A prequel exploring the Spartan youth of Kratos demands reverence for God of War‘s brutal origins, yet Sons of Sparta emerges as a tepid bore held back by generic metroidvania design. This digital-only PlayStation 5 title shadow-dropped (probably out of embarrassment) into a lineage of god-slaying epics, promising the raw forging of legends in ancient Laconia’s Agoge.
Kratos and brother Deimos, cadets marked by birthmarks of prophecy, embark on a quest for a vanished peer named Vasilis amid mythological horrors. Framed through adult Kratos’ melodramatic recounting to daughter Calliope, the narrative aspires to lessons in duty, brotherhood, and honour. Was this a tale worth telling?
What makes Kratos interesting? Probably the actions he took and what led him to being full of piss and vinegar. Take that away, and set the story back when he’s a boy, and Kratos becomes a fairly generic ancient Spartan child. Without the drama and the torment of his adult actions, there isn’t a story worth telling. Absent is the seething rage, the volcanic fury that propels the series’ icon. This juvenile version remains a bland example, with his sense of “duty” expressed through joyless lectures and mechanical obedience. There is no internal conflict or prophetic visions that spark primal fear, just a boy pretending to be a soldier.
The gameplay is very standard, following a metroidvania blueprint without flair or innovation. Kratos’ spear and shield form the core mechanics, allowing for basic actions like thrusting, parrying, and rolling, but combat quickly becomes monotonous with predictable and easily cheesed enemy patterns and weak combos that lack bite. Exploration covers vibrant yet repetitive biomes filled with backtracking to reach ability-gated paths. Anyone familiar with similar games will recognise this, but the puzzles are overly simplified. The pacing drags due to empty corridors and unnecessary enemy encounters, or sometimes none at all where it would have made sense, while the upgrade crafting lacks meaningful risk-reward.
Progression hinges on the brothers’ odyssey for the lost cadet Vasilis, unlocking “Gifts of Olympus” that gate realms: Hermes’ fleet-footed double-jump breaches sheer cliffs, Athena’s aegis enables wall-clings on vine-draped facades, Poseidon’s trident impales aquatic barriers in subterranean cisterns. Some mechanics echo Hollow Knight‘s or liberally borrow from Blasphemous, but execution falters, birthing a world bloated with redundancy, starved of verticality, and punctuated by egregious padding. God of War: Sons of Sparta is a much longer game than it would appear, lasting well over 20 hours, but rarely earning half of it.
The hub exemplifies initial promise undercut by a complete lack of imagination. Narrow corridors branch into drill yards where skirmishes yield orbs for spear upgrades, yet paths loop predictably. Level design is never bad in the traditional sense, yet it manages to be offensively dull. If it weren’t for the admittedly striking backgrounds, the level layouts would blur together into a hazy miasma of Corinthian columns and stone crag platforms.
Could a metroidvania God of War prequel work? Sure. It just needed to be fueled by some kind of artistic inspiration and not be an arbitrary stopgap release when the franchise is gradually losing relevance. God of War: Sons of Sparta‘s biggest sin is how aggressively boring it is. The combination of incompetent bosses who are easily exploited, monotonous music that induces drowsiness rather than excitement, and generic visuals makes it clear that there’s no compelling reason to engage with this game.
