Steven Pilgrim

I really don't get what all the hype is. Sure, the scenery is pretty, but the world is empty. 95% of the game is just running from one place to another, or trying to solve some puzzle for which there's no logic or clues. Puzzles need to be more than just, "Look around and find something, even though you have no idea what you're looking for, and it doesn't stand out in any way." Atreus is annoying and entirely too modern for the setting, as is the main villain. As for the gameplay and combat, it baffles me as to how anyone calls it revolutionary. It's the exact same formula we see in every modern AAA game: parrying, climbing, looting, crafting, linear upgrade system, needlessly complicated UI, etc. God of War used to be constantly fun and engaging, without wasting any time in terms of gameplay or story. Now, like everything else, it's going against everything it stood for because of trends, corporate greed, and an audience of yes men who clap like seals every time the SAME game formula gets regurgitated for the thousandth time. As long as people continue to approve, game companies will continue to give us the dull, repetitive releases that are ruining a generation of gaming.

I really thought I was going to like this game at first. But as others have pointed out, it drags out way too long, like EVERY modern piece of entertainment. Believe me, I can play long games and sit through hours of cutscenes, but not if it's going to be incredibly repetitive. Seriously, how many times do I have to hear a student say they don't trust the new kid, or see evidence that the coach is abusing the team? You don't have to keep making the same point over and over and over. The final straw was when the game went over an hour without letting me save. Some might see this as nitpicking, but it's not, it's a BIG deal. I seriously don't have time to play a game that won't let me break it up into 30 or 45 min sessions. People are busy these days. Developers need to consider that. I'm done with newer games. If you want good story-based RPG's, go with something older like Final Fantasy 6-10 or Chrono Trigger. Pretty much all newer games are just money rackets extending the length of the game to make more profit, including games like Persona 5 that hypocritically pose as Orwellian.

PC version is horrible. Any respectable resolution causes the UI to be so small, you can't see anything in the menu. Regardless of resolution, you can barely see the cursor at all. The key bindings say that arrow keys move the camera, yet pushing arrow keys does nothing. And developers wonder why piracy is on the rise, when they're constantly charging full-price for products that literally don't work at all.

There was plenty I liked about this game, but it was outweighed by the bad. Frankly, it amazes me that more people aren't opposed to the episodic format. I mean, we already had to wait 25 years for a remake, and now we have to wait years more for two more games, and pay full-price for all three of them? (BTW, they don't warn you AT ALL before you buy the first one that it's only a third of the story). Not only that, but because they stretched the content out so much, the quality of it suffers greatly. The remake gets incredibly repetitive, both in terms of gameplay and story. The vast majority of "story" is helping some old man find a lucky coin, or helping children find a cat, or several consecutive hours of, "To reach platform number blah blah, we have to cross bridge numbers blah and blah, then activate generator number blah blah..." Stuff that really just isn't interesting at all, let alone relevant to the main plot. They also made huge changes to the plot, most of which I couldn't even make it far enough to see. While I consider the battle system to be the strong point of the game, it has serious flaws. Some bosses use OP moves that you literally have no defense against. And I get that the MP bar has to be limited somehow, but just having to wait on it (with NO way to speed it up) is cheap and tedious. I found myself spending huge amounts of battle time just running around in circles, waiting for my gauges to fill (battles would often take about half an hour, just for that reason). While the remake has some fun, fast-paced action and is very faithful in many regards, I honestly feel like it was mostly a shameless cash grab, especially the way it was dragged out. Go figure that almost every media franchise with a central message against corporate greed has now been taken over by it.