A quick note that I only finished this on hard mode, and not on Titan; Think of this more of an “impressions” writeup than a full review.
Still plenty of fun to be had here; It’s classic God of War, which is a formula that’s almost impossible to actually make badly. Unfortunately, there are a lot of changes here that really make this worse than it should be. It’s a shame because with a few tweaks, I could see this being one of my favourites in the series.
The most obvious change of note is the new rage system; meter fills up as you attack with the Blades of Chaos, and Kratos can’t use certain combos that he previously had access to until he fills up that meter. Probably the most infamous change, but I think there are a lot of other aspects to its design and what surrounds it that just make it feel like even more of a middle finger.
To first focus on the rage system itself, a good chunk of Kratos’ (Already smaller) moveset DOESN’T fill the meter; Throws, finishers, parries, and world weapons. It’s only standard attacks from the chains that work. Throws, I can understand, seeing as they give i-frames and are some of the safest moves in the game. But the lack of rage on parrying is baffling given the fact that it’s already been nerfed (L1 + X and endlag instead of just L1), and hasn’t seemed to have gotten much stronger. World weapons not giving rage is also just another reason to barely use them, if most of them lacking much in the way of significant attack power isn’t enough. The second is its extremely punishing nature: Get hit, and the meter drops. And if you’re hit while in rage state, poof, you’re out. As a result, unless I was abusing the shield glitch, I didn’t find many moments where I actually wanted to keep the rage state up instead of just immediately expending it on the special attack.
That second point ties into the enemy design. In principle, I like how ridiculously aggressive the enemies in this game are; Some of the most aggressive I’ve seen in an action game to date. But a good chunk of them are harder to stun than in past games, and they seem to have a greater quantity of difficult-to-avoid grabs that force you into QTEs and instantly drain all of your meter; See the Sirens, and Gorgons for the worst examples of this. And in the case of the Talos enemies, they straight-up can go into a state where if you light attack them, you just get hitstunned. Combine this with the chaotic as ever encounter design of classic God of War (Though fair play to the game, it doesn’t ALWAYS throw those enemies at you, and there are a good number of encounters where the game actually pops off), and a generally weaker Kratos with more limited tools, and I found myself falling into boring, defensive play that devolved into spamming magic for i-frames more often than I would’ve wanted.
Then we get to Kratos’s actual toolset in this game, and… It’s a mixed bag. To add in some positivity, the new grab system I really like. Kratos can now leash enemies from afar, and drag them around the arena, being able to slash with the chains (Which DOES build rage), evade, slam or throw enemies. Gives a lot more dimension to the already fairly unique grab system of this series. But outside of that, the elemental Blades of Chaos are a pretty weak substitute for having multiple weapons, with the main attacks on each of them being mostly the same and the variations stemming from magic, rage attacks, and L1 + Square and Triangle. And the world weapons, while interesting in concept, generally fall apart in practice. 3 of the 5 weapons’ are largely unhelpful, with the best move upon obtaining them to chuck them away immediately for decent damage and stun, and the shield being completely broken due to a glitch that allows you to switch elements while using the plumes, causing it to fire off multiple times at once.
Balancing in this game is generally not great, with probably the highest quantity of tools in the series that feel mostly useless, and as per usual for God of War, a few tools that are absurdly overpowered; To give a couple of examples for each, respectively, we first have the Ice of Poseidon on the chains, which does some of the worst damage amongst the elemental options and whose freezing barely works. When you DO manage to freeze an enemy, it takes an absurd number of hits to actually shatter them which by then, the enemy will have already unfrozen from time. On the second front is the Oath Stone of Orkos, which is an item has a high area of effect, damage, stun, and recharges fairly quickly. You really want to throw this one out a lot later in the game.
I’ve been relatively harsh on this game, but that’s mostly because I just find it to be less than the sum of its parts. You could easily pitch this to me in a way that would sound like a perfect God of War game; A revamped and more in-depth grab system, meter management that rewards both strong offense and defense, some of the best sound design in an action game to date and graphics and art direction that are still jaw-dropping today? Fuck yeah, sign me up. But I came away from the game feeling with a general sense of “meh”; Here’s hoping for a re-release on newer consoles at some point at least, so we don’t put that last point to waste. Will probably revisit this again in the future on Titan mode to try sorting out how many of my problems with this game were just skill issues, since at the end of the day, I still find a lot of its ideas compelling.
