What the PS4 version ships with on day one

✚ Checked 2026-11-15 · PS5 1.005.000 / PS4 launch build · 2 sources

Day one on PS4

God of War Sons of Sparta arrives on PlayStation 4 on 16 November 2026, and it arrives complete. This is not a cut-down port and not a staggered rollout: the same story, the same 21 regions, the same 594 collectibles, and the same free patch that brings Hermes Mode and Erebus Mode on the same day.

What you actually get for $29.99

The story runs roughly 20+ hours to platinum, so a single playthrough is comfortably a full-length game at half the price of a current-generation release. The digital deluxe adds in-game gear and upgrade materials plus a digital art book, the soundtrack and PSN avatars.

The deluxe is not required for anything. There are no trophies locked behind it and no content gated by it — the rewards are gear