It's probably unsurprising for anyone to hear this is the best game in the "Greek myth trilogy" (I am not playing Ascension or the PSP games sorry), but yea I really think it is. Took me 21 hours to beat - about the same length as the other games - and it was also the first game I chose to beat on my brand new PS5. Admittedly I don't think it was the best idea to play all three original God of War games for the first time back to back since it made this one really feel like more of the same for the most part, but that didn't damper my experience with it. I think God of War III still manages to feel pretty unique in its own ways and it also is such a huge graphical upgrade over the original two games that it almost felt disorienting. I know this is a remaster, but I always forget just how much more of an advancement the PS3 felt from the PS2. So, overall, I don't think this game did a whole lot to change the gameplay, but sometimes its good to not break what isn't broken. Helps that the new stuff that was added here is all pretty great.

I'll start this review with the story. This game starts literally right where God of War II ended since we see Kratos riding on the back of Gaia with his own personal Titan army to destroy Olympus, giving us an appropriately action-packed beginning to the game. Hermes, Zeus, Hades, and Poseidon watch the carnage unfold and look to put a stop to it, but Poseidon is the only one to actually go and fight Kratos. Naturally, he is the first unfortunate godly soul to get killed in a brutal over-the-top fashion by Kratos. Kratos reaches Zeus, swearing revenge, but Zeus puts a stop to the fight entirely by knocking Kratos out the building and striking Gaia with lightning. Turns out the Titans have no loyalty to Kratos since Gaia lets Kratos fall to save herself and she even directly calls him a pawn in their plan. Also, small side-note: I never really understood how powerful Zeus is supposed to be. He constantly talks about how he keeps letting Kratos off easy or that he held back in their previous fights, which is believable from the sheer destructive power he has in the cutscenes, but it seems like whenever you actually get to fight him when you're all powered up in 2 and 3 he just does not seem as overwhelmingly strong as he usually is. Seems I'm getting ahead of myself though. After Gaia lets Kratos fall, he finds his way in the River Styx, where he gets all his health, magic, and weapon upgrades from the previous game sapped away due to the ghosts. That's one thing I always thought was pretty cool about these games; God of War II and III both have clear story reasons as to why you start off back at square one every game and I think it'd be nice if more games did that. From here, Kratos starts his journey to kill all the Greek gods and anyone else standing in his way in the most brutal ways he can possibly think of, while taking their equipment for his own gain. Pretty typical God of War things. Of course, since you start out in the River Styx, your next target is Hades. I have to say that it was really cool to finally see him after his existence being alluded to a lot in the first game and only a few glimpses of his appearance being shown in the second game, and it was really satisfying killing him. You also meet Hephaestus in the Underworld, who is a reluctant ally for a good portion of the game. To be honest, I think its unfortunate that he was just another god to be killed just like all the others, but I suppose that's the way the cookie crumbles. From here on out you're pretty much just traveling all throughout Greece and various mythological locations to look for more enemies to fight and more gods to slay. There is some noteworthy story stuff, though, like how some lore on Kratos is expanded upon a little. Maybe this was shown in the PSP games, but apparently he killed Persephone and that was not in either PS2 game so I was confused when Hades mentioned that. Hercules is also his brother, which I had no idea about but makes sense considering he's a son of Zeus and Hera. Anyway, Kratos manages to kill every major Greek god (the only exceptions are ones that don't even show up in the games like Demeter although Artemis was in the first game and just never appears in this one so that was a strange omission), including Zeus by the very end of the game. With each god he brutalizes, the world gets more and more destroyed without the respective god to control natural forces. With Helios's death and beheading, the sun practically disappears, for example. Another big example is how the Underworld is completely out of control without Hades. Plant life also dies out once Kratos snaps the neck of Hera. Honestly, Kratos is probably the most violent and bloodthirsty here than he's ever been before, although that really isn't new for this series from what I've played of it. This ties into one big problem I have with this game's story: I don't really get what it was trying to do with Kratos's character. I will detail this in another paragraph since I went on a long tangent there.

