YMMV / God of War III

• Alternative Character Interpretation:
  • One can easily assume that Zeus does a Redemption Equals Death near the end of the game. After having black smoke, which might be Fear, the evil that corrupted him, sent spewing out of his mouth, combined by the fact that he doesn't put up any sort of resistance against Kratos afterwards, it can be assumed that Zeus has finally seen the error of his ways and chooses to die as a result. Cut dialogue reveals that this was intended to be very much the case, begging for a Mercy Kill explicitly from Kratos after being freed from his specific Evil, but removed at the last second presumably because either it was too on the nose and thus detracted from the scene... or the fact the player as Kratos wouldn't have stopped punching him to let him say anything at the time, deeming it unnecessary altogether.
  • How much of the gods' enmity with Kratos and overall unpleasantness was the result of them being corrupted by the evils in Pandora's Box?
• Anti-Climax Boss: Hermes. After bragging about his super speed and leading you on a chase through collapsing architecture to his fight, he's... not very fast, and his attacks are girlish slaps that do almost no damage. This fits his spoiled brat/schoolyard bully character, though.
• Awesome Bosses: Hades. He's got a great intro (just him chuckling at you and listing his grievances in the darkness before emerging), his attacks are powerful yet nicely telegraphed so you don't necessarily die to his "infinite number of chains spiking the ground" move, you get into a tug of war with him when his chains and Kratos' chains get entangled, and you finish off the fight by ripping out his own soul!
• Base-Breaking Character: Aphrodite. Many in the fanbase appreciate her for being a sultry Ms. Fanservice who has more of a personality than other such God of War characters, but an equal amount of players loathe and detest her for being the most blatant Rated M for Money moment in the entire series, to the point where the story entirely stops so the player can ogle her and her handmaidens' nearly nude bodies and optionally have sex with her, in a scene so out-of-place it attracted real-world controversy. This has died down a bit in recent years with most people looking back at it more fondly, especially since the series completely ditched any kind of fanservice.
• Best Known for the Fanservice: Aphrodite's sex minigame, for better or for worse, became one of the most well-known things about the game because of the shameless display of nudity, Aphrodite getting really intimate with her handmaidens, her acting extremely seductive towards Kratos and her sex scene being apparently so passionate it makes her handmaidens so horny they themselves start having sex. It's not wonder why most fans call it the BEST sex minigame in the whole series and a really good example of fanservice in games as a whole.
• Broken Base: The game getting remade for the PS4. While it's not as controversial as The Last of Us Remastered (Namely because it's not being released less than a year after its original release) a few people feel that the game still looks good enough to not warrant the remastering (And based on what footage has been released, the change isn't that notable), and alongside that, why are they making the current Grand Finale of the franchise the first to be remade for the 8th Gen consoles? Once the remaster was released, while there were just enough improvements to be a slight Polished Port and has all the DLC, many say the remaster is only worth it to those who don't have the PS3 version.
• Catharsis Factor: You know those Wraith enemies in nearly all the games that disappear into the ground and chop at you multiple times and there's no way to stop it save from some fancy dodging/blocking? Well, you finally have the ability to drag them right back out of the ground while they're doing this.
• Demonic Spiders:
  • Satyrs suffer from the same problems in previous games. The only consolation is that they're rare, with a grand total of three encounters in the whole game. This is offset, however, by the fact that they never travel alone.
  • Wraiths are annoyingly fast and can attack from far away. They are also hard to stagger and can't be grabbed. Their worst aspect though, is the fact that they can sink into the ground on a whim. This makes them invincible until they decide to knock it off, but they can still hurt you by diving at you from underground. You can just drag them out with L1 and Circle, but it's not exactly easy to land a grab on them...
• Ensemble Dark Horse: Poseidon managed to be one the most popular boss fights despite only being a tutorial fight due to the amazing visual effects of the body and horses he creates out of water.
• Even Better Sequel: God of War III was far bigger than the previous games, and widely considered a Killer App for the PS3.
• Funny Moments: The Gamestop commercial where the Chimera (with three different voices for each head) asks Kratos what his new armor is made of. Kratos replies that "the boots are snakeskin, the helmet is fashioned from a goat skull and the loincloth is lion hide. Cue Oh, Crap! reaction from the Chimera as Kratos leaps into battle.
