This review contains spoilers
Took me a while to get to this one after having played the whole classic God of War trilogy back to back (none of the PSP games or Ascension though since I figured they weren't necessary), but man I think this is a really good game. I genuinely couldn't think of any major complaints I had with it. For those curious, this game took 43 hours to beat. Certainly longer than the average playthrough, but hey I'm a slowpoke with games so that's no shocker.
I'll start with the gameplay. I still came out of this thinking the old games were more fun with the straightforward hack-and-slash style they have, but I found the overhauled combat systems this reboot has to be pretty interesting and fun in its own way. Instead of the magic spells that you casted with mana in the original God of War and God of War II, here you have Runic Attacks, which are basically spells that you press either L1 + R1 or L1 + R2 to activate depending on the type (there's one Runic Attack slot for each of the two types, Heavy and Light). They don't have a cost since there's no mana at all in this game, but they do have a significant cooldown that you can lower through improving your Cooldown stat. Speaking of which, yea this game goes for the whole shebang when it comes to RPG stuff; you got a big skill tree to sink your Experience into, three gear slots (Chest, Wrists, and Waist), enchantments to socket into your gear, Talismans, and weapon pommels. It's not at all hard to understand how any of these work, though, since they just increase your stats and have certain special effects like "High chance to gain a Strength buff after killing an enemy" or something of the sort. There's probably a wide variety of builds you can go for, but I mostly focused on Defense, Vitality, and Strength, though I also managed to get a ton of Runic (stat that dictates how powerful the Runic Attacks are) through the strong gear I got at the end of the game. That's the boring stuff, though. The fun stuff is the actual combat itself, which I thought felt a lot more in-depth than the classic trilogy due to all the moves you can get in the skill tree, even if it did take me a while to get used to it. All those extra moves plus having to remember Atreus is there to shoot arrows at your foes (thank god he can't die lol) might seem a little overwhelming, but you gradually work up to that so you have enough time to get used to everything first.
I was going to include this in the gameplay paragraph, but, in typical Bob fashion, I rambled on too long and now it's its own paragraph. Outside of combat, the exploration of the world feels pretty basic. You unlock fast travel relatively early on, although for some reason you can only go to one point on the map until your travel stone gets upgraded halfway through the game. I don't really understand why they did that, though I suppose it lets you actually see the world while you're traveling on boat to get where you need to go. One thing I will complain about is that this game does the whole open world thing of counting down a hundred different things you can do, but thankfully side-quests are kept to a minimum so I didn't feel like I was running around everywhere before I could continue the story (since I typically like to do side-quests first unless it doesn't feel worth it or is in a very inconvenient spot). It helps that the worlds themselves are actually kind of small and linear for open world standards, so its not like my time playing Skyrim or Breath of the Wild where there's so many things to do and so many places to see that I get completely overwhelmed. Most side activities are just a bunch of small optional stuff, like sometimes you see Odin's ghostly ravens all around the world that you can take down. There's 51 of those ravens if I remember correctly and I only found 5. Similarly, there's a bunch of chests you can find around the world that give you different things, whether that be just some Hacksilver (the currency of this game) or something more rare like resources for crafting and upgrading gear or even items that permanently increase either your health (Iðunn's Apples) or Spartan Rage (Horns of Blood Mead). Sometimes you also come across Yggdrassil Tears, which permanently increase one of your stats by two. There's also entire other realms to explore, with four of them being areas you go to in the main story and two - Muspelheim and Niflheim - being optional content you need to collect some stuff to gain access to (unfortunately you can't go to Asgard, Svartalfheim, or Vanaheim even though they're right there at the realm Travel Gate). Point is, there's a lot of stuff to do, but it never felt overwhelmingly large to me which is a big plus in my opinion.
