Review: God of War: Sons of Sparta - Not the Return to Greece We Wanted

At the last State of Play, Sony surprised everyone by launching a new God of War game called Sons of Sparta, a two-dimensional Metroidvania title with a pixel art style. This was a game that appeared quite a bit in rumors circulating in recent months, and it turns out everything was true—but is it really what fans were hoping to get from a new entry in the series?

Before the Gods Knew to Fear Him

Sons of Sparta tells the story of Kratos's youth alongside his brother Deimos, when the two were nothing more than young cadets undergoing Sparta's warrior training. There are no iconic Blades of Chaos from the original trilogy here, no crushing gods' heads and using them as portable lanterns—just two boys trying to prove themselves. The game's narrative is clever: an older Kratos (voiced by returning T.C. Carson) tells the story of him and Deimos to his daughter Calliope, giving the entire adventure a nostalgic-melancholic color that anyone familiar with the series will immediately understand why.

The dynamic between Kratos and Deimos is the heart of the story, and on paper it works: Kratos is the "professional," rigid, disciplined, and manipulates Sparta's rules to justify any action he wants to take. Deimos is the wild one of the two, emotional, impulsive, and tends to run before he thinks. The main problem is that the story doesn't really dare. It's pleasant, fairly simple, and has some emotional moments that land well—but at no point did I feel like I was witnessing something that absolutely needed to be told. This isn't a story that scratches deep, but rather a prequel that does the job "by the book," relatively safe, and overall—I would have preferred to get an in-between story of Kratos on his revenge quest, with all the iconic weapons and familiar brutality. 

Spear, Shield, and Not Much Beyond

Sons of Sparta is a classic Metroidvania game with an interconnected map that expands as you gain new abilities and opens up new areas to explore, with encouragement to return to previously visited areas with what you've acquired. It works, but again, here too it doesn't do anything exceptional with the genre.

The decision to tell the story of Kratos's youth severely limits what the game can offer us in terms of gameplay, because the main weapon we're given is a spear and nothing more. On one hand, this makes sense from a story perspective. On the other hand, it makes combat feel relatively narrow, especially in the first hours. Combat is based on fairly simple strikes with the spear (alongside some special attacks), blocking and dodge rolling, with upgrades that come gradually and add some depth, but it takes far too long to reach a point where it feels genuinely fun.

The game will grant you "gifts" from the gods that serve as both exploration tools and weapons, and on the surface, in every game in the series these are the most interesting items that add tremendous depth to what Kratos can do. Here everything feels very watered down, precisely because of the decision to tell this specific story. The slingshot will allow you to open passages and also hit enemies from a distance, the burning branch will let you burn bushes that also block passages to new places, and overall these "gifts" feel less like gifts and more like everyday objects that don't do much to excite or add depth.

In terms of the map and different areas, there is variety, with zones of olive groves, underground caves, mystical forests, and ancient temples. Some of them are stunning. Others, especially in the middle of the game, start repeating themselves in a way that feels lazy. The artistic style—which I believe many people didn't expect—is pixel art. This two-dimensional presentation is definitely a risk that Santa Monica decided to take, and I completely understand the desire to go in a different direction, especially if we've already decided to do this with the story and gameplay. For the most part it looks gorgeous, with backgrounds packed with details and characters that manage to stand out and convey different personalities just from their appearance alone. In other places, it looks a bit like it's designed to run on Nokia mobile devices from twenty years ago. There's a bit of culture shock here that I'm not sure sits well enough, even if you come to it without expectations and with a clean slate.

What won't take you long is loving the soundtrack. The music blends heavy Greek motifs characteristic of the series with sounds that feel like a "younger" and rawer version of them, as if Kratos and Deimos haven't yet matured into the instruments of destruction they become later. It's not the best soundtrack the series has offered, but it does the job and does it well.

The Bottom Line

Sons of Sparta is not a game worth including under God of War. There's a story here with an interesting dynamic between its two main characters, a unique visual style, and music that does the job. But the gameplay takes far too long to warm up with upgrades that aren't really worth your time, the map loses its variety halfway through, and overall—the entire experience feels half-baked and could have gone in a much more interesting direction.