3/5 ★ – DarrensTrashBag's review of God of War: Ascension.

This game is very much style over substance. The opening stage and many others are cinematically incredible. The graphics are fantastic despite having that 2013 high aperture look sometimes. Where this game falls flat is with it's story and gameplay. The story, frankly, is insanely boring. The whole goal of the game is for Kratos to learn the truth, but since most players most likely played the other games, they will know that the truth is that Kratos killed his family. Even when they do reveal it, Kratos shows no emotion, except for burning his house down. So even the resolution of this story is boring. Up next is the gameplay, which is just Santa Monica thinking on how to make every mechanic in God of War, which in some games were great and sometimes not, the worst that it can possibly be. They downgraded the combat rather than making it the same or upgrading it. The most jarring thing is the parry mechanic. It is probably the most idiotic parrying mechanic in any game I have played. The parry is delayed, and you have to hold down a button and then hit another button to parry. It is insanely difficult to parry any attack and you just have to stand there blocking for like ten seconds so that you can actually time the mistimed parry. Next, having the magic locked behind an weapon element and the orb system. The weapon element part is stupid since you can just use one or two elements for the entire game and be just fine. A minor thing I didn't like was the minigames to kill some enemies, I just prefer doing 2-4 QTEs since it is much more efficient. The level design, boring and infuriating. 60% of this game is just puzzles and the other 40 is fighting enemies with tons of health, shields, and attacks every three seconds. The furnace was absolute torture to go through and easily the worst part in any of these games. I'd rather climb 100 miles of the spiked walls in God of War 1 than do that part again. Finally, the hardware issues. This game's framerate really likes to dip, especially during the opening stage and the final cutscene. I have also experienced the most glitches in this game than in any other God of War game. One time I fell on top of an enemy in a corner and it just made me stuck for like 30 seconds, next I grappled a green grapple point that I wasn't supposed to by accident and it destroyed the camera, I have had Kratos do his grapple animations on nothing, I have had enemies be grappled by a non-existent Kratos. No game is without glitches of course, but it the frequency that these occurred convinced me that they were more focused on making God of War, but Uncharted. Overall, I think this game is worth playing only once, but as someone who wants to play all the God of War games. Otherwise, just play the main 3. 60/100