God of War II pushes the PS2 to the limit with amazing scenery, graphics, action and puzzlesolving.
While telling a story in a videogame that hasn't been told before is hard, GoW2 really tells an amazing and unique story, and videogame stories simply does not get any better than this.
The main action is still using the button mashing formula and that can be considered both good and bad, there are a few weapons and godly abilities to choose from, and all of them have their ups and downs.
When you kill an enemy you gather experience orbs which can be used to upgrade your abilities, and become stronger.
Some of the enemies you'll face are strong as hell, and cannot be taken down easily, but if you use your combos and abilities right you'll probably have no problems.
There are many interactive "cutscenes" so to speak, where you have to press a button at the right time to execute deadly moves on your enemies.
It's bloody, it's gory, you gotta love it.
The orchestral music and sounds are some of the best I've ever heard, it fits the mood of the levels and the overall game perfectly, and you can't consider it nothing other than flawless.
While the graphics look very familiar from its predecessor there are a number of graphical touches and upgrades, Kratos and the environments are more detailed, it looks a lot better.
The scenery and the camera angles in this game are amazing, it really immerses you into the game, the environments are huge and the view distance reach very far, it's very impressive considering the hardware it's running on.
There are a lot of puzzles in this game and they differ from many different situations. But the camera angles sometimes make it hard to figure out what to do because you can't see the whole area you're in, and that can make it kind of frustrating. But if you're an expert puzzle solver and have lots of patience you won't be bothered much.
I didn't have such luck, I had to go on the internet and find a walkthrough to find out what I was supposed to do a few times. I know, shame on me.
I don't want to write an overly long review, nobody will probably ever read all of this, but if you do, believe me, you absolutely need to play this game.
It's that good.