I like this game simply because it does something I wish more anime games would try to make : their own story within the universe of said anime instead of being the anime you've already seen but worse. That shit is usually non-canon anyway so who cares if it's bad and tons of naruto shippuden games already make the first naruto vs sasuke an epic showdown instead of Sasuke curbstomping Naruto for 5 minutes like in the manga. It's not even that here it's decent, some cool moments here and there nothing to really complain about.

It's a shame that this game is so sloooooooooooow. The menuing takes forever, the maps are way too big for how bland they are (or 3-5 tiles movement is too low) animations are unskippable and are looooooooong. The leveling system is also really annoying and unbalanced. Some characters are busted (Gin, your protagonist especially speed Fujimaru who pretty much deletes the map in bankai...), others are ass (Chad, Jidanbo).

Cool game with cool ideas but on god play this on an emulator with speed up

This game represents some of the best aspects of modern AAA gaming but also is a showcase of its worst

Let's start with the good : the game looks gorgeous : the environment, the character models, the animations, everything looks great. Speaking of the animations the instakills are crunchy as hell, you feel the strength of ripping a body in half and that never gets old. The presentation is also top notch and I understand how in a first playthrough it looks so impressive

Noticed something ? I never talked about the game part. And that's because everything about it is a bunch of popular gaming trends without asking why it works and would it work with this genre.

Vikings are popular with shit like Skyrim, Vinland Saga and...well Vikings so let's go with this setting. Looting and gear systems have been prominent in most games so let's have this even if it doesn't make sense in this setting. The last of us is the blueprint for modern AAA gaming ? Let's add a son to Kratos and make him a sad angry dad but also make the boy a glorified assist button because god forbid he mildly inconveniences you (he still does with that inexplicable fit he throw during the game that stops like 30 minutes later but whatever). Some of it goes against each other such as the single camera shot for immersion sake but also being able to fuck around to do side quests

Also the climbing is like Uncharted without the setpieces (you know the one good thing about Uncharted climbing since both this and dad of war were just glorified press X and a direction and you will be magnetized to a wall)

The game still has lots of problems on its own. The single shot gimmick prevents the camera from moving too much and is way too close to the player as a result, the game decides randomly that you or the enemy's attacks will land even if you're too far from each other by dragging the attacker like action man toys 6 years old me would play with. Sometimes you kick a frozen enemy into a wall and insta-kills them but the next of the same enemy doesn't react to the kick or the axe simply bounces. The game took inspiration from dmc but the wrong one because some ennemies can only be hit by a certain weapon (something universal panned by even the biggest contratians who still think DmC is a good game)

Speaking of that I hope you enjoy fighting repeat bosses because this game is like Yakuza 0 except instead of Kuze who had something unique every encounter (2 he had a pipe, 3 brass knuckles, 4 you had a partner and he had ads with him and 5 he has that qte and remixed theme) here it's the same troll you kill with that pillar slam everytime. Clever move to put the best boss fight in the game at the very beginning tho.

The last 2 trends the game took from are the worst on my eyes : treating the player like a braindead zombie who has to not think and making the game as long as possible to reach an arbitrary time limit that makes a game good despite no one saying they prefer 30 mid hours to 10 good ones. The second is self-explanatory. The first is simply how easy the puzzles are, how nothing can bother or challenge the player too much (failed btw because I can tell you dying because the game decided to slide the enemy into you despite being clearly too far to hit is in fact bothersome) and how prominent unskippable cutscenes of you walking very slowly while people are talking. Which also tanks its replayability

This game has a flawless presentation and I understand most people who play AAA aren't familiar with action games or OG GOW (I myself am not with the trilogy hence why I haven't talked about Kratos's evolution even if this review is already way too long) but it represents everything I despise about modern AAA and why I drifted away from it the last few years. It has nothing unique, nothing special and nothing would be said in a few years when they call god of war 2018 the best game of all time when asked what is memorable about it

This and Yakuza 1 are comparable to Street fighter I and II, a clunky but promising prototype becoming what it was always meant to be. The combat is near perfect (outside of the heat meter being very slow), the story is very well-written even if a bit too fast at times and I love Ryuji Goda. He's a simple yet perfect character for this game and Kiryu. The substories are the only aspect K2 improves upon as some of the original are missable and even if you did them all some are tied to HARD mini-games. Though the Amon fights are better in the original (still bad tho)

Among the closest things to a perfect game, don't feel intimidated because the models don't look as detailed as Kiwami 2 or because idiots decided that anything made before 2014 is the stone age and the only people who like those games are biased nostalgics. This game hasn't aged a day and while K2 is easier to afford it's an inferior product to the original in just about every way

The PS2 era of gaming was the perfect balance between games made as works of art and ideas first and the money and budgets being small enough to not be frowned upon by suits if anything deviated from the video game equivalent of Oscar baits but high enough so the potentiel of these ideas could be realized and not be held back by limited technology

This game is exactly that but released in 2019. Everything oozes soul and personality but with the polish of 11 years of game design and graphical advancement since a good but flawed DMC4. It's everything me pre-2019 would've asked for DMC5 and more.