God of War 2018's story is probably the main selling point of the game. It's very cinematic and atmospheric overall. Frankly I find it impressive how the game is littered with lore all around that you can read in-game whenever you kill a new enemy, learn new information in the story dialogue, or find the glyphs and papers you need. Unfortunately I don't know that much about Norse mythology so I can't attest to how accurate this is, but it was still really cool to read up on in-game. As for the actual story that unfurls while you play the game...man this is some really cool stuff. In my God of War III review, I complained a lot about the ending and how it tried too hard to redeem Kratos. Its been so deeply cemented that he's a terrible person, willing to use most people in his way regardless of if they're innocent or not. Occasionally he does good things, of course, but usually not for anything but his own gain. Sure, he has always had a tragic side to him, since the games establish that he is a broken man tortured by the gods and consumed by vengeance, but frankly the kind of vile acts this man has done makes it to where I'd need some convincing to believe he's a changed man in this game. Unfortunately, we learn basically nothing about how exactly Kratos got to these Scandinavian lands, which I feel should have been pretty important considering that God of War III ends on a completely destroyed Greece and Kratos only barely getting up after stabbing himself with the sword of the gods and beating Zeus to a pulp. This is pretty much a timeskip to a later time, where Kratos has hidden himself from the world and decided to start life over again. Despite my gripes about God of War III's last bits of story, I do think they managed to convincingly show Kratos's growth as a person in this game. He's just as stoic, suspicious of everyone, and cynical as he's always been, and he never really tries to play hero. There's a lot of characters in this game he would have never helped if it weren't for his son convincing him, since, just like the games of the past, Kratos is single-mindedly pursuing his one goal. He does soften up just a little more over time thanks to the efforts of the allies on this journey, though, and in a way that surprisingly felt natural for him since its not like he just becomes a nice guy. He's still stoic, commanding, and distant even by the end, he just grows to trust his son a lot more. Something I really like about how he was handled in this game is with his relationship to Atreus, his son. Atreus is a bit of a handful, as kids tend to be, but he has a very strained relationship with his dad because the man was basically absent in his life until the events of this game. Although Kratos clearly loved Faye - Atreus's mother - a lot, he was also very distant with his son, so Faye basically raised Atreus by herself while Kratos was off doing...uh, whatever he was doing. You can really feel the tension in the early parts of the game, with how cold and detached Kratos is and how frustrated Atreus is. Sadly we never get to see what Faye was like when she was alive or even what she looks like (which is quite unfortunate imo since she is obviously a major character motivation of both Kratos and Atreus), but I suppose that was to service this game's heavy beginning. The goal that starts this whole journey is Kratos and Atreus traveling to disperse Faye's ashes on the tallest mountain to fulfill her dying wish, but, of course, there's a whole lot more to the plot than that. Eventually we meet some of the new allies in this game, my favorites of which being Mimir and the two Dwarf brothers Brok and Sindri. If you know me, you know I love a good comedic relief, which all these guys bring plenty of while still fitting the grisly tone the story mostly has. Soon enough, we meet Freya, though we don't yet know that's Freya until a bit later. She's mostly just there as the resident healer who Kratos often goes back to for help with patching up allies, though she also knows Kratos is a god and tries to nudge him into telling Atreus the truth of who he is. It does feel like a very Kratos thing for him to refuse telling Atreus the truth until Atreus literally gets an illness from being a god who doesn't know he's a god, and even then he's still hiding secrets that do eventually get revealed to Atreus much later...in also similarly dire circumstances, where Kratos is pretty much forced to tell the truth. Honestly, you can really understand why Atreus would be so frustrated with his father, but you can also understand why Kratos wouldn't want to reveal all of this to his son. In a way, his fears are almost vindicated in a segment of the game I see people often hate on (for understandable reasons imo) where Atreus suddenly becomes an egotistical asshole after learning he's a god. Anyway, Baldur is the main villain of this game and honestly he was actually a more interesting villain than I thought he'd be. From his first appearance, you get the impression he's just an immortal lunatic who wants something out of you that he never discloses even after you finally get to kill the bastard, but once you get further in the game you get to learn more about him which makes him an interesting tragic character. Its not until the very end of the game that you learn the reason he keeps chasing you down and fighting you all the time is because he was looking for Faye, presumably because Odin promised Baldur he would get rid of the immortality if he killed Faye. As it turns out, Baldur is the son of Freya, and their relationship is...well, very complicated. Freya used magic to make Baldur immune to everything except for mistletoe (hey that's one bit of Norse myth I've actually heard of before playing this game), meaning he feels no pain at all from anything and he regenerates from any wounds he gets. She did this since she firmly believed it was a blessing to protect him from all harm, but Baldur sees it as a miserable curse that ruined his life and he hates her guts for it. I think its actually a pretty interesting relationship to compare with Kratos and Atreus. The Kratos comparison is obvious and blatantly stated in game: Baldur was consumed by vengeance, willing to do all sorts of terrible things to achieve it, just like Kratos once was. But the parallels in Kratos and Atreus's relationship is in how the bond between Kratos and Atreus could be reforged despite their flaws, meanwhile Baldur was just too vengeful and venomous to reconcile with his mother. The final fight of the game has one last epic fight between Kratos and Baldur, all the while Freya controls a dead giant to try to break it up. You can definitely sympathize with Freya's anguish, but, at the same time, Baldur is too far gone. Even when Baldur is about to choke Freya out, she lets him nearly kill her, and she even gets angry when Kratos stops him. The grief is strong and the whole moment is just really emotionally powerful. Uh, anyway, I think this is the longest story paragraph I've ever written, so to stop myself from droning on even more, I'll just say this was a really great story and I loved it.
Overall, God of War 2018 was a great game in my opinion. Fun gameplay (even if I prefer the classic trilogy's style more), an excellent story, cool lore...lots of stuff to like, not much at all to hate. Earns a splendid 4.5 stars out of me. It was so close to a 5, but it just barely missed the mark for the fact that the combat wasn't as fun as I hoped it'd be. Very curious to try out Ragnarok whenever I get that.
