God of War II just immerses the player into a completely new, both wonderful and tragic world!
It's really nice to see that, in most of the levels, the actual level design is impecably done, with great use of shadows and colours. It's just unbelievable that soon after seeing the scenary, you'll start hacking, chopping and doing amazing combos at enemies.
I think this game is very immersive, in the sense that it puts accross the feeling of fighting with it's numerous weapons! I mean, using the sword of Olympus to deal some serious damage is just plain fun!! Keeping to the tradition, Athena's blades are probably still most usefull all throughout the game, unless you really feel like braching out of a comfortable rhythm and use the Spear of Destiny, or Euryale head to petrify enemies. You could also use the barbarian Hammer, which the game really makes the player put it into use agains skelletons when Kratos has to get to the bottom of an elevator, before the roof collapses, while skelletons have go's at him! A really neat magic feature though, is (like the powerful Poseidon's Rage from God of War) Cronos' Rage, but with the addition that Kratos is allowed to move while casting it! The atlas Quake magic also comes in handy to deal very heavy damage!
One thing about the game that displeased me only a little, was the lack of material you can do after you finished the game. You can retry the game and upgrade every weapon (VERY easily if you have the urn of gaia activated which gives you 10 times as many red orbs), but apart from that there is no online play. Challenge of the titans is nice, but the last challenge makes it worth it's name: Perfection is Divine! If you can take on that challenge and win, you should really feel... lucky I guess!! The ;ack of extras is nothing major worth complaining about though, because God of War was also like that, but it would just add to the game even more, the fact that you could take it up against other people online, in deathmatches and other online-type games, to really test your Kratos skills against real players!
Thanks alot for reading this review, and hopefully you found it useful, to both those that have, and that haven't played this amazing game!