To explain my issue with Kratos here...by the end of the game, he finds this girl named Pandora who was part of the titular Pandora's Box. When he opened up Pandora's Box in the events of the first game, it released all the evils in the world that were sealed away, but it also released hope in the form of Pandora. Initially he pushes away Pandora, but he grows to like her more in the story, to the point where, when its time for her to sacrifice herself and literally do her job (as she herself put it), he tries to stop her. In a way, I sorta get it, since she's the only one that really believed in him the whole time in pretty much any of the games and she is likeable. Kratos always had a tragic side to him and this does fit that well. On the other hand, he is also an absolute killing machine that has only ever shown remorse for his victims when they're his daughter and wife. There are moments in this very game where Kratos casually kills innocent people without a care in the world, all in the name of his quest to kill Zeus even if they did nothing wrong to him or weren't even affiliated with Zeus. He has absolutely no issue telling Daedalus that his son - Icarus - is dead and he took his nice pair of wings, even though Daedalus has spent his entire life with Zeus breathing down his neck building an incredibly elaborate labyrinth he doesn't even fully understand in the vain hope his son will be spared. Kratos knows that and doesn't care at all. There's a man trapped in the Underworld who offers to help Kratos and he's far too weak to even attempt to be a turncoat, but he still gets incinerated with no reaction from the Spartan warrior. Perhaps the most despicable of all these cases is the surviving woman servant of Poseidon who's heavily implied to be a sexual assault victim. He just treats her as a nuisance at first, but eventually he literally uses her as a doorstopper and her entire body gets crunched into the wheel holding the door open. She was still alive screaming in horror the whole time until you hear a loud crunch indicating she got crushed (the developers also once thought it'd be funny to make a joke about this scene in the old trophy name you used to get and that does not help the case here lol). I know senseless violence and over-the-top dark humor has pretty much always been a thing in the God of War games - this isn't even mentioning the other cases through the series of Kratos killing innocents or cases it was played for laughs - and I have no problem with this sort of edginess normally, but the attempt at redeeming Kratos is something I don't understand at all. As far as I've concerned, you've already basically made the man completely irredeemable, which is fine when they embrace it...which the story was doing well until this sudden shift. I'll see if my opinion changes by the time I beat the 2018 God of War reboot since I hear he's pretty much like a brand new clean man there, but that won't be for a while since I'm taking a break from these games for a bit.

Story rants aside, yea the gameplay is a lot of fun as always. You explore a linear space, solve puzzles, do some platforming, and beat up a whole bunch of enemies and bosses to progress. I did notice that there seems to be less platforming here than usual, but it is still present and I actually think that's good in some ways. I was glad to see I didn't have to tightrope walk over beams again, that's for sure. Also, not sure if its just me, but I felt that the collectibles that give you Magic and Health upgrades were easier to find in this game. This, combined with the fact that you only need three this time to get an upgrade whereas you needed six in the original two games, lead me to a big surprise when I actually managed to find most of the Gorgon Eyes and all the Phoenix Feathers almost entirely without a guide. Unfortunately the new weapons were disappointing in my opinion. Aside from the Nemean Cestus, they all kinda just feel like the Blades of Chaos again but with some new gimmicks. The Blades of Exile are literally just a copy paste of the Blades of Chaos, the Claws of Hades have more range and a fun soul summoning gimmick but don't really feel that much different from the Blades of Exile, and I never even used the Nemesis Whip outside of the parts where it was necessary because it also just felt like more swords on chains. On the plus side, I liked using the Claws of Hades for a while and the Nemean Cestus has become my favorite weapon of any God of War game for its sheer brute power (and it doesn't even sacrifice too much speed in the process). In my opinion the biggest new change for combat here is the slight revamp to the magic system in the other two games. In those, you got a select few spells you could freely cycle through, but in this game each weapon has a specific spell assigned to it. They're all a bit boring to me, but they were effective in taking down enemies. I think they limited the amount of spells to make up for the new item system in place here. Over the course of the game you get three items - Bow of Apollo, Head of Helios (his literal head that you rip off), and Boots of Hermes - that can be used for various purposes. The Boots of Hermes has designated areas with footprints that let you know you can use the ability to go up walls, the Bow of Apollo ignites red brambles to get rid of them, and the Head of Helios illuminates wherever you point it at. The head also reveals secrets if you keep pointing it at a suspicious warped looking spot. They do have some combat uses but they're not very reliable aside from boss fight gimmicks where you have to use them at the right time to proceed, like the Bow of Apollo can be used as a good poking tool from far range in combat but its also very weak so good luck taking any strong enemy down with it. Okay, last point I want to make about the gameplay is the Quick-Time-Events. I think these are probably the most responsive and forgiving they've ever been, which I really appreciate considering I struggled so much on one of the bosses in the first game just because the QTE timing was absurd. However, I really don't like how the prompts show up on seemingly random parts of the screen. Sometimes its to the left, sometimes its to the right, sometimes its on the bottom, sometimes its on top. This is pretty disorienting and makes it hard to react quickly, which is kind of the whole point behind a QTE. Again its not too bad because the windows for timing are pretty forgiving, but it was annoying nonetheless.

Overall, I do have my gripes with the gameplay in God of War III and I wasn't a big fan of the ending, but I still really enjoyed my time with it and I think its an excellent conclusion to the Greek myth side of the series. It gets a good 4 stars, the same score I gave the other God of War games. I am curious to see how the reboot continues Kratos's story.