's underneath the arena and about to spawn.
0:57 - once all other Gorgons have been shattered, you should just damage kill the remaining enemies. As an additional little thing to boost dps, you can cast Soul L1+t: it will create a homing damage effect even if it's interrupted fairly early on by Soul Rage.
To note, the final Siren gets knocked out of ring by Oath Stone off-camera, which is some more unrealistic good luck that you shouldn't expect in actual run attempts...
In the past, I didn't have much eye for combat tactics and didn't really bother refining many of the fight sections in my old RTA. Now, as I'm revisiting Ascension, I'm trying to rectify this error by inventing more reliable and fast tactics for combat sections around the game.
The first fight of Trials of Archimedes in Chapter 28 is arguably the hardest of them all. No matter what you do, this fight will have a degree of RNG to it. The game's dubious design choices and blatantly buggy coding hit you especially hard in this battle, making some of Kratos' best damage dealing tactics unavailable or risky:
- Falling Helios is Kratos' biggest dps attack, but in an RTA, it's quite risky to use here because of a magnetic ledge side effect - sometimes Kratos gets sucked in through the cracks of the floor and he falls to his death. You can get rid of the magnetic ledge effect by retrying, but I actually want to keep it in order to do a small skip in the next chapter. Therefore, my intention was to create a reliable fight tactic without the use of Falling Helios.
- Oath Stone creates a shadow Kratos that deals heavy damage to enemies for a time. Unfortunately, he can randomly stop functioning. It seems this can happen if enemies are too far away and/or he misses? At any rate, he is not a 100% reliable damage dealer as a result.
- Freezing with ice is neither a reliable or quick option.
- Stonefreezing IS an option if you stun a Gorgon and use her mini-game. However, this rarely seen mechanic seems pretty rough around the edges. For one, the Gorgon mini-game can rarely fail to stonefreeze anything. Secondly, the statues themselves have a surprising amount of health and their hitboxes can be quite wonky, so it's not 100% guaranteed you can break them in time. Still, although only maybe 90% reliable, I decided to use stonefreezing in my combat tactic since the Gorgons are so tanky otherwise.
- Ring-outs work on the Sirens. However, with most attacks like Fire Magic or Eyes of Truth, knocking Sirens over the edge seems inconsistent at best. Wulf2k9 helpfully suggested the sprint uppercut, which works reliably enough that I incorporated it into this combat tactic. Thanks!
Alright, so as for the fight tactic itself...
0:12 - you can get a Gorgon stunned by 2x Fire Rage or by discarding your sub-weapon. Using Shield discard is faster, but it can be helpful to save the Shield as a contingency plan. The plan for these first Gorgons is to keep mini-gaming the same Gorgon over and over and keep shattering the newly spawned ones.
0:24 - although I use ground Cyclone of Chaos for shattering the statues, using the air version might overall be more reliable, although this comes at the expense of decreased mobility for a few seconds.
0:40 - after shattering two Gorgons, Sirens start appearing. This is a critical point in the fight. On the video, I stun the original Gorgon for the third time with two Fire Rages, then get into a good position and wait. Since the Siren spawn location is determined by Kratos' position, you can get them close to the edge and then uppercut one or two right as they spawn. Kratos' position and angle matter a lot.
Then, IF you're quick enough AND the newly spawned Gorgon does not attack right away AND the original Gorgon is close enough, you can mini-game her and stonefreeze the new Gorgon. If not... well, this is where the Shield discard can be a good contingency to do a quick stun on the original Gorgon without wasting too much time or dealing with too much enemy RNG.
It's probably worth it to do the Gorgon mini-game no matter whether you succeed or fail at the ring-outs. The mini-game does a heavy knockback to nearby enemies, and so it gives an additional opportunity to ring-out or even shatter the nearby Sirens, if they're close enough to the new Gorgon that is about to be shattered.
I'm not sure what else you could do during this time than stun the original Gorgon a third time. Casting lingering damage effects like Soul Rage makes the new Sirens start dodging, which is not great for doing those ring-outs. Overall, stunning the original Gorgon seems more useful than doing nothing, even if you do miss the opportunity to actually utilize the mini-game after performing the ring-outs.
If all else fails, damage killing from this point on with Soul Rage and Oath Stone is a mostly RNG-free option, but it's not the fastest way to do things.
0:52 - one of the Sirens is killed on this attempt by getting stonefrozen while it's underneath the arena and about to spawn.
0:57 - once all other Gorgons have been shattered, you should just damage kill the remaining enemies. As an additional little thing to boost dps, you can cast Soul L1+t: it will create a homing damage effect even if it's interrupted fairly early on by Soul Rage.
To note, the final Siren gets knocked out of ring by Oath Stone off-camera, which is some more unrealistic good luck that you shouldn't expect in actual run attempts...