Still plenty of fun to be had here; It’s classic God of War, which is a formula that’s almost impossible to actually make badly. Unfortunately, there are a lot of changes here that really make this worse than it should be. It’s a shame because with a few tweaks, I could see this being one of my favourites in the series.
The most obvious change of note is the new rage system; meter fills up as you attack with the Blades of Chaos, and Kratos can’t use certain combos that he previously had access to until he fills up that meter. Probably the most infamous change, but I think there are a lot of other aspects to its design and what surrounds it that just make it feel like even more of a middle finger.
To first focus on the rage system itself, a good chunk of Kratos’ (Already smaller) moveset DOESN’T fill the meter; Throws, finishers, parries, and world weapons. It’s only standard attacks from the chains that work. Throws, I can understand, seeing as they give i-frames and are some of the safest moves in the game. But the lack of rage on parrying is baffling given the fact that it’s already been nerfed (L1 + X and endlag instead of just L1), and hasn’t seemed to have gotten much stronger. World weapons not giving rage is also just another reason to barely use them, if most of them lacking much in the way of significant attack power isn’t enough. The second is its extremely punishing nature: Get hit, and the meter drops. And if you’re hit while in rage state, poof, you’re out. As a result, unless I was abusing the shield glitch, I didn’t find many moments where I actually wanted to keep the rage state up instead of just immediately expending it on the special attack.
That second point ties into the enemy design. In principle, I like how ridiculously aggressive the enemies in this game are; Some of the most aggressive I’ve seen in an action game to date. But a good chunk of them are harder to stun than in past games, and they seem to have a greater quantity of difficult-to-avoid grabs that force you into QTEs and instantly drain all of your meter; See the Sirens, and Gorgons for the worst examples of this. And in the case of the Talos enemies, they straight-up can go into a state where if you light attack them, you just get hitstunned. Combine this with the chaotic as ever encounter design of classic God of War (Though fair play to the game, it doesn’t ALWAYS throw those enemies at you, and there are a good number of encounters where the game actually pops off), and a generally weaker Kratos with more limited tools, and I found myself falling into boring, defensive play that devolved into spamming magic for i-frames more often than I would’ve wanted.
Then we get to Kratos’s actual toolset in this game, and… It’s a mixed bag. To add in some positivity, the new grab system I really like. Kratos can now leash enemies from afar, and drag them around the arena, being able to slash with the chains (Which DOES build rage), evade, slam or throw enemies. Gives a lot more dimension to the already fairly unique grab system of this series. But outside of that, the elemental Blades of Chaos are a pretty weak substitute for having multiple weapons, with the main attacks on each of them being mostly the same and the variations stemming from magic, rage attacks, and L1 + Square and Triangle. And the world weapons, while interesting in concept, generally fall apart in practice. 3 of the 5 weapons’ are largely unhelpful, with the best move upon obtaining them to chuck them away immediately for decent damage and stun, and the shield being completely broken due to a glitch that allows you to switch elements while using the plumes, causing it to fire off multiple times at once.
Balancing in this game is generally not great, with probably the highest quantity of tools in the series that feel mostly useless, and as per usual for God of War, a few tools that are absurdly overpowered; To give a couple of examples for each, respectively, we first have the Ice of Poseidon on the chains, which does some of the worst damage amongst the elemental options and whose freezing barely works. When you DO manage to freeze an enemy, it takes an absurd number of hits to actually shatter them which by then, the enemy will have already unfrozen from time. On the second front is the Oath Stone of Orkos, which is an item has a high area of effect, damage, stun, and recharges fairly quickly. You really want to throw this one out a lot later in the game.
I’ve been relatively harsh on this game, but that’s mostly because I just find it to be less than the sum of its parts. You could easily pitch this to me in a way that would sound like a perfect God of War game; A revamped and more in-depth grab system, meter management that rewards both strong offense and defense, some of the best sound design in an action game to date and graphics and art direction that are still jaw-dropping today? Fuck yeah, sign me up. But I came away from the game feeling with a general sense of “meh”; Here’s hoping for a re-release on newer consoles at some point at least, so we don’t put that last point to waste. Will probably revisit this again in the future on Titan mode to try sorting out how many of my problems with this game were just skill issues, since at the end of the day, I still find a lot of its ideas compelling.
Reviewed on Apr 10, 2023