God of War Sons of Sparta - Review
A few years ago, I played all the God of War games on stream, the original PlayStation 2 game, all the way through to God of War Ragnarok. What surprised many was the 2D sidescroller game that released on mobile phones, before iPhone. Honestly, getting another 2D game staring Kratos was never something I thought would ever happen, so the surprise release of Sons of Sparta was quite the welcome surprise. The only question, is this a tale worthy of Kratos, or is it a tale that did not need telling?
The story of this game is a little wonky, it is Kratos telling his daughter Calliope, about an adventure that he went on with his brother Deimos, when they were both boys. Which means that the game is set before the original God of War timeline wise, but given Kratos and Calliope are always in the same space, it could also be another location and time, but saying more could be a spoiler. What is interesting about the game is that we get to see more of the dynamic between Kratos and Deimos, which the only other time we saw the brothers together was a little more anger filled. Everyone knows that Kratos is an angry man, at least in the Greek series of games, so it was odd to see him be the more restrained brother. Deimos on the other hand was the more carefree and willing to rush into danger, all for a sense of boasting. Now if you know the story of the brothers, you do know how this eventually shakes out, but for what is on offer here, it is a fine story.
The issue that I have with the prequel story though, is that because of the 20 years of stories that we have, there is no sense of threat and danger to either brother. There are of course more characters in the game and those are up for grabs by Thanatos, but the two main characters, you need not worry about those. My only other issue with the story is the pacing, there is a lot of forced breaks for the game to tell you something, which feels like it goes against the flow of a God of War game. I am not opposed to a story of course, but I honestly felt that I could not go more than a few screens before the game took hold and told me a story beat.
Thankfully, the gameplay is better than the story and it manages to combine the exploration of a Metroidvania with the familiar elements of a God of War title. While Kratos has a number of abilities available to him, as you progress through the adventure you will be bestowed with gifts from Olympus, which grant you extra abilities. One of the ones obtained early on are the wings of Nike, which let you sprint and make massive jumps. As you might imagine, these extra items do require extra juice to use, the wings of Nike use stamina, but you have some items that use magic and you need to manage your levels of each all the time. Exploration is very much a back-and-forth scenario, as you will constantly come up against items that block your path, until you find the right item to let you remove it. This something that I really did like, because it gave me a sense of freedom to my adventure, other God of War games, especially the Greek ones direct you quite a bit, whereas this did not do that. Of course, as a more Metroidvania style of game, Laconia has a lot of nooks and crannies to discover, some of them complete with challenges.
Challenges in the game can be described in one of two ways, the enemies and boss that you encounter as you explore and the trials that you activate. The former is just the regular style of most games, Kratos has the ability to attack with his spear, or using any number of extra items that he has picked up. As you explore the world and defeat enemies, you will collect red orbs, which can be used to unlock new skills at the campfires, which also act as your save point. That system and the creation and upgrade of your gear is very much a Norse mythology system, it does work in the context of the game. While you can do some basic upgrades at the fires, better upgrades can be done with the blacksmith, as long as you have the right materials. This will require a lot more exploration, as some of those materials will be in chests, hidden away behind a challenge.
Which brings me to the second point of the gameplay, the trials. Some of these can be found in the world, when you attempt to remove fruit from a tree, others can be found in caves and even buildings. Many of these trials are combat focused, with a number of enemies spawning in and you needing to defeat them all. Some of the trials are time based, giving you a finite amount of time to reach a goal. Those ones are more of an issue, because while Kratos is decent in combat, he is not the most agile of characters. This is one of my major annoyances with the gameplay, a lot of the actions seem tied to button presses for the sake of having a button to press. A clear example of this is pressing triangle to grab onto a rope or ladder. This works as an idea when you are just exploring, but having to do it while under a timer, it becomes frustrating. Combat can also be frustrating at times, simply due to the number of enemies that can attack you at once.
Kratos has his spear, items and shield, the latter of which does allow you to parry attacks, but while you are defending an archer or spitting enemy from the front, other enemies will still attack you from the rear. In the original games, enemies also came at you from all angles and at all times, but there you were not locked into a perspective. What makes this especially frustrating is that when you attempt to get away from enemies, by dodging or jumping over them, the game can still decide you did not do it right and you take damage. There were more than a few times I got stuck against enemies, because dodging one meant I hit another and then I would get stuck in a cycle. The combat does offer some depth, with enemies that offer attacks you can’t parry or even dodge, but those only really matter when it is one on one.
Something I do think the game does very well is its presentation, specifically the world as I think it looks quite stunning. Laconia has a number of regions to explore, some are dark and foreboding, others are bright and welcoming. The game uses a nice parallax scrolling for the background, giving a lot of depth to things, but the main focal point for each area remains locked in place, so it does not become too distracting. I would like to say that the characters all look nice, but they don’t, they are not horrible, just weird. Kratos, Deimos and all the other folks, all walk like they are hunched over, which is weird, and becomes quite noticeable when they stand up to speak with folks. Kratos especially does not change throughout the adventure, when you equip the wings of Nike, which are sandals, he still runs around without them on his feet.
This is more of an observation, but the characters all remind me of Grand Theft Auto: Chinatown Wars, where they were 3d but animated to look 2d and this has that same vibe.
The sound is good, the music feels appropriately authentic for the God of War series and when a boss crashes onto the screen, it kicks in even harder. The voice works is going to be hit or miss depending on your preference and for me, it was a miss. While it was delightful to hear TC Carson back as Kratos, he sounded like he was trying to do an impression of Christopher Judge’s Kratos and not his own voice. Now to be fair, in all the Greek games, Kratos is usually yelling, but there are times when he speaks normally and it does not seem to match how he speaks here. Young Kratos and Deimos sound ok, both my issue is they both sound like American teenagers. This is not shade at the actors, Antony Del Rio and Scott Menville both do great jobs, but when the game is set in ancient Greece, hearing kids talk like modern day America feels out of place. Side note, Scott Menville has been the voice of Robin for a long time now, and I just can’t hear Deimos talking, without hearing Robin instead.
God of War Sons of Sparta is an ok game, it offers up a great Metroidvania experience, while encountering some fun monsters from mythology. The biggest issues the game has are the story poses no threat to the lead characters, due to its prequel nature and combat, while fine 1-on-1, suffers greatly when there are multiple enemies on screen. For Kratos’ second side-scrolling adventure, this is a much better attempt than the first one, but falls short of what God of War is all about. Fans of the series will enjoy learning more about the characters and the world is worth exploring, but newcomers might be best suited to enjoy this, without all that Greek family drama.
The Score
7.5
Review code provided by PlayStation
The Pros
The world is pretty fun to explore and takes advantage of the metroidvania genre
Combat is pretty great, more so when it is one-on-one…
The Cons
… but if you get surrounded by enemies, the 2d perspective really hurts the action
The story lacks any real sense of danger to the characters, due to its prequel nature
