God of War: Ghost of Sparta

The second game from the PSP is another great experience that follows the success from the franchise, the greatest downside are enemies that need a specific skill to deal damage, but this is balanced on one of the main characters of the series being playable.

God of War Ghost of Sparta is the best prequel entry in the series that even though is smaller scale due to being a Playstation Portable title, manages to provide mainline entry quality experience and leaves a longterm mark on the series itself.

Ghost of Sparta is a portable device entry so obviously visuals did quite age, but it does still look on par with God of War II visuals and for Playatation Portable that was rather impressive. Art style makes character and enemy models looks great, enviroment is vatied enough to not get boring.

Gameplay didn't change much and is comparable to God Of War II, weapon variety is limited, with more variety being given to magic abilities, some of which are rather OP. Blades of Athena feel great to use, abilities are unchanged, new weapon finally gave Kratos iconic spartan weaponry - speak and shield, quite great addition and are on par with the blades in terms of their reliance in combat, with also it's throwing spear capabilities being cleverly used in some puzzles, have to give credit to this weapon since it is laying some groundwork for GOW Ragnarok. Set pieces are present, some of them are memorable, but it's not on the same scale as mainline entries. Challanges in the option menu and the arena provide some more playtime and are fun to get play, additionally provide some extra content like skins, artwork, and finally a unique new playable character to mess around in said arena, one you should experience finding it out by yourself.

Narrative is surprisingly the highlight of Ghost of Sparta, it explores past of Kratos and adresses some of the questions that concerns his family tree, properly explaining and showing the origins of character's iconic face scar and tattoos. It was rather fun finally seeing Sparta in person, but it didn't explore it as much as I hoped. Narrative tone is rather brutal, showing the horrible fates of our protagonists mother and brother - Deimos, whos backstory and character makes up the main motivation of Ghost of Sparta. It was rather interesting to learn about Deimos, his interactions with Kratos are quite memorable, but sadly not abundant enough, mostly focusing on it by the game's ending, definitely should have been explored more. The mechanic at the ending's boss fight is quite obviously the groundwork of Atreus gameplay in GOW 2018, which I must again give this game some credit for it. Honestly I believe Ghost of Sparta should have been a AAA spin-off instead of Ascension, give it time and budget it could have come close to the mainline entries.

To sum up, Ghost of Sparta is a pretty enjoyable, but short experience that manages to tell an interesting story and provide console like experience on a portable device, I recommend giving it a try since Ragnarok references it quite a bit.

Nice story only

God Of War on the goo, solid story, solid gameplay, solid graphics (for psp standards) worth a try 🤙🏽

- Gameplay: 7
- Story: 8
- Characters: 7
- Sounds: 8
- Graphics: 6
- Animation: 7
- Level Design: 7
- My Opinion: 8.5
- Device Played On: PlayStation 3
- Date: Sep/2022

Total Rate: 7.3

like I said, still on the psp, it's a great experience. great gameplay, great cinematics, everything's great.