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Not having any control over the camera means that you can’t peak around corners to see what you’re going to run into, and you can’t prepare yourself for it. This allows for more surprising enemy encounters as they pop out from behind corners when you don’t expect them to. The fixed camera can also help lead the player to areas of interest by looking toward a certain area that it wants to draw your attention to. The camera seems to work best when progressing forward, because when going backwards to already-visited areas, the camera doesn’t feel right so you get a pretty good feeling for when the game doesn’t want you to go that way. This was usually a good thing during my play-through, but there was the odd time where I was supposed to go backwards and the camera didn’t adjust to give me a good feeling about it, but luckily it was quite rare for that to happen.

The openness of the levels encourages adventure, which is appropriate in an action-adventure game. This is always a juggling match between giving the player areas to roam without making them feel like it’s too linear of level design versus giving them too much and allowing them to get lost, which happened to me briefly a couple times and I’ll talk about that later. I found myself trailing off the main route quite often to see what was off to the sides, maybe a chest with some items inside, just out of curiosity because I’m that type of adventurous gamer who enjoys finding the hidden items and whatnot. It was nice to not have a super-linear route forcing a distinct path. Throughout each level you come across chests that hold health, magic, and various other useful items. I was pleased with the health and magic placements as there was always some to be found to replenish myself with when I needed it. The game prepares you well with usually giving you health and magic before a big battle and then rewards you afterwards for getting past the difficult section with more to heal yourself with and get your magic bar filled back up. I also enjoyed the chests that alternate between health and magic. You see the chest changing colour from green (health) to blue (magic) and you open the chest at whichever colour represents your needs at the time. Save altars are glowing pillars of light which you can walk into and save your game. Much like the health and magic chests, these are placed appropriately and can be found before and after climaxes in the gameplay. If you decide to take a break and return to the game later, you don’t have to go very far to get back to where you were. The enemy placements work well with the fixed camera and pop out from behind corners and surprise you, like I previously mentioned. The amount of enemies that I encountered felt just right. Once I got off Kratos’ ship and stepped foot in Athens, I was introduced to new enemies right away and from there it always felt like I was fighting the proper amount at any given time. There was the odd time where I’d get outnumbered, die, and have to try again, but a slight change to my strategy always led me to victory.

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