It's Okay but needs a few patches
I’d give God of War: Ghost of Sparta a 6/10. I definitely liked it, but there were enough issues that held it back from being something I’d rate higher. The technical problems were hard to ignore. The game randomly went black on me a few times and I had to restart. The music glitched in one area, there were a bunch of dialogue bugs, and I noticed frame drops here and there. None of that completely ruined it, but it definitely pulled me out of the experience more than it should have. Some of the design choices were frustrating too. There’s a challenge area with timed sections where some parts require near perfection. If you mess up early, you can’t just restart. You’re forced to wait for the timer to run out, which can be up to 50 seconds depending on how early you messed up. So you’re just sitting there waiting, sometimes multiple times in a row. That gets annoying fast. There’s also an NPC connected to that challenge area who stands at the door. Every single time you pass her, she greets you with the exact same dialogue. I’m pretty sure that’s a bug and not intentional, because there’s no way it was meant to repeat like that every single time. It gets repetitive really quickly. Another weird choice was not letting you climb certain ledges if an enemy is standing near them, even if they’re not moving. It just feels restrictive and awkward during combat. Combat overall is okay, but not amazing. Some bosses were honestly kind of boring, though a few were solid. I especially liked the last boss. The problem is I explored so much that I was max level by the time I fought it, and it barely did any damage to me. I didn’t really have to try, so it killed some of the tension. That feels like a balancing issue more than anything. Exploration was one of the stronger parts for me, and I did enjoy the story. I just wish it leaned more into that side of things. I wanted more story-heavy moments, more interesting characters, and more memorable story beats. The ending was good though. I liked how it wrapped up. One design decision I really didn’t like was limiting the number of map screenshots you can place to 25. You come across way more than 25 things you can’t interact with early on, so you’re constantly choosing what to mark and what to forget. That just felt unnecessary and frustrating.There were other small design issues too that I can’t remember right now, but I remember being annoyed multiple times while playing. That said, I would want a sequel. There’s a good foundation here. If they fix the bugs, improve the balancing, and make smarter design choices, they could make something much better next time. The music was great, which I expected since Bear McCreary came back to score it. He always delivers. There were also a few side characters and little quest lines that felt like they were building toward something interesting and then just didn’t. That was disappointing. Overall I liked it, but it feels like a game that could’ve been much better with more polish and tighter design.