• Goddamned Bats: The Feral Hounds may just have the harpies one-upped in terms of sheer goddamn-ness in that they render you a total sitting duck for other stronger enemies if even just one latches onto you.
• Hilarious in Hindsight: In the final showdown with Zeus, the first phase wouldn't look out of place in a 2D Fighting Game. One year later, Kratos is a Guest Fighter Mortal Kombat 9 whose setting wouldn't make him look out of place while making his quick time event kills perfect fatality practice. A year after that, both Kratos and Zeus (the latter as DLC) would appear in the 2D Mascot Fighter Playstation All Stars Battle Royale.
• I Knew It!:
  • After seeing the ending of the second game, many fans speculated that the Titans, and specifically Gaia, would betray Kratos at some point. The prediction turned out to be correct: After the battle against Poseidon, Gaia plainly tells Kratos that he was nothing but a pawn to her, before letting him fall to his death.
  • Once fans knew that the game would be about Kratos slaying the Olympians, they were able to correctly predict that he would "defeat" Aphrodite through a sex minigame.
• Jerkass Woobie: Hades. His sadomasochism is not surprising, considering him losing his wife, brother and niece. Seeing how unrepentantly selfish and callous Kratos acts in the game, it's really not a stretch to sympathize with the God of the Underworld.
• Memetic Mutation:
  • "YOU CHALLENGE ME, MORTAL? A GOD OF OLYMPUS!?"^ExplanationPoseidon's introductory line is often used as a sound bite (particularly the first half) to indicate that someone or something is severely Bullying a Dragon and it will not end well for them.
  • Kratos plays the lottery and loses. ("Rage of Sparta" begins to play in the background) ^Explanation Rage of Sparta is the music track that generally plays whenever Kratos is about to kill one of the gods. People have started to apply it to whenever Kratos gets pissed enough to kill something.
  • "PETULANT CHILD! I WILL TOLERATE YOUR INSOLENCE NO MORE!!!"^ExplanationThis Zeus quote is frequently employed as a reaction to Trolls or otherwise annoying and disrespectful Internet Jerks, as well as used in memes to make jokes about someone's Hilariously Abusive Childhood.
  • "Such Chaos. I will have much to do after I kill you."^ExplanationThis is another meme that often involves someone's Hilariously Abusive Childhood with Zeus being their father.
  • As with many of Clancy Brown's characters, you'll find no shortage of commenters on youtube making Mr. Krabs and Dr. Neo Cortex jokes at the expense of Hades.
• Narm: The scene where Kratos lets go of Pandora, allowing her to be consumed by the Flame of Olympus so that he can attack Zeus is mean to be a tense and emotionally climactic scene, but because of the awkward and derpy way Kratos' face is animated and the weird grumbling growl he makes (which sounds less like Zeus triggering his Berserk Button and more like Kratos is annoyed a waiter got his order wrong) turn the scene into a source of gut-busting laughter.
• Nausea Fuel:
  • The Cronos Boss fight. Tearing off his blistered fingernail, cutting open a scab, getting swallowed and then graphically cutting your way out of his stomach with the Blade of Olympus? Disgusting. A skinless cyclops busting out of a bulge on his shoulder, and legionnaires crawling out of cavities in his hide? Also disgusting.
  • The Hades boss fight has pieces of his flesh break off and you have to chase them around. yuck.
• Nightmare Fuel: Kratos kills Helios by slowly and graphically ripping his head off. The horrific screaming and the fact Helios’s disembodied head is still very much alive afterwards doesn’t help in the slightest.
• Nightmare Retardant: Some think Hades looks more like a sumo wrestler than an intimidating God of the Underworld.
• Play the Game, Skip the Story: Generally speaking, this game is considered the best of the original run of God of War games for its refined and polished gameplay and its spectacular boss fights. The story on the other hand is much more controversial. Kratos is so single minded in his quest for vengeance and so over the top violent that it's very easy to root for the gods over him (except for Hermes) as all of them have very valid reasons for fighting Kratos and are justified in hating him. Until Kratos starts interacting with Pandora, the plot only serves to ping pong him from one atrocity to the next as he makes the world increasingly unlivable for everyone who may have survived his onslaught.
