God of War Sons of Sparta has found itself under fire by folks unimpressed by the big, final announcement of PlayStation's February State of Play being a 2D Metroidvania, but fans say we should be encouraging releases like this rather than bringing them down.
At the time of writing, Sons of Sparta doesn't have that many critic reviews logged on Metacritic, but it currently sits with a slightly mixed score of 73. Not awful by any means, but a fair number of players have been dunking on the game online. Criticisms have included its visuals, with some calling it "ugly," while others simply aren't jazzed about the genre, saying: "We have plenty of generic indie side scrollers, please make it stop."
Others, however, think that folks shouldn't be so critical, since Sons of Sparta represents a couple of different things that many have been begging for for some time. For a start, it offers some variation from the number of third-person action adventures that make up a large chunk of PlayStation's modern first-party library (its God of War reboot games included).
"Do you know how often we see people complain here that PlayStation ONLY makes the cinematic 3rd person action adventure games??? We get something slightly different, and now we have this," one fan writes, sharing a tweet poking fun at the game.
"'Give us something new.' Gives them something new. 'This sucks, give us what we want.' Gives them something they want. 'This sucks, AAA just recycles games. You have no innovation. Indie is better,'" another says, listing examples of common complaints that we've heard time and time again, including when it comes to the PS5's library of games.
"I hate that appreciation of games has just become lost," says another, calling out people who "just want to see ultra-realistic graphics." They add: "Games are ultimately about the gameplay and/or the story. Some of the best games in history are side-scrollers."
>complains that PlayStation only makes cinematic games>complains that their games don’t have unique art styles>complains that games are too expensive>also complains when they make a $30 gameplay heavy spinoff with a unique art style🤷♂️ https://t.co/Pc14QiW9PFFebruary 14, 2026
Others have pointed out how many people have been calling out the state of AAA development and its increasingly expensive budgets for being unsustainable, but yet aren't embracing something like this and its $30 price tag.
"It's kinda sad this game is getting poked fun at cause PlayStation would benefit a lot from more games like this. Smaller scale projects with conservative budgets is what a lot of companies need right now instead of $300 million for countable nose hairs," one writes.
"Honestly, Sony should be producing more of these in between their big budget AAA releases as a means of not only keeping their fans playing something new, but also to help offset the cost of said AAA games. Nintendo should not be the only Publisher doing this," comments another.
Obviously, it's still only early days for God of War Sons of Sparta, so it remains to be seen exactly how well it'll sell, and namely if it'll be enough to encourage Sony to take more risks like this. For now, though, it seems like most of the God of War hype is centered around the newly announced Greek trilogy remake, even if it's probably still a long way off.
For now, you can also check out our list of games like God of War Ragnarok for more titles similar to Sony Santa Monica's rebooted action adventures.
