God of War: Sons of Sparta review for PS5

When I think of God of War – whether we’re talking the original games or the rebooted Dad Kratos version – there are two things that come to my mind.

The first, obviously, is violence. The more recent games may not quite be as over-the-top in their gore, and they may have tried to humanize Kratos by giving him a son to care for, but the core of the games could always be boiled down to Kratos killing gods and other lesser beings, often in the most bloody, over-the-top ways imaginable. Whether it was part of an epic one-on-one battle or Kratos mowing his way through hordes of enemies, there was always lots and lots of visceral (and viscera-filled) action.

The second thing would probably be the environments. Even if all the original games have kind of run together in my head at this point, off the top of my head I can picture all kinds of different locations, each of which still stand out for how detailed and memorable they looked.

God of War: Sons of Sparta has neither of those things. Which makes you question: At what point is a God of War game no longer a God of War game?

I mean, it still has T.C. Carson providing Kratos’ voice, which is a nice throwback to the original games. Even if I’ve fallen off the series in recent years, there’s still something about that growl that reminds me of how much I used to love those games.

But beyond that? It feels like a generic metroidvania with some faint God of War branding – and even that’s barely there. You’re playing as Kratos as a boy, after all, back before he became obsessed with revenge and murdering everyone. The combat is basically just a lot of stabbing with your spear, which can be enhanced with special tips. While they make the spear more powerful, ultimately it’s still just stabbing around – hardly the best replacement for wielding the Blades of Chaos.

As for the locations, they’re all pretty forgettable. They look nice enough if you’re a fan of 2D artwork, but there’s nothing here that captures the grandiosity of the rest of the God of War games. While I understand that the Sons of Sparta’s scope is a lot smaller than the rest of the series, and that it’s trying to tell a side story to the main epic, it can’t help but feel shabby by comparison.

As someone who misses the old Sony and the way they’d try weird things (and not just go for big and cinematic with every one of their games), it feels weird to criticize them for a game where they try something different. But the problem is that God of War: Sons of Sparta isn’t particularly fun. It’s a perfectly adequate metroidvania at a time when there are plenty of very good metroidvanias that are more worth your time, so unless you desperately want a Kratos: The Very Early Years game you can safely skip this one.

Sony Interactive Entertainment provided us with a God of War: Sons of Sparta PS5 code for review purposes.