• Player Punch : Brutal, and possibly the most poignant and well-written part of the game it appears in. Toward the end of the game, Kratos retrieves Pandora from the Labyrinth. Kratos needs Pandora because she is literally the key that will get him past the Fires of Olympus and open the box that bears her name. To serve her function as the key, though, Pandora has to die in the Fires of Olympus. She willingly goes with him, and as they journey together, for whatever reason, Pandora speaks with Kratos as though he is someone she trusts. She bares her heart (figuratively) to the guy who has been going around butchering the world by proxy. And you start to see just a hint of decent human being re-emerge in Kratos: she clearly reminds him of his own lost daughter. Enough that when they finally reach the Flame of Olympus, as Pandora is walking toward it, Kratos grabs her arm and refuses to let her continue. Pandora struggles with him, pointing out this is what he brought her there for. Which means all the soul-baring she did, all the things she said to him were words said to the man she knew was functionally her executioner. She then yells "Let go, you're hurting me!" at the guy who has spent the whole game murdering helpless opponents, slaughtering possible friend and definite foe alike, and killing more than enough of the world by proxy. And his hand snaps off her like he's been burned. And then Zeus shows up, and it just gets worse...
• Polished Port: Regardless of the Broken Base above, the PS4 version qualifies; the graphics are slightly improved, there are fewer framerate hiccups, and all the DLC is in one package.
• Rooting for the Empire: Kratos is open to being called such a douchebag by blaming his problems on everyone else, killing practical innocents and destroying the world all due to his selfish desire for revenge that some people start rooting for Zeus who is defending the world from Kratos. Not to mention even on the individual level, Kratos has Kick the Dog moments that fans found more horrifying than what Zeus did.
• Scrappy Mechanic: Unlike its predecessors, enabling bonus costumes in this game disables trophies. That and unskippable cutscenes make replaying God of War III less enjoyable than it could be.
• That One Boss: The Cerberus Breeder. He spits out kamikaze dogs at you that explode. Sure you can kick them back at him but they don't do a lot of damage. What makes it worse is the Satyr Generals that come to back it up after each time you take off one of its heads. On harder difficulties, you need to turn dodging and blocking into an art form to survive.
• That One Level:
  • The Cavern. You're on a moving platform in the form of a giant box held up by a chain. The basic minions attacking aren't difficult, but then two minotaur appear, determined to break the chain, which is followed by another mook rush. Followed by two more with archers sniping at you. More mooks follow, and then SEVERAL more attack. And if you fail at any point, you have to start over.
  • The Trials of Erebus. The first portion is simple enough because you only need to kill the Arms of Hades and the Lost Souls. The second one is a bit tougher because of the minotaurs that spawn but still manageable. The third and final trial, however, ramps up the difficulty by making you face minotaurs, divebombing harpies, and gorgons. By this point in the game, your equipment are still at a low level and your health meter is still short enough that you can get killed in three hits on higher difficulties.
  • On the return to the Three Judges after finishing the Labyrinth, Kratos returns to where the Trials of Erebus took place earlier. This time, he's fighting an evolved Cerberus that can spew out exploding puppy Cerberus. To make matters worse, after cutting off one of the evolved Cerberus' heads, the series' staple Demonic Spider, the Satyr, makes an appearance, with more spawning as the battle goes on.
• Unintentional Uncanny Valley: Compared to the other characters in the game with their considerably detailed and realistic-looking faces and bodies, especially Kratos, Pandora... never quite looks right. Something about her eyes being a bit too far apart, her skin being too smooth and plastic-looking, and her overall character model having lots of strange animations prevents her from "fitting in" when standing alongside Kratos, Zeus, and Athena. This may be intentional due to her status as an Artificial Human, and in concept art she resembles a Living Statue.
• Visual Effects of Awesome: Poseidon may well be the most visually spectacular boss in gaming history. There also exist some great effects on the landscape and, in Hera's garden, the lightning, for starters.
• The Woobie: It's genuinely hard not to feel awful for Poseidon's Princess. A beautiful young woman who clearly has nothing to do with Poseidon's machinations and is absolutely terrified when Kratos finds her but gets dragged along and ends up dying horrifically by being crushed head-first inside the mechanisms of an enormous gate.