God of War: Sons of Sparta arrived as a surprise shadow drop after PlayStation’s February State of Play, but the bigger shock is the early reception snapshot: on Metacritic, the critics’ average has hovered around 69-70, while the user score sits at 6.6 – an unusually “Mixed or Average” start for a franchise that rarely lands anywhere near the middle of the road.

The conversation isn’t just about whether the game is “good” in isolation. It’s about what people expect a first-party adjacent PlayStation franchise entry to look and feel like in 2026. God of War: Sons of Sparta is not a big-budget, cinematic third-person action adventure. It’s a retro-inspired 2D side-scrolling action platformer built around a Metroidvania-style loop of exploration, backtracking, and ability-gated progression.

Sony positions the story as canon, set during Kratos’ harsh training at the Agoge alongside Deimos. The core toolkit revolves around spear-and-shield combat and divine relics branded as the Gifts of Olympus. The project was developed in collaboration between Santa Monica Studio and Mega Cat Studios, released digitally on PlayStation 5 at $29.99, with a $39.99 Digital Deluxe option.

Where the numbers stand right now

On Metacritic, the PlayStation 5 version currently sits around a 70 metascore in the platform’s “Mixed or Average” band, with the review count climbing as more outlets publish their verdicts. The user score is 6.6 from roughly five hundred ratings, and the distribution is unusually split for this name: a clear majority of positive user reviews, but also a chunky negative segment that drags the average down.

That kind of profile is common for big releases in crowded genres, but it looks striking next to the historical baseline for God of War. A 7/10 equivalent is “fine” in many contexts. Here, it reads like a franchise-level red flag because the bar is normally set far above average.

The previous low was still an 80

For years, the mainline series’ weakest Metacritic metascore was associated with God of War: Ascension at 80. That matters because it puts today’s 69-70 range in perspective: the gap is more than ten points, and that’s a big swing for a brand that has historically lived in the “generally favorable to universal acclaim” space.

Some smaller historical projects don’t appear consistently on every aggregator, so the cleanest comparison remains the better-known console entries. Under that lens, Sons of Sparta currently sits at the bottom of the stack.

Why a $30, 2D God of War is getting hit from both sides

A lot of the criticism is structural rather than scandalous: the Metroidvania field is packed with strong alternatives, and reviewers who call the game “competent” often also say it doesn’t do enough to stand out. If the combat and ability progression feel conservative, and the art direction doesn’t immediately grab you, a solid 7/10 can land as “forgettable” in a genre where people have endless options.

Pricing also plays into perception. At $30, the game isn’t positioned like a throwaway experiment, but it also doesn’t present as a modern AAA showcase. That mismatch fuels the knee-jerk reaction: some players wanted a headline God of War moment, not a smaller side project with a different camera angle and a different pacing model.

At the same time, the project is exactly what a portion of the PlayStation audience has been asking for – smaller, faster, riskier releases that break up the parade of massive third-person cinematic productions. That’s why the argument around Sons of Sparta keeps expanding beyond the game itself: it becomes a proxy fight over what a sustainable first-party pipeline should look like.

Meanwhile, a lot of hype remains concentrated on the newly announced Greek trilogy remake. That context makes Sons of Sparta feel like a bridge release to some – even if early sales indicators on digital best-seller lists suggest it’s moving units for what it is.

David Jaffe’s verdict: “this is not God of War”

The reaction got louder after series creator David Jaffe publicly tore into the game. His core point wasn’t that a 2.5D concept is doomed – he explicitly liked the idea – but that the specific narrative concept and execution didn’t work for him.

Two lines in particular have traveled widely: “I don’t like it, I don’t recommend it” and “this is not God of War”. He also complained about constant stop-start dialogue moments and rejected the portrayal of a young Kratos. Jaffe went further and questioned how the project was greenlit in the first place, framing the decision as the most interesting part of the story.

That harsh framing sits next to a more consistent critical throughline: many reviews don’t describe a broken game. They describe a functional, sometimes enjoyable Metroidvania that struggles to rise above genre familiarity, and whose “average” performance reads like failure only because the God of War name normally means something closer to exceptional.

Source: Metacritic, The Verge, TechRadar, Push Square