REVIEW: God of War on PC is the definitive edition of the game

God of War was officially released for PC. I never thought I would write these words in a serious publication, but the time has come. The Ghost of Sparta is older, in mourning, and has a son. And now he has to worry about buying video cards. Jokes aside, the idolized game comes to computers with mastery and impresses the community.

PlayStation has kindly provided a PC God of War key to the showmetech, and after finishing the game, here's our full review.

Kratos' mature return

Kratos he was always that tough, ruthless, arrogant and extremely vindictive character. His early PlayStation 2 trilogy shaped a generation. In the year 2005 there was God of War, PlayStation's biggest property and the symbol of future consoles. What was just supposed to be a simple game about Greek mythology has turned into a phenomenon.

In 2018 we were surprised by the new venture of the God of War. Older and more mature, Kratos is calmer—but that doesn't mean he's calm—has learned from countless past mistakes and has a son, Atreus.

The story of the new God of War is simple in synopsis and execution. After the death of his wife, Faye, Kratos and Atreus must take her ashes to the highest mountain of all the kingdoms in that region. The great thing is that we now jump out of Greek mythology and fall like thunder into the Norse mythology. And look, it did a lot of good for the franchise.

I don't want to rush into telling more about the narrative, because even though it's been a few years since the title's primary release, it's still filled with some plot twists, memorable scenes and excellent character development.

Definitely what pleases me most about God of War is how well each character was treated, whether the protagonists, supporting actors and even those who don't even appear on screen, just mentioned. Kratos and Atreus show a bad father-son relationship that starts to take shape, while Mimir serves as the main comic relief of the plot. The trio is amazing. The dwarves Sindri and Brok, in addition to being the blacksmiths to level our weapons, create light and crude scenes.

However, one of the main highlights goes to the villain Baldur. It's really great, even if it appears in less moments than I would like. By the way, their motivations and background are quite interesting. It is worth commenting on the national dubbing: Ricardo Juarez and Felipe Volpato play Kratos, while Beatriz Villa and Silvio Girardi play Freya and Baldur. The result is excellent.

Cool combat and confusing customization

Everything about the narrative part of God of War pleases me well. However, the combat left me with a flea behind my ear. Since 2018, my social media has been raving about how good the combat was in the new God of War. Many referred to it as a kind of “dance” to express what that fluid gameplay was like. Well, there's definitely combat in the game...

The truth is that the title does have a cool fight. The combos are fun, the parry It's really fun to do, and the Leviathan ax It's a formidable weapon, but that's it. At no time did I feel like I was on another planet. In fact, I don't even think that's what Santa Monica Studios wanted to convey to the public. Combat and gameplay do their job very well, however it was nothing groundbreaking in 2018 and in 2022 it isn't either.

On the other hand, the new God of War brought those old "rpg elements” for your base, so we have a good range of possibilities to customize our weapons, make and improve armor, equip spells, upgrade different skill trees and so on. The problem is, it's all so confusing...

As I progressed through God of War and upgraded, I was confused by the menus, options, comparisons, etc. There seemed to be a lack of polish on this important structure of God of War. In the end, you can do everything, but the point is, could it be better. Perhaps the developers' idea was beyond time to deliver the game on the correct date and these deviations happened.

The best PC port of recent times

When God of War on PC was announced, my main concern was how this game would make it to computers. We would be talking about a disaster like Horizon: Zero Dawn or a job well done like Days Gone?

Luckily for the community, the result was even better than expected. God of War shines on PC and is easily one of the best ports of recent years. By the way, it is worth mentioning that to say that the game has a good port doesn't mean it's light. One port well done involves from a good adaptation to the controls, keyboard and mouse, operation of the menus until reaching the part of actually running the game.

By the way, speaking of controllers, I played most of the time with a standard Xbox One controller. To my surprise, the layout of the joystick appeared in the game's interfaces. Playing God of War on a PC with an Xbox controller shows that 2022 can be a very different year — and hopefully much better! Other than that, playing with keyboard and mouse is very fun and easy, with a smooth learning curve,

That said, I can't complain about anything. It's like I'm playing on a console. You loadings they are fast, it has the essence of a video game, the menus are dynamic. But it's time to talk about what people really want to know. How does the game run on computers? Before that, it is worth checking out the technical specifications released by PlayStation:

