God of War II (2007)

The writing, story, and cut-scenes are what make this a 5-Star installment in the Legendary Series.

Those 🤬 Quick-Time events can be frustrating enough to make a preacher cuss!

Other than that, for mature audiences, I'd recommend it. Even thought it's almost 20yrs old, I had a version that had some upgrades to the visuals, that made it look quite nice on PS3. Although, it was rather inconsistent. The game play had a complete overhaul, but some of the scenes did not get the same treatment, so they looked like they could have on the PS2. It was quite comical actually, and quite different from the time. During that time, the cutscenes looked like animation, and were fun to watch. With the remake, the gameplay was actually prettier.

One of the most annoying and frustrating game I've ever played. Everything is done to annoy the player, so many things are a chore.

QTE (which are by themselves lame) everywhere, for everything, even as trivial as opening a door. The necessity to maintain a button pressed for something as simple as opening a chest, so many time where we neeed to mash the same button like a retard just because... Bosses and mobs with instakill-like attacks, quite a few times where we are on a rope or climbing and when we have only a few attack, making the said passages extremely shallow and repetitives. Core combat gameplay is okayish, lots of options available but the combat lacks depth. Main character is angry, that is his sole character trait. He's Angry: the man. Grooooar I'm Kratos and I'm angry, juste because. A few bugs that makes some passages even more a chore than they already are. Plot is not very good, The main villain betrays us for no real reason.

I didn't like the first one very much, this one I hated it, it's really a bad game. Cool setting, some spectacular scens and visually nice levels are not enough to compensate for awful game mechanics (f*** QTEs it's the level 0 of gameplay and game design) and bad level design (gameplay-wise).

Bigger. Bolder. Bloodier. Nastier. Smoother. More accessible...r. It takes everything the first game did, examines it closely, takes out all of the annoying bits, replaces them with fun things, and ups the gonzo adventure content to absolutely ridiculous levels. Some of the jank of the first game's combat has been smoothed over, making it flow better and feel more visceral. The new powers also change things up nicely. It would have been easy to keep everything the same, but the tweaked combat retains what worked while keeping things fresh.

Everything a sequel should be so far. My only problem is that some of the conveyance when it comes to the puzzles is a little weird, making them more obtuse than the first game, but there thankfully aren't many annoying jumping puzzles so far.