It's not much, but I finally got around to soft-modding my 3DS by installing custom firmware. Eventually, I'm going to try adding games to my Nintendo 3DS.

Games Progress
God of War: I'm playing this game on Hero (Normal difficulty) mode, though some things can only be unlocked by beating the game on God (Very Hard difficulty) mode. Anyway, the story begins with Kratos throwing himself off a mountain before the story focuses on the events of 3 weeks ago.

The game begins with me in a sinking ship that is besieged by the fearsome Hydra. The Hydra fight isn't too tough, and the level does make it a point to teach me the basic mechanics for this game, so that's nice. After beating the Hydra, I enter it's mouth and find the ship captain.
Rather than save the man, Kratos kicks him into the dead Hydra's stomach and takes the key for himself so that he can save the women and take the other ship for himself.

After completing the first area, I journey onto Athens which is a large area broken up into several sections. Eventually, I encounter Ares but I don't get to fight him immediately. Instead, I travel through a area with several houses, then into ransacked temples before reaching the Temple of the Oracle.

Games Progress
God of War: I made it past the area with the rotating blades. It turns out that I can still jump while moving on beams that require balancing. The first bit can be skipped, which makes it somewhat less tedious (even if Kratos's dying screams are amusing). After clearing the beams all for a Muse Key, I make it to an empty area of wooden floors and stairs before using it to return to a previous area. I then end up making it to the boss fight against the Pandora's Guardian.

The fight itself isn't too bad, though I did get stuck in a cycle on wailing on them, doing the Quick Time events and then attacking them while they were stunned, which dragged on. I had to look up a solution online and it turns out I'm supposed to attack the Pandora Guardian, do the QTE then return to the upper platform and pull a lever to fire a log at them. After doing this, I finally make progress and after a few tries of wearing away at the guardian's armour then attacking their exposed rotting body, I finally defeated them and cleared the Challenge of Hades.

I return to the main area of Pandora's Temple, find a hidden room unlocked by the Muse Keys that increases my HP and Magic, and gives me a hefty red orb bonus. After this, I manage to finish the light puzzle established early on in the level to make the Poseidon statue rise before capping off this lengthy gauntlet with a battle against some satyrs.

Cliffs of Madness starts out easy, then I have to deal with enemies and puzzles. I also ended up having an empty magic meter most of the time, which made taking down enemies a pain. However as I progressed, I was able to max out the Blades of Chaos at Level 5, which makes using them really fun now. Other weapons/magic maxes out at Level 3 as I discovered when maxing out Poseidon's Rage. After all the backtracking and the puzzles and enemies, I finally progress into the Architect's Tomb.

The Architect's Tomb consists of a puzzle where I have to weigh down 3 floor switches to open a door. Two of them can be held down with a statue and a concrete block but one of them involves standing on the switch and getting the door quickly before the switch resets itself. After this, I go into a room with several sketches of the various traps seen in Pandora's Templ before having Kratos tear a skull from a corpse for the third time in order to open a door with a skull shaped panel. After this is one of the hardest enemy battles in the game. Several harpies and soldiers on a moving conveyor belts with spiked rollers and insta-kill flamethrowers. After several attempts, Pandora's Box is finally mine!

However, after the long quest to obtain Pandora's Box, Ares realizes that Kratos has the box, and throws a pillar all the way to the temple, causing Kratos to die and his quest to be for naught... OK, not really. Kratos winds up in the underworld and I decide to save my game after everything thus far.

Games Progress
God of War 2: I was supposed to write up my progress from the start (i.e my first attempt at playing the game on God Mode, then switching to Spartan difficulty and doing the rest of my playthrough from there). Last time, I got as far as the hopeless boss fight with Zeus.

After this, I find a new ally in Pegasus, go on an adventure that involves stealing a new ability from a Titan, putting Prometheous out of his misery, leaving said Titan behind to visit an island, one where the Sisters of Fate await me. So far on that island, I've done a lot of fighting, beat two bosses, activated giant horses to progress ahead and gained several new abilites.

Games Progress
God of War II: The Icarus Wings were annoying for me to use at first, but as I progressed through Atlas, they became far more intuitive later on. Interestingly enough, the fight with the Titan Minotaur is probably only one where I have to climb to safety to avoid falling into lava while dodging stones. Aside from that, it's a standard level and the only other interesting thing I can say is that I ended up thinking about a crack ship involving Kratos and Ursula (yes, the one from The Little Mermaid).
Eventually, I manage to avoid getting crushed by Atlas and learn Atlas Quake, a useful crowd control skill that is great for dealing with crowds of enemies.

After freeing Atlas from his chains, I make it back to the surface and undergo a journey through the Palace of Fates to resurrect the Phoenix. The puzzles in this part are more difficult with the Chamber of the Phoenix being quite infuriating specifically (i.e having to deal with Hades Legionaries and respawning while pushing a statue to a switch just to get to the phoenixes's ashes). After all this, I go into another area and end up fighting the Last Spartan, a simple but novel fight which is done from a 2D perspective only for Kratos to lose the will to fight after realizing he killed the spartan he met at the beginning of the game.

After a pep talk from Gaia posing as Kratos's deceased wife and getting an upgraded variant of Rage of the Titans, the fight with the Kraken actually begins. The boss fight isn't too hard, even if did take a bit for me to realize that I was supposed to place the Last Spartan's corpse on top of the switch press so I can trigger the quick time event to damage it's tentacles. After the fight is over, I have to do a QTE to get the phoenix to help Kratos to fly to the next area. After all this, I make it to the Palace of Fate. I'm not sure what's up ahead, but I'm sure it will be interesting.

[…] the only other interesting thing I can say is that I ended up thinking about a crack ship involving Kratos and Ursula (yes, the one from The Little Mermaid).

Now that is an interesting ship.


If God of War 3 was on the PS2, that would probably have been next, wouldn't it?

Games Progress
Saint Saiya - The Sanctuary: So I decided to try this out out instead. Unlike The Hades, this one actually bothers to ease the player into it's player and has a tutorial for it's mechanics. After playing a few fights, I decided this game (and by extention, it's sequel) wasn't for me despite the graphics and music. I know I said I wanted to see my playthrough of Saint Seiya - The Hades through, but I've changed my mind because it's okay to try something out and decide it's not for me after all.

I've also deleted a few PS2 games off the USB stick I'm currently using and have made a start on making a list of PS1 games I'll be transferring to each of my USB Sticks containing various PS2 games.

Téa must've taken a level in badass then :p

Wait, isn't Duelist of the Roses a PS2 game loosely based on the Wars of the Roses?