I’ve had God of War for the Playstation 4 lying around for a couple of years now but about a month ago I finally decided to give it a try. The game takes place quite a while after the events of previous God of War games. Kratos has moved to the north where he’s married again and now has a son, Atreus. On her dying bed, Faye, Kratos’ wife had asked that her ashes are scattered at the highest peak. When Kratos is also attacked by a mysterious man who cannot be hurt and barely escapes that encounter, he and Atreus leave their home and begin their journey to fulfil Faye’s last wish.
What follows are hours and hours of exploring Midgard, one of the realms of Norse Mythology where you encounter many deities like Freya but also some lesser known ones like Mothi and Magni, Thor’s sons. Eventually, you also pick up the head of Mimir, the god of knowledge, who guides you through this world (and eventually also other realms like Helheim and Muspelheim), and you even fight some Valkyries 😀
While the game is basically and open-world game with a lot of RPG elements mixed in (yes, you can upgrade your armour, your weapons, … basically everything), there are very few down-phases. The hub world (The “Lake of the Nine”) in and of itself has a lot of interesting side-quests and navigating from one area of the map to another is quite fast so it never gets boring; and even more so when you take the sometimes stunning graphics especially when you’re on top of huge mountains into account!
I played the game on the default difficulty level and I died many, many …. Many times; all of them deserved. All the encounters with small enemies all the way to the big bossed are fair and you know right away when you messed up and what you could do better next time around. Thanks to very short loading time and good safe-points, dying isn’t much of a punishment.
While I considered games like Spider-Man and Horizon: Zero Dawn must-haves on the PS4, I have to day that God of War deserves that title even more! OK, I’m a slight sucker for mythology in general but this game just blew me away and I cannot wait for the next one for the PS5!
Over the years I've written quite a few reviews 🙂 You can find them at /reviews/.
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