***Review contains a few minor spoilers***
Click here for my YouTube SPOILER talk and review
An immersive game that allows a takes advantage of rich Norse mythology to add depth to the story about a father and his son forced to work together to fulfill a loved one’s last wish. This is the first game in the “God of War” series that I’ve played, and I knew very little about Kratos until I watched a brief video recapping the story thus far. While the story is engaging, it’s not too original. Like the film “Logan” or the video game “The Last of Us,” we basically have the same story of a grumpy father figure who doesn’t share much of his personal information while grudgingly making a trek with a young child that he slowly bonds with. Luckily, the journey is filled with beautifully designed locales that are steeped with Norse mythology. Atreus’ enthusiasm to learn more about the world around him and the knowledge he presents the he learned from his mother make you excited to learn more about the world too. The game’s dynamic becomes much more entertaining once Mimir joins along. While I assumed he would just be a temporary addition, he joins you for the rest of the game, adding interesting tidbits and much needed humor.
The game looks great. There’s nothing groundbreaking, but the world is well-designed and there’s a variety of terrain. Once you can travel to other realms, you’ll find they are all distinctive and you feel like you’re someplace exotic. The sound design is terrific, and the game often features a movie-quality score, especially during boss battles. The monsters feature of good variety of offensive and defensive combinations, forcing you to use different battle tactics depending on what you’re facing. Initially, I found combat boring. Your axe is powerful, but slow. You’ll probably use your fist more than anything else in order to stun your opponent and take them out quickly. Atreus isn’t really much help in the beginning, so the battles are fairly one-note. Once you upgrade yourself and your son, and acquire powerful runic attacks, the fights become much more varied. I mostly stuck to my basic fist to face strategy, while using Atreus as support and this worked enough to get by. But, once I got into some of the more difficult optional battles, and learned that I need all my available tricks to win these fights. After a few gauntlet battles and a tussle with a few Valkyries, and finally became a fairly skilled player. Some of the boss fights can be tricky due to regular combat alternating with sequences that require pressing the right button at the right time. However, this does help add to the epicenes and cinematic feel of these big battles.
As far as negatives, I think I’m spoiled by open world games, so the exploring options feel limiting, especially early on, when your path is heavily influenced by the story. Even when you can start accessing more areas, traveling by boat and foot to the same locations many different times to reach previously inaccessible areas is frustrating. It’s probably better to wait till later in the game when the Travel Gates unlock and allow fast travel. But, then you miss out on crucial items and that can give you an edge against your foes. There’s also the tendency of the Dwarves to randomly show up at a new shop when you happen to be in that area, even places that were almost impossible for you to reach yourself. They offer an explanation, but it just feels unrealistic and takes you out of the fantasy. Other things like your boat always just appearing at the dock you’re closest to hurts the suspension of disbelief. Also, Atreus’ dialog gets very repetitive, especially if you’re exploring an area for a long time. I don’t know how many times I heard “I wish mom were here.” If you’re trying to go for 100% completion, there is a lot of searching over and over for green ravens, tough gauntlets, mazes with poison mists, and unbelievable powerful enemies that will frustrate you.
Overall, watching our characters bond as they travel through gorgeous landscapes while unleashing some killer combos is a satisfying journey, and you’ll want to see everything you can see and hear every tale you can hear.
**** out of *****