It seems every year, there are dozens of new games released that try to put their own unique spin on the Metroidvania genre. It honestly can feel like the market is oversaturated with them at times. Yet still, every year we see one or two games rise above the pack. Last year, it was Hollow Knight: Silksong and Ender Magnolia: Bloom in the Mist. Both games pushed the genre forward in interesting ways and challenged the player to learn their systems or die trying.
So, when Sony shadowdropped a new God of War Metroidvania game at its latest State of Play, I was optimistic that we would be treated to the next big thing in the Metroidvania landscape. Surely Sony wouldn’t take such a big swing with one of its flagship franchises like this unless it knew this game was going to make a big splash, right?
Unfortunately, God of War Sons of Sparta not only fails to make a splash, but it is barely a drop in the bucket.
A Complicated Childhood
Sons of Sparta is a prequel story taking place in the very early years of Kratos’s life. He and his brother Deimos have just been permitted to explore the regions outside of Sparta as they continue their training to find their spot in the Spartan military. Very early on in the game, the brothers learn of a fellow trainee who has gone missing, named Vasilis. Kratos is not too keen to search for him, but Deimos is adamant that they can’t leave another Spartan behind and insists they go searching. The central mystery of what happened to Vasilis is just a catalyst for the real focus of the game. This is a game about the complicated relationship between Kratos and Deimos. The two brothers have such different ideals and views on life that they often clash when presented with a moral crossroad. The story hinges on whether you are invested in their story and their struggle, and for what it’s worth, it does manage to land most of its emotional moments. There are just a lot of rough patches along the way.
One of the main detractors for me was how poor most of the voice acting is throughout the game. Outside of T.C. Carson, who narrates the game and is just as brilliant as he was in the original trilogy, and young Kratos, played by Antony Del Rio, the rest of the voice acting ranges from just passable to downright awful. It was to the point that when some characters spoke, it would immediately draw me out of the game and story. This is such a shame for a series that is so well known for stellar performances from its cast. This isn’t Sons of Sparta’s biggest issue, however. It only gets worse from here.
Uninspired Gameplay
Metroidvania’s hinge on three things: exploration, combat, and progression-based upgrades. You need to make exploration feel rewarding while also making the world fold back on itself in interesting ways that bring the world to life. Combat either needs enough weapon variety or upgrades to make it fun to play around with new builds and possible loadouts, or feel tight and fun to engage with over the course of a 15-20 hour experience. Most importantly, in my opinion, you need unique and interesting progress-based upgrades to make the player feel like they are getting more and more powerful throughout the game. Sons of Sparta either fails or just does the bare minimum in all three of these categories.
Like most Metroidvania’s there is a lot of backtracking you will have to do throughout the game. However, the environments and level design in Sons of Sparta quickly become monotonous and boring to plod back and forth through. There just isn’t much character in each area, and a lot of that is due to the unusual art style chosen for the game. Character models are just plain unappealing, with awkward animations, while the background art is just a mix of brown and dark green environments that just blend together. The world feels sterile and lifeless, sucking the joy out of any excitement I would have for discovering a new area, which wouldn’t have been such a chore if the combat hadn’t been so dull.
You will spend most of your time just banging out Kratos’s basic combo by mashing square in each encounter while pulling up your shield or evading certain enemy attacks. Whether you block or evade will depend on what color the enemy you are fighting glows when preparing an attack. There are upgrades you can find or purchase for Kratos’s spear and shield throughout the game that change up combat slightly, though. Spear tips can be interchanged to add elemental properties to your attack, spear grips change up your combo finisher, and spear ends give you new attacks that can be done by holding L1. This sounds like it adds a lot of build options, but for the most part, these parts offer negligible differences between each other.
The game also did very little to incentivize me to try out new builds anyway. I still don’t understand the point of the elemental spear tips, as I never ran into an enemy or encounter that explicitly showed that I was doing less damage by not taking advantage of elemental weaknesses. And it is hard to get excited about a new grip when the only difference between it and my last one is that now I get to do a vertical combo finisher rather than a horizontal one. I was hoping the bosses in the game would at least make me rethink my setup, but even they failed to make me switch up my strategies; other than that, I now had to jump and attack to hit them instead of just standing and attacking them. Simply put, combat in Sons of Sparta is just too dull to keep you engaged. There are also certain boss fights where Deimos will be present to help in a fight, but his AI is absolutely awful. There were more than a few occasions where I would look over and see Deimos just standing perfectly still, not even attacking.
And then we get to the progression-based upgrades, where Sons of Sparta plays it way too safe. You have your standard double jump upgrade about midway through the game, a sling to hit switches, bombs to light torches and destroy obstacles, a glaive that cuts through foliage and turns gear, and a blade that can push blocks. These are gained by visiting temples spread throughout the world. You can upgrade these items to increase their potency and unlock a couple of new moves with them by bringing offerings found through hidden alters, but they are largely inconsequential. Even if these abilities themselves are uninspiring, a good Metroidvania game would think of creative ways for you to use these abilities to progress. Sons of Sparta never does this. Each of these items have their functions that are made obvious from the moment you have them, and that’s it.
Besides item-based progression, you can also finish combat challenges hidden throughout the world to find fruit that you can offer to the gods at their corresponding temples to increase your stats. I think I only gained a little over half the upgrades, but still felt like I was way overpowered by the time I reached the endgame. The game is way too easy as it is, and these upgrades only make it even more of a cakewalk. The game needed another pass of balancing in order to make Kratos’s progression not feel way too overtuned.
A Complete Nothing
God of War Sons of Sparta feels like the most basic and uninspired entry in the God of War series, yet. I really don’t know who this game was made for. The combat is sterile and not particularly deep, the Metroidvania elements are paint-by-numbers boring, and the story, while sometimes impactful, doesn’t add much to the series lore in any interesting ways. There isn’t anything to be offended by or point at as downright terrible, but it is a head-scratching game that fails to prove why it needed to exist.
The most damning thing I can say about Sons of Sparta is that one day after rolling credits on it, I don’t feel anything. The game had made no lasting impressions on me, negative or positive. It is a complete nothingburger of a game and will sadly probably be remembered as nothing more than a small footnote in the history of the series.
Disclaimer: God of War Sons of Sparta was reviewed on PlayStation 5.