Technical specifications

	Minimum Requirements	Recommended Requirements	High requirements	Best requirements	Ultra Requirements
average performance	720p, 30fps	1080p, 30fps	1080p, fps	1440p, 60fps	4K 60fps
GPU	NVIDIA GTX 960 (4GB) or AMD R9 290X (4GB)	NVIDIA GTX 1060 (6GB) or AMD RX 570 (4GB)	NVIDIA GTX 1070 (8GB) or AMD RX 5600 XT (6GB)	NVIDIA RTX 2070 (8GB) or AMD RX 5700 XT (8GB)	NVIDIA RTX 3080 (10GB) or AMD RX 6800 XT (16GB)
CPU	Intel i5-2500k (4 core 3.3 GHz) or AMD Ryzen 3 1200 (4 core 3.1 GHz)	Intel i5-6600k (4 core 3.5 GHz) or AMD Ryzen 5 2400 G (4 core 3.6 GHz)	Intel i7-4770k (4 core 3.5 GHz) or AMD Ryzen 7 2700 (8 core 3.2 GHz)	Intel i7-7700k (4 core 4.2 GHz) or AMD Ryzen 7 3700x (8 core 3.6 GHz)	Intel i9-9900k (8 core 3.6 GHz) or AMD Ryzen 9 3950x (16 core 3.5 GHz)
RAM	8 GB DDR	8 GB DDR	8 GB DDR	16 GB DDR	16 GB DDR
OS	10 64-bit Windows	10 64-bit Windows	10 64-bit Windows	10 64-bit Windows	10 64-bit Windows
Storage	70 GB HDD	70 GB SSD	70 GB SSD	70 GB SSD	70 GB SSD

Well done but still heavy

I will not lie: God of War is kinda heavy. However, in our tests, using an NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3060 from EVGA, 32 GB of DDR5 RAM memory at 4800 Mhz and an Intel Core i7-12700K processor, we managed to run practically at 60 frames in maximum quality in Full HD resolution.

If I needed to establish a direct comparison with another “heavyweight” of PCs, it would undoubtedly be with Red Dead Redemption II. Rockstar's established title is incredibly heavy, and to this day it runs at the limit for many big boards.

It's interesting to note that both games are heavy not because they're poorly made — hello, Cyberpunk? — but because they are really so beautiful and unique that it's hard to make them completely round. hardware of PC. On consoles this is quite different, as games are optimized for two or three similar platforms to run at their maximum.

However, if you believe that your PC will not be able to run God of War with everything in Ultra quality at the best resolutions, calm down! In my tests, and as usual in the industry, lowering the quality from Ultra to High creates almost imperceptible differences and will give you a good jump from frames. And let's face it, you're playing on PC. Try aiming for 60 frames, because the experience is infinitely better.

On the NVIDIA side, it is easy to run with the main cards, such as the RTX 3060 and RTX 3060 Ti, in addition to high-end GPUs such as the RTX 3070 and 3080 family, which are already prepared to run in 4K without major problems.

As for AMD, the same goes for the entry cards, the RX 6600 and 6600 XT for Full HD, the RX 6700 XT for 1440p, and the RX 6800 and 6800 XT for 4K.

Furthermore, it is worth mentioning the implementation of two technologies that have been very important for PC gamers: FidelityFX Super Resolution, from AMD, and the DLSS, from NVIDIA.

DLSS and FidelityFX Super Resolution

In practical terms, DLSS takes a native resolution in Quad HD (2560 x 1440), for example, and renders the frames at a lower resolution, such as Full HD (1920x1080). Thanks to AI, the feature resizes the image scale and resolution and fills in the remaining pixels due to artificial intelligence processing, reducing the load on the graphics card. The function is also used to correct aliasing problems and ensures more stability.

On the other hand, AMD also decided to invest in its own technique: FidelityFX Super Resolution, Or just FSR, uses this same premise of taking a higher resolution image, reducing it, and then increasing it again with AI and adding some filters. The big difference between the two options is that while the AMD feature only uses with and AI to resize images, DLSS uses structures physically present in the graphics card body to help with this process. Therefore, to have this technique it is necessary to have an NVIDIA GPU and, more specifically, an RTX series GPU, as they are the only cards that use these structures.

I wanted to bring this explanation to this text, because God of War has both technologies. So an overwhelming portion of players can benefit. However, during my 20+ hours of gameplay, I felt the role of DLSS and FSR a little different.

From Full HD to 4K you won't get as much frames as in other titles. So I didn't feel a gain of 30 frames, of course Death Stranding, when turning on the DLSS. Not. I didn't feel it with the FSR either. However, what is very noticeable is stability. Running at 1440p on Ultra without any resources it's possible to stay between about 44 frames, but you feel the gameplay a little heavy. Turning on one of these technologies makes things more stable and greatly improves the final experience, even if it's not at 60 frames. Strange, no?

So DLSS and FSR are present and can help you, especially to have more stability in the system, but don't go thinking that you'll be able to double the frame rate simply using Quality mode. Run tests, lower the overall quality to High, and besides not seeing much of a graphical difference, your game will be running perfectly.

Conclusion

God of War coming to PC is a dream. God of War coming to PC with the treatment it deserves, full of content, with good optimization, a great port, top quality dubbing and good graphical options is what we have been asking for for a long time, and we have finally been honored.

This release opens unimaginable doors for PlayStation's future in the PC market, and I can only hope that other great franchises like The Last of Us, Spider-Man, Ratchet & Clank, etc., make their way to this great platform.

In addition, God of War on PC is a must experience, which easily entered my pantheon of best games not only for the nostalgia factor, but also for the sequence of hits in which this release is connected.

God of War is available at Steam e Epic Games Store for R $ 199,00.

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So, what did you think of our review? Enjoy and check out my impressions of the game on our podcast, ShowmeCAST, in a special episode about God of War and the new panic movie.