I'll start with the gameplay. I still came out of this thinking the old games were more fun with the straightforward hack-and-slash style they have, but I found the overhauled combat systems this reboot has to be pretty interesting and fun in its own way. Instead of the magic spells that you casted with mana in the original God of War and God of War II, here you have Runic Attacks, which are basically spells that you press either L1 + R1 or L1 + R2 to activate depending on the type (there's one Runic Attack slot for each of the two types, Heavy and Light). They don't have a cost since there's no mana at all in this game, but they do have a significant cooldown that you can lower through improving your Cooldown stat. Speaking of which, yea this game goes for the whole shebang when it comes to RPG stuff; you got a big skill tree to sink your Experience into, three gear slots (Chest, Wrists, and Waist), enchantments to socket into your gear, Talismans, and weapon pommels. It's not at all hard to understand how any of these work, though, since they just increase your stats and have certain special effects like "High chance to gain a Strength buff after killing an enemy" or something of the sort. There's probably a wide variety of builds you can go for, but I mostly focused on Defense, Vitality, and Strength, though I also managed to get a ton of Runic (stat that dictates how powerful the Runic Attacks are) through the strong gear I got at the end of the game. That's the boring stuff, though. The fun stuff is the actual combat itself, which I thought felt a lot more in-depth than the classic trilogy due to all the moves you can get in the skill tree, even if it did take me a while to get used to it. All those extra moves plus having to remember Atreus is there to shoot arrows at your foes (thank god he can't die lol) might seem a little overwhelming, but you gradually work up to that so you have enough time to get used to everything first.
I was going to include this in the gameplay paragraph, but, in typical Bob fashion, I rambled on too long and now it's its own paragraph. Outside of combat, the exploration of the world feels pretty basic. You unlock fast travel relatively early on, although for some reason you can only go to one point on the map until your travel stone gets upgraded halfway through the game. I don't really understand why they did that, though I suppose it lets you actually see the world while you're traveling on boat to get where you need to go. One thing I will complain about is that this game does the whole open world thing of counting down a hundred different things you can do, but thankfully side-quests are kept to a minimum so I didn't feel like I was running around everywhere before I could continue the story (since I typically like to do side-quests first unless it doesn't feel worth it or is in a very inconvenient spot). It helps that the worlds themselves are actually kind of small and linear for open world standards, so its not like my time playing Skyrim or Breath of the Wild where there's so many things to do and so many places to see that I get completely overwhelmed. Most side activities are just a bunch of small optional stuff, like sometimes you see Odin's ghostly ravens all around the world that you can take down. There's 51 of those ravens if I remember correctly and I only found 5. Similarly, there's a bunch of chests you can find around the world that give you different things, whether that be just some Hacksilver (the currency of this game) or something more rare like resources for crafting and upgrading gear or even items that permanently increase either your health (Iðunn's Apples) or Spartan Rage (Horns of Blood Mead). Sometimes you also come across Yggdrassil Tears, which permanently increase one of your stats by two. There's also entire other realms to explore, with four of them being areas you go to in the main story and two - Muspelheim and Niflheim - being optional content you need to collect some stuff to gain access to (unfortunately you can't go to Asgard, Svartalfheim, or Vanaheim even though they're right there at the realm Travel Gate). Point is, there's a lot of stuff to do, but it never felt overwhelmingly large to me which is a big plus in my opinion.
