God of War
Santa Monica Studio · RPG, ARPG, Action
Overview
God of War is the sequel to God of War III as well as a continuation of the canon God of War chronology. Unlike previous installments, this game focuses on Norse mythology and follows an older and more seasoned Kratos and his son Atreus in the years since the third game. It is in this harsh, unforgiving world that he must fight to survive… and teach his son to do the same.
THE GAMEQ VERDICT9,999 reviews analyzed
What players are actually saying
1. Summary
Players talk about the story of Kratos and his son Atreus more than anything else: 73% of the longer reviews discuss the story, and 17% mention the father and son relationship directly. The visuals come up in 39% and the music, sound or voice acting in 19%, and direct praise for the Leviathan Axe combat outnumbers direct complaints about it by about six to one. Some reviewers are first-timers who had owned the game for years or bought it before the sequel; others are PlayStation players replaying it at higher frame rates on PC, and those who mention performance mostly describe the port as smooth.
The recurring complaints are about fighting the same troll-type mini-bosses and draugr, slow climbing, crawling and realm travel, and a camera that sits tight on Kratos. Fans of the Greek trilogy are split on the slower, heavier, RPG-flavoured combat, and players on the hardest difficulties complain that enemies simply get more health and damage. A small group calls it a movie more than a game. Among the longer negative reviews, 45% call it boring, repetitive or tedious, and close to a fifth compliment the story or acting. Where the negative reviews disagree with the rest, it is mostly over whether the fighting, puzzles and exploration stay interesting across the whole campaign.
2. What keeps coming up
What players praise
The story of Kratos and AtreusHigh
Story comes up in 73% of the longer reviews, and the praise centres on the relationship between father and son more than on the plot. Reviewers describe Kratos as an older, restrained father trying not to pass his past on to his son, and the slow change in how the two speak to each other is what they remember. "Kratos and Atreus have one of the best father-son relationships in gaming," one writes. Several reviewers who are parents say the story landed harder for that reason, and some newcomers to the series say they could follow it without having played the Greek games.
Some people who disliked the game still praise the story. One negative reviewer wrote: "The story deals with grief, fatherhood, and learning to move forward without making everything feel overly sentimental." Close to a fifth (19%) of the longer negative reviews compliment the story, writing or acting before explaining what drove them away.
Criticism of the writing is scattered: some call the plot a simple errand, a few find the middle stretch slow, and some players who wanted the old Kratos find the quieter version hard to accept (see the Greek trilogy entry below). A few positive reviews warn about the opening hours: "Slow start, opens up around 5 hours in."
Visuals, music and voice workHigh
The graphics or art come up in 39% of the longer reviews, and the soundtrack, sound design or voice performances in 19%. Some reviewers say the game still looks current years after release, and a few mention playing it on ultrawide or high-refresh monitors. The unbroken, no-cut camera through cutscenes and play gets its own praise, and some reviewers say the cutscenes held their attention: "Cut scenes you actually want to watch, and they never ever drag on." Christopher Judge's Kratos and the cast around him are praised in positive reviews and in some negative ones too.
Weighty axe combat that keeps adding toolsHigh
16% of the longer reviews praise the combat in direct terms (satisfying, weighty, brutal, fun), against 3% that call it boring, clunky or repetitive in similar wording. The Leviathan Axe is the centrepiece: "Throwing and recalling the Leviathan Axe never gets old," one reviewer writes, and others mention its throws freezing enemies. Some positive reviews say the system clicked a few hours in, once runic attacks, Atreus's arrows and later weapons were unlocked, and players on harder settings say it rewards timing and parrying.
Detractors find the moveset limited, the lock-on unreliable and the fights repetitive by the midpoint (more under the split and frustration entries).
A PC port that runs wellMedium
7% of the longer reviews volunteer that the game runs well, often with frame rates and hardware attached, including older graphics cards, handheld PCs and Linux. "Runs like butter, and that was on a 2060 Super." A smaller group reports crashes and glitches on particular hardware (see PC problems below).
Mimir and the supporting castLow
Reviewers who mention the talking head Mimir (4% of the longer reviews) enjoy him as the lore-teller who fills boat trips with stories, and the dwarf blacksmith brothers get similar affection. "Mimir's boat stories made those sequences far less boring as well," one player notes, though a few find the constant chatter tiring (see Atreus below).
Where players are split
A different game from the Greek trilogyMedium
15% of the longer reviews compare the game with the original Greek-era games, and they disagree about the change. Some longtime fans say the reinvention worked: "This game respects its original identity and expertly crafted a new one." Others wanted the fast, combo-heavy hack-and-slash and the rage-driven Kratos back, and object to the over-the-shoulder view, the lack of a jump button and the gear levels. "It's probably a good game, just not a good God of War game," one of them sums up. 20% of the longer negative reviews make the comparison with the older games.
PuzzlesMedium
14% of the longer reviews mention puzzles. Supporters describe them as light breaks between fights: "puzzles that tickle (but not challenge, let's be clear about that) your brain just enough." Critics find them too frequent and too similar, mostly throwing the axe at targets or hunting for runes to open a chest, and some name the timed bell chests. "They should've called this game God of Puzzles because that's what we do the whole game," one negative review says. Some also complain that companions call out solutions before the player has a chance to think, which they find patronising.
Gear, levels and how difficulty worksMedium
12% of the longer reviews discuss the gear, loot or RPG systems, and they split. Fans enjoy building toward runic or elemental setups and upgrading armour sets. Critics find the inventory cluttered ("Feels like every single item has to have an upgrade.") and dislike that an enemy one or two levels above your gear can kill you in a few hits. Players who start on the two hardest settings complain about this in particular: "This games idea of increasing difficulty is just to give the enemies a giant health pool." A few reviews advise starting one notch below the top difficulty.
