Given my previous experience with the God of War series, I didn’t really care about the announcement of the series return. Not that I didn’t like the games, but I only truly enjoyed the second game and since the third entry haven’t even bothered with the Ascension or the PSP titles. But then the game got released on PS4 and everyone praised… the story? In a God of War game? That piqued my interest, but the lack of a PS4 of my own (and the abundance of games I could play anyway) led me to safely wait until some later re-release or a port of the game will allow me to check it out.
Now with the exceptional PC port available, I was finally able to play and enjoy the game myself.
God of War is a third person action adventure hack and slash game with a surprisingly strong narrative focus. Unlike the previous games in the franchise, the camera and the flow of combat has been changed. Instead of far views with fixed camera that show a lot of the location, the view has been shifted to being over the shoulder and very close to the camera, not moving too far away even during the combat encounters. Due to this, the flow of the combat has been changed too, focusing more on careful comboing, dodging and blocking with usually less than ten enemies on the screen at once. Instead of the huge crowd control mayhem that the original games were all about. Even the combat finishers, that used to be complex QTEs that you had to do to get healing resources (the concept that recent Doom games inherited) are now less of a requirement apart from the more complex fights and optional challenges.
Despite these huge gameplay changes that make God of War (2018) feel different from the previous titles, a lot of the general concepts and the flow of the game is still recognizable. The upgrades are now relegated to “resources” and crafting-like action RPG ideas, but they don’t work entirely unlike the red orbs from the earlier games. Exploration and chests are still a thing with many secrets hidden throughout the game world, it’s just that this world is now almost entirely interconnected and available for re-exploration instead of being more linear. Platforming is now linear and simpler, reminiscent of Enslaved: Odyssey to the West, but it’s still part of the gameplay, as are the puzzles. And even with the more claustrophobic camera and somewhat slower paced action, the game is still full of huge epic fights and exhilarating situations. So even though the game plays more like Hellblade: Senua’s Sacrifice, it still feels like a continuation to the previous God of War games.
Apart from the story. While the original God of War trilogy didn’t have a bad storyline per se, it was very much a “cool angry dude kills gods” type of deal with very few emotional beats or any kind of character development. The story was there to enable the cool stuff to happen and to be an interesting reinterpretation of Greek and Roman mythologies. And the final title in the trilogy was basically about Kratos just killing everything and being needlessly brutal about it. In this game, all of that pointless violence is used to build a new story that is more personal and introspective. The father and son relationship is used really well, without the typical pitfalls of this type of story. There are many genuinely surprising turns, good character building and shockingly well delivered callbacks for those who went through all of the original titles. Yet, if you didn’t, you can easily play this game and enjoy it too.
Because it really is enjoyable. I found it to be the most fun God of War title so far and one of the better examples of a “western” melee-focused action adventure. It’s still nowhere near the best examples of this type of game (which tend to be made in Japan). And harder difficulties or more challenging fights in this game are less about feeling more tense and more about prolonging the fights with bigger enemy health bars and higher enemy damage. The fully optional locations with their two types of special challenges are also more tedious and annoying than what you’d expect these to be. Sure, they are optional and you won’t have to do them if you don’t want to, but they feel like really cool concepts that were simply not developed well enough.
Still, playing God of War (2018) is really fun. The gameplay is fun, exploring the world of Norse mythology is exciting, the flow is great, the story is surprisingly well done and engaging and the PC port is fantastic. I’m glad that this game has been finally ported to PC and it was a pleasure to play it. So even if you’ve never played God of War games before, check this one out, even for the world and the story.