Kratos is a jerk. Let's just be honest about that before we dive into anything else. By the time you reach the opening cinematic of God of War 3 Remastered, the "Ghost of Sparta" has moved past being a tragic hero and pivoted hard into being a force of pure, unadulterated environmental destruction. He doesn't just want to kill Zeus. He wants to tear the entire world apart to get to him. And honestly? Playing it today on a PS5 via backward compatibility or on a PS4 Pro, it still feels more visceral than almost anything released in the last decade.
The scale is just stupid.
You start the game on the back of Gaia, a Titan the size of a mountain, as she scales Mount Olympus. You aren't just fighting guys on a flat plane; you’re fighting on a shifting, vertical landscape that happens to be the arm of a living being. It was a technical marvel in 2010 on the PS3, and in the God of War 3 Remastered version, which bumped the frame rate to a locked 60fps and sharpened the textures to 1080p, it remains a masterclass in art direction over raw polygon counts.
Why the Remaster Actually Matters for Combat
If you’ve played the 2018 reboot or God of War Ragnarök, you’re used to the "over-the-shoulder" camera. It's intimate. It's grounded. It’s "prestige" gaming. God of War 3 Remastered is the exact opposite. It’s a fixed-camera spectacle fighter that wants you to see every drop of gore.
The 60 frames per second isn't just a marketing bullet point. It fundamentally changes the parry windows. In the original PS3 release, there were tiny bits of input lag and frame drops during heavy elemental effects. In the remaster, hitting a perfect fleece parry against a Centaur General feels like clockwork. You feel more in control of the chaos.
The combat loop is basically a dance of Blades of Exile, but the Remaster highlights the subtle work Sony Santa Monica did with the secondary weapons. The Claws of Hades? They're fast and creepy. The Nemean Cestus? They hit like a freight train and are arguably the most satisfying "heavy" weapon in the entire franchise history. Switching between these on the fly at 60fps makes the newer games' combat feel almost sluggish by comparison.
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The Visual Gap: 2010 vs. The Remaster
Usually, when a game gets "remastered," it’s a lazy port. This one was a bit different because the base assets were already so high-quality. The developers originally used a lot of high-resolution textures that the PS3 could barely handle. When Bluepoint Games (who handled the porting side of things) moved it to the PS4 architecture, they unlocked what was already there.
Kratos looks wet.
That sounds like a weird thing to say, but the way blood and water coat his skin in the remaster is genuinely impressive. The lighting on his skin shaders was updated, making the sweat and grime look less like a flat texture and more like a physical layer. You can see the pores on his face during those extreme close-ups when he’s, say, ripping the head off Helios. It’s brutal. It’s unnecessary. It’s exactly what the game is trying to be.
The Problem with "Modern" Gaming vs. GoW 3
Modern games love to waste your time. They love "crafting" and "skill trees" that require you to hunt for iron ore for three hours.
God of War 3 Remastered doesn't care about your crafting needs. It has a singular focus: forward momentum. You move from one god-tier boss fight to the next with almost no fluff. There are puzzles, sure, like the Hera's Garden perspective puzzle or the Labyrinth, but they serve the pacing rather than slowing it to a crawl.
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There’s a specific nuance to the level design here that we’ve lost. The game is essentially one long, continuous climb. You start at the bottom of the mountain, you get kicked back down to Hades, and you spend the rest of the game clawing your way back up. It’s a literal and metaphorical ascent. By the time you reach the top, the world below is literally falling apart. Floods, plagues, darkness—the game shows you the consequences of your actions in real-time.
Most games today are afraid to make their protagonist this unlikable. Kratos is a monster in this game. He uses a civilian as a literal doorstop at one point. It’s uncomfortable, but it’s honest to the character's descent into madness.
Performance and Technical Reality
Let’s talk numbers, but not the boring kind. On a base PS4, the game hits 1080p/60fps with ease. On a PS5, it’s obviously locked. The loading times are practically non-existent compared to the original disc-spin days.
One thing people forget is the Photo Mode. It was one of the earlier iterations of a trend that has now become standard. In God of War 3 Remastered, the Photo Mode allows you to capture the sheer absurdity of the scale. You can zoom out to see Kratos as a tiny speck against the backdrop of a Titan’s face. It really puts the "Epic" in Epic Fantasy.
The audio also got a bit of a cleanup. If you’re playing with a decent headset or a surround sound system, the orchestral swell when the "Rage of Sparta" kicks in is enough to make you want to punch through a wall. Gerard Marino’s score is heavy on the brass and deep male choirs, which fits the "end of the world" vibe perfectly.
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Is It Too Violent?
Probably.
There’s a scene where you play from the first-person perspective of Poseidon as Kratos beats him to death. You literally see Kratos' thumbs coming toward "your" eyes. It’s one of the most controversial moments in gaming for a reason. But that’s the point of the Greek era of God of War. It wasn't meant to be a "dad simulator." It was a Greek tragedy played out with the violence of a slasher flick.
If you’re coming from the Norse games, this might be a shock. There is no nuance here. There is no "we must be better." There is only "I will have my revenge." It’s a snapshot of an era of gaming where "more" was always "better," and somehow, it still holds up because the execution is so polished.
What Most People Miss About the Story
Everyone says the story is just "Kratos is angry." That's a bit of a surface-level take.
If you look at the subtext of the encounters, especially with characters like Pandora, you see the very first flickers of the Kratos we eventually see in the 2018 game. He’s trying to resist his nature, even if he fails miserably at it. The "Hope" monologue at the end is often mocked for being cheesy, but in the context of a world that has been completely destroyed by his hand, it’s the only way the story could have ended without being a total nihilistic void.
Actionable Steps for New and Returning Players
If you’re going to jump into God of War 3 Remastered today, don't just mash square. That’s how people get bored.
- Crank the Difficulty: Play on Titan (Hard) mode. The game’s combat mechanics, like the combat grapple and the different magic types, only really matter when the enemies can actually kill you. On Normal, you can ignore 90% of the moveset.
- Learn the "L1 + Circle" Grapple: It’s a move that lets Kratos use an enemy as a battering ram. It’s essential for crowd control and keeps your combo meter alive.
- Use the Cestus for Shield-Breakers: Don't waste time trying to chip away at shielded enemies with the blades. Swap to the gauntlets, break the defense, and swap back. It makes the flow feel way better.
- Explore the Corners: The remaster didn't change the locations of the Gorgon Eyes or Phoenix Feathers. Maxing out your health and magic bars early makes the late-game boss rushes (like the three-stage fight against Zeus) much less frustrating.
- Watch the Backgrounds: Seriously. Look at what’s happening in the distance while you’re fighting. You’ll see the Titans fighting the Gods in the background of almost every Olympus stage. The level of detail Bluepoint preserved is staggering.
The reality of God of War 3 Remastered is that it represents the peak of a specific genre. We don't really get many "Triple-A" fixed-camera action games anymore. Everything has to be open-world now. Everything has to have 40 hours of side quests. Playing this is a reminder that a focused, 10-hour explosion of high-octane violence can be just as rewarding as a sprawling RPG. It’s lean, it’s mean, and it’s still the most "metal" game Sony has ever produced.