Valkyries and the optional realmsMedium
9% of the longer reviews mention the optional Valkyrie fights. For some they are the high point: "The Valkyrie fights were epic, and finally beating the Queen? Pure satisfaction." Others describe the final Valkyrie as an unfair damage sponge with hard-to-read attacks; one negative review is simply "Sigrun fight ruined the game for me, don't bother". The two challenge realms, Muspelheim's trials and Niflheim's mist runs, come up less often (4%), and players who mention them often call the runs grindy or tedious: "Nifllheim is just absolutely atrocious: boring grind, rng, same enemies repeating, mist poison."
Cinematic pacingMedium
Close to a third of the longer negative reviews bring up cutscenes, walking or the game feeling like a movie, usually to complain about long stretches of following characters, slow walks while someone talks, and unskippable scenes on replays. "Every cool thing happens in cutscenes," one writes. Few positive reviews make this complaint, and many of them praise the same scenes.
Atreus as a companionLow
A minority of reviewers, in positive and negative reviews alike, find Atreus whiny or talkative, and some dislike how often he and Mimir comment on puzzles and fights: "I had to check my settings to see if there is a way to disable his yapping. There isn't." Others accept it as part of the arc: "Atreus might be annoying at some points but if you know anything about Kratos' character from the previous games, his relationship with his son tells a lot." A few players also note that he becomes a useful part of the fighting once his arrows are upgraded.
What frustrates players
Recycled enemies and mini-bossesMedium
7% of the longer reviews complain about enemy or boss variety, in positive reviews as well as negative ones, sometimes as the only flaw named. The repeated troll fights are the usual example: "most bosses are trolls with a new paint job," a positive reviewer writes, and a detractor adds: "You fight the troll boss and rock golem so many times you can do it blindfolded by the end." Reviewers also name the draugr variants, and some single out the flying dark elves of Alfheim for their ranged, blinding attacks.
Slow traversal, backtracking and no jumpMedium
6% of the longer reviews raise fast travel, backtracking, climbing or the missing jump. Players describe climbing sections, squeeze-throughs and realm-travel walks that hide loading, plus fast travel that unlocks late and does not reach every area. Completionists going back for chests locked behind later abilities mention it too. "Just give me a loading screen, man," one player writes after detailing the door animations of fast travel. Some say Kratos being blocked by knee-high debris breaks the sense that he is a god.
A camera that sits too closeMedium
8% of the longer reviews mention the camera, and about half of those mentions are complaints. With Kratos filling a large part of the screen, players lose sight of enemies attacking from the sides and behind and rely on on-screen arrows and the quick-turn button. "The main character does not need to take up 85% of the screen real estate," one writes. A few ask for a field-of-view slider, and some mention using third-party tools or mods to widen it.
PC problems for some playersLow
A small minority reports technical trouble, set against the larger group praising the port. The recurring problems are crashes linked to a memory leak ("Memory leak leads to constant crashes every 20 minutes or so."), a checkerboard or grid shadow artefact on AMD RX 9070-series cards ("On the latest driver, the shadows look like a grid or net."), held keyboard keys dropping out ("Unplayable with K&M, randomly stopping, and needs repress W."), and crashes or performance dips on Steam Deck for a few players.
Controls and settings that can't be changedLow
A handful of players want fuller controller remapping, a field-of-view slider and an option to turn off motion blur and depth of field. "Can't natively disable Motion Blur, change FoV, or properly remap controller settings," one player warns, recommending mods. A few also say the keyboard controls are hard to learn and recommend a controller.
3. The player conversation
Many reviews are enthusiastic and personal. Some come from people finally playing a game they had heard about for years, and 11% of the longer reviews mention the sequel, Ragnarök, some of them saying they plan to play it next. Players who first finished it on PS4 return to praise the PC version, and parents describe the story in terms of their own children. The BOY meme runs through hundreds of one-line reviews.
Two groups stand out among the negative reviews: fans of the Greek trilogy who wanted a faster, angrier God of War, and players who find the cinematic pacing, puzzles and repeated enemies tedious. Balance complaints come from players on the hardest difficulties and from completionists chasing the final Valkyrie and the mist realm, and technical complaints from a small set of players on particular hardware. The positive share held between 90% and 98% in every week from late September 2025 onward, with no shift in sentiment across the slice.
4. What the developers could do
- Add enemy and mini-boss variety, or rotate the repeated troll fights: reused trolls and draugr variants are named in positive reviews as well as negative ones.
- Speed up traversal and fast travel: players ask for shorter or skippable climbing and crawl sections, a plain loading screen instead of walk-through realm travel, and more fast-travel points.
- Add a field-of-view slider and a wider combat camera option: players lose track of off-screen attackers with the close camera, and some resort to mods to widen it.
- Rebalance the higher difficulties around behaviour instead of health and damage: hardest-difficulty players say enemies just become sponges that kill in a few hits.
- Fix the remaining PC bugs: the memory-leak crashes (one reviewer says the leak has been around for years), the AMD RX 9070 shadow artefact and dropped keyboard inputs.
- Tone down companion hints and allow skipping cutscenes on replays: players want to solve puzzles without Atreus or Mimir giving away the answer and to skip scenes on new playthroughs.
- Trim the Niflheim mist grind and the late Valkyrie spikes: completionists describe the mist economy and the final Valkyrie as the parts that soured an otherwise good finish.
- Offer full controller remapping and motion blur and depth-of-field toggles: players note these are missing and reach for mods instead.
