I don't have a lot of faith in Santa Monica studios. I didn't enjoy the first two games of this series and I just barely trucked through God of War 3, but either by some act of the gods or just the most beautiful storm, God of War 4 managed to be a truly great experience. It manages to get so much cohesively right despite a multitude of rough edges and interior flaws.
The combat was the first thing that brought me in, using a genuinely competent system of kiting enemies and managing your position. You have a good berth of tools to use and all of them have specialized use, whether that be keeping space, juggling enemies, or managing hordes. Enemy encounters are generally well designed to boot, with many of them keeping you always moving and continuously judging opportunity costs to what you decide to do. Other than a couple stinkers, all the enemies have interesting movesets to manage. Cooldown abilities are done here well for probably the first time I've seen outside multiplayer games, in that they have a clear cost of use and don't just steamroll or fully limit your options. You also have weapon swapping and Atreus's bow shots to always keep your hands busy and use a genuine amount of depth.
The boss fights in tandem are hit or miss, with a couple genuinely good story bosses that actually use the system, a couple spectacle bosses that serve as a nice visual treat, and then a bunch of really boring annoying troll bosses reskinned with an elemental buff. That sounds more negative, but the game makes up for it with optional bosses known as Valkyries, which maximize to the fullest extent what the system of mechanics is capable of. Each valkyrie has a great moveset and offers a fantastic difficult challenge.
The rest of the gameplay unfortunately is much less than graceful. The puzzle rooms range from somewhat earned downtime to incredibly boring endeavors, and pretty much almost all of the side content other than the valkyries is a waste of time that perpetuates the singlehandedly weakest component of the whole game -- The Gear. In short, God of War did not need a gear system, or a stats system. It has no depth to it and only adds problems, especially when the difficulty is put up when level scaling is introduced, to make matters worse. It really should've stuck with story-progressed unlocks rather than this level bullshit, but apparently they needed something to stretch out that exploration aspect and this is what they decided on.
On the other hand, what ended up coming as a surprise to me a few hours in was the great story and characters on offer. The story in short is very simple, but what it offers is excellent characterization brimming with personality. The banter between Kratos and Atreus is well written as it is characterizing and pushing the relationship between them forward in a natural almost entirely organic way. There is a low point to this, in a single rushed instance where Atreus becomes a massive egomaniac in the span of a few minutes, but the purpose is there and it rights itself up to bring a fantastic ending at the end. Another character is brought in at the halfway point to make the worldbuilding and lore parts of the story more interesting, as well as make the banter more humorous.
It also needs to be said that the game is a visual and auditory treat, but I think that ends up being a massive understatement. There is, to my knowledge, no game in the triple A spectrum that has as good cinematography, visual design, and direction as God of War 4 does. It earns the one-shot gimmick that most mediums fail to do, as well as nail almost every setpiece. There are a few scenes in here that will stick with me for a while in a way Naughty Dog and Rockstar games fail to capture. Probably helps that the director of the game is a massive film nerd. The music is also solid and fitting for the game, although in contrast I probably won't be listening to it much from now on.
Overall, while it has a few shaky steps and some monikers of the triple A pitch the developers are limited by, God of War 4 is an excellent game that kept me engaged enough to finish as soon as I could. I honestly am just crossing my fingers that they don't fuck up the sequel. (8.5/10)
The combat was the first thing that brought me in, using a genuinely competent system of kiting enemies and managing your position. You have a good berth of tools to use and all of them have specialized use, whether that be keeping space, juggling enemies, or managing hordes. Enemy encounters are generally well designed to boot, with many of them keeping you always moving and continuously judging opportunity costs to what you decide to do. Other than a couple stinkers, all the enemies have interesting movesets to manage. Cooldown abilities are done here well for probably the first time I've seen outside multiplayer games, in that they have a clear cost of use and don't just steamroll or fully limit your options. You also have weapon swapping and Atreus's bow shots to always keep your hands busy and use a genuine amount of depth.
The boss fights in tandem are hit or miss, with a couple genuinely good story bosses that actually use the system, a couple spectacle bosses that serve as a nice visual treat, and then a bunch of really boring annoying troll bosses reskinned with an elemental buff. That sounds more negative, but the game makes up for it with optional bosses known as Valkyries, which maximize to the fullest extent what the system of mechanics is capable of. Each valkyrie has a great moveset and offers a fantastic difficult challenge.
The rest of the gameplay unfortunately is much less than graceful. The puzzle rooms range from somewhat earned downtime to incredibly boring endeavors, and pretty much almost all of the side content other than the valkyries is a waste of time that perpetuates the singlehandedly weakest component of the whole game -- The Gear. In short, God of War did not need a gear system, or a stats system. It has no depth to it and only adds problems, especially when the difficulty is put up when level scaling is introduced, to make matters worse. It really should've stuck with story-progressed unlocks rather than this level bullshit, but apparently they needed something to stretch out that exploration aspect and this is what they decided on.
On the other hand, what ended up coming as a surprise to me a few hours in was the great story and characters on offer. The story in short is very simple, but what it offers is excellent characterization brimming with personality. The banter between Kratos and Atreus is well written as it is characterizing and pushing the relationship between them forward in a natural almost entirely organic way. There is a low point to this, in a single rushed instance where Atreus becomes a massive egomaniac in the span of a few minutes, but the purpose is there and it rights itself up to bring a fantastic ending at the end. Another character is brought in at the halfway point to make the worldbuilding and lore parts of the story more interesting, as well as make the banter more humorous.
It also needs to be said that the game is a visual and auditory treat, but I think that ends up being a massive understatement. There is, to my knowledge, no game in the triple A spectrum that has as good cinematography, visual design, and direction as God of War 4 does. It earns the one-shot gimmick that most mediums fail to do, as well as nail almost every setpiece. There are a few scenes in here that will stick with me for a while in a way Naughty Dog and Rockstar games fail to capture. Probably helps that the director of the game is a massive film nerd. The music is also solid and fitting for the game, although in contrast I probably won't be listening to it much from now on.
Overall, while it has a few shaky steps and some monikers of the triple A pitch the developers are limited by, God of War 4 is an excellent game that kept me engaged enough to finish as soon as I could. I honestly am just crossing my fingers that they don't fuck up the sequel. (8.5/10)