I respect elements of God of War. And I admit that taking the time to obtain a mastery of its combat system could yield a pretty addicting hack-and-slash.

But I did not enjoy God of War. Constantly staggering from enemy attacks is not fun. Dodge-rolling possessing such a long recovery time is not fun. Being surrounded by half of a dozen enemies that just spam attack you until they wombo combo you into heaven is not fun. Climbing walls and having to spam one attack button and having enemies grabbing onto you is not fun. Balancing Kratos on a tightrope and similarly spamming a single attack while enemies climb onto you is not fun.

Rarely did I enjoy a combat encounter in God of War. Kratos' movesets are decently satisfying, but the game doesn't let me play it like a hack-and-slash. It seems like you need to constantly dodge-roll and block attacks. But the dodge-roll system does not feel satisfying, as the recovery time is too long and the precision of the dodge roll's movement is too inaccurate for it to feel good when jumping between attacking and rolling.

Beyond the combat being frustrating, there are other sections that frustrate me. No one can forget the tower of blades in Hades' domain. I was too exhausted at that point to get angry, but screw that place.

I do like aspects of God of War. The level design is impressive, as the player is often introduced with plenty of paths to explore at once, and each somehow relates to the access of the other one. Tons of cool secrets too, like moving a ballista into the right spot to shoot a wall down, or exploring the hidden corners of the staged camera to discover new rooms. And the game looks quite freakin' cool. Athens is a well-designed area, and I'll never forget trudging through the deserts and going through a hell of puzzles on a giant's back. Very cool stuff.

The puzzles are also clever. One moment hinted at me being able to turn a minotaur to stone with Medusa's head after luring him onto a pressure plate. And another presented a ground plate that I could rotate and six or so stone structures that needed to go into a wall.

God of War's boss fights are also a lot of fun. I think what makes them satisfying is that the game shines during one-on-one encounters. It's rarely fun when the player gets staggered by a heap of enemies, but when fighting a boss, you can tactically plan your dodge rolls. They'll still kick your ass, but at least you know you had the ability to avoid whatever they're hitting you with.

The shift from 2018 to the original is jarring, as Kratos is nothing but evil and obnoxious. It certainly makes it harder to sympathize with him as a character in the new one, but it also makes him more interesting. He wasn't just a mildly bad guy. He was an actual villain. This changed my perception of the new game, as it's more obvious why he'd want to hide his awful past, and why Kratos is the way he is.

I wanted to like this game so much more than I did, but It seemed to be very insistent on the opposite. This may be the most reluctant 3/5 I ever give. First of all, the story is surprisingly good. The ending is a bit rushed but otherwise few complaints there. It makes a good use of its setting and Kratos is a badass protagonist. I was always looking forward to the next cutscene. The problem is everything inbetween that. The gameplay has quite frankly aged terribly. Combat is a staggerfest full of spongebobs that take so much damage it make Kratos feel like a tiny baby man. All of his moves and animations are pretty fun though. The worst part is the platforming and puzzles. Some sequences have like one second margin of error before you're dead or have to restart. This is most frustrating because the camera is abhorrent and is your worst enemy in the game. Plus the red orbs for upgrades basically get dripfed until endgame and make any sense of progression feel kinda pointless. All the annoyances just made the game really unfun for me a lot of the time, and if it werent for the good story and great setting (plus a lot of titties, there are so many in this game) this would've been a 2/5 at best.

Trophy Completion - 82%
Time Played - 9 hours 45 Minutes
Nancymeter - 59/100
Game Completion #39 of 2022
April Completion #8

lol it’s wild how much I remembered this having a proper story, it’s genuinely just “kill Ares” and then a big (good) infodump at the end

Found this really annoying to play in 2022, I don’t think I understood the combat and just spammed the L1+Square spin move the whole time. The checkpoints are really bad at times and some of the puzzles are very annoying.

Still worth playing imo but I just remember it being so much better! Might be due to playing most of it on a Steam Deck while watching movies etc but I felt like at times I had no clue what the actual goal of each little area was. Really eager to try out 2 and 3 again to see what improvements they made.