God of War II Review

Arriving at the tail end of a console's life is usually a death sentence, and this is the rare case where the extra years of familiarity with the hardware are visible in every room. The Colossus of Rhodes opening is larger than anything in the first game and it is the tutorial. Combat gained the most: parries are readable, the Golden Fleece turns defence into an offensive tool, and secondary weapons finally have reasons to exist rather than sitting unused in a menu.

Puzzle design improved too, trading the first game's block pushing for physics problems built around the environment, and the Titan's chamber sequences are legitimately clever. Kratos remains a limitation the writing cannot solve. He wants revenge, he says so loudly, and the Sisters of Fate subplot is scaffolding rather than a story. The final boss is also anticlimactic on purpose, a setup for a third game rather than a conclusion. Everything else is a studio operating at the ceiling of what the machine could physically render.