God of War 2018's story is probably the main selling point of the game. It's very cinematic and atmospheric overall. Frankly I find it impressive how the game is littered with lore all around that you can read in-game whenever you kill a new enemy, learn new information in the story dialogue, or find the glyphs and papers you need. Unfortunately I don't know that much about Norse mythology so I can't attest to how accurate this is, but it was still really cool to read up on in-game. As for the actual story that unfurls while you play the game...man this is some really cool stuff. In my God of War III review, I complained a lot about the ending and how it tried too hard to redeem Kratos. Its been so deeply cemented that he's a terrible person, willing to use most people in his way regardless of if they're innocent or not. Occasionally he does good things, of course, but usually not for anything but his own gain. Sure, he has always had a tragic side to him, since the games establish that he is a broken man tortured by the gods and consumed by vengeance, but frankly the kind of vile acts this man has done makes it to where I'd need some convincing to believe he's a changed man in this game. Unfortunately, we learn basically nothing about how exactly Kratos got to these Scandinavian lands, which I feel should have been pretty important considering that God of War III ends on a completely destroyed Greece and Kratos only barely getting up after stabbing himself with the sword of the gods and beating Zeus to a pulp. This is pretty much a timeskip to a later time, where Kratos has hidden himself from the world and decided to start life over again. Despite my gripes about God of War III's last bits of story, I do think they managed to convincingly show Kratos's growth as a person in this game. He's just as stoic, suspicious of everyone, and cynical as he's always been, and he never really tries to play hero. There's a lot of characters in this game he would have never helped if it weren't for his son convincing him, since, just like the games of the past, Kratos is single-mindedly pursuing his one goal. He does soften up just a little more over time thanks to the efforts of the allies on this journey, though, and in a way that surprisingly felt natural for him since its not like he just becomes a nice guy. He's still stoic, commanding, and distant even by the end, he just grows to trust his son a lot more. Something I really like about how he was handled in this game is with his relationship to Atreus, his son. Atreus is a bit of a handful, as kids tend to be, but he has a very strained relationship with his dad because the man was basically absent in his life until the events of this game. Although Kratos clearly loved Faye - Atreus's mother - a lot, he was also very distant with his son, so Faye basically raised Atreus by herself while Kratos was off doing...uh, whatever he was doing. You can really feel the tension in the early parts of the game, with how cold and detached Kratos is and how frustrated Atreus is. Sadly we never get to see what Faye was like when she was alive or even what she looks like (which is quite unfortunate imo since she is obviously a major character motivation of both Kratos and Atreus), but I suppose that was to service this game's heavy beginning. The goal that starts this whole journey is Kratos and Atreus traveling to disperse Faye's ashes on the tallest mountain to fulfill her dying wish, but, of course, there's a whole lot more to the plot than that. Eventually we meet some of the new allies in this game, my favorites of which being Mimir and the two Dwarf brothers Brok and Sindri. If you know me, you know I love a good comedic relief, which all these guys bring plenty of while still fitting the grisly tone the story mostly has. Soon enough, we meet Freya, though we don't yet know that's Freya until a bit later. She's mostly just there as the resident healer who Kratos often goes back to for help with patching up allies, though she also knows Kratos is a god and tries to nudge him into telling Atreus the truth of who he is. It does feel like a very Kratos thing for him to refuse telling Atreus the truth until Atreus literally gets an illness from being a god who doesn't know he's a god, and even then he's still hiding secrets that do eventually get revealed to Atreus much later...in also similarly dire circumstances, where Kratos is pretty much forced to tell the truth. Honestly, you can really understand why Atreus would be so frustrated with his father, but you can also understand why Kratos wouldn't want to reveal all of this to his son. In a way, his fears are almost vindicated in a segment of the game I see people often hate on (for understandable reasons imo) where Atreus suddenly becomes an egotistical asshole after learning he's a god. Anyway, Baldur is the main villain of this game and honestly he was actually a more interesting villain than I thought he'd be. From his first appearance, you get the impression he's just an immortal lunatic who wants something out of you that he never discloses even after you finally get to kill the bastard, but once you get further in the game you get to learn more about him which makes him an interesting tragic character. Its not until the very end of the game that you learn the reason he keeps chasing you down and fighting you all the time is because he was looking for Faye, presumably because Odin promised Baldur he would get rid of the immortality if he killed Faye. As it turns out, Baldur is the son of Freya, and their relationship is...well, very complicated. Freya used magic to make Baldur immune to everything except for mistletoe (hey that's one bit of Norse myth I've actually heard of before playing this game), meaning he feels no pain at all from anything and he regenerates from any wounds he gets. She did this since she firmly believed it was a blessing to protect him from all harm, but Baldur sees it as a miserable curse that ruined his life and he hates her guts for it. I think its actually a pretty interesting relationship to compare with Kratos and Atreus. The Kratos comparison is obvious and blatantly stated in game: Baldur was consumed by vengeance, willing to do all sorts of terrible things to achieve it, just like Kratos once was. But the parallels in Kratos and Atreus's relationship is in how the bond between Kratos and Atreus could be reforged despite their flaws, meanwhile Baldur was just too vengeful and venomous to reconcile with his mother. The final fight of the game has one last epic fight between Kratos and Baldur, all the while Freya controls a dead giant to try to break it up. You can definitely sympathize with Freya's anguish, but, at the same time, Baldur is too far gone. Even when Baldur is about to choke Freya out, she lets him nearly kill her, and she even gets angry when Kratos stops him. The grief is strong and the whole moment is just really emotionally powerful. Uh, anyway, I think this is the longest story paragraph I've ever written, so to stop myself from droning on even more, I'll just say this was a really great story and I loved it.
Overall, God of War 2018 was a great game in my opinion. Fun gameplay (even if I prefer the classic trilogy's style more), an excellent story, cool lore...lots of stuff to like, not much at all to hate. Earns a splendid 4.5 stars out of me. It was so close to a 5, but it just barely missed the mark for the fact that the combat wasn't as fun as I hoped it'd be. Very curious to try out Ragnarok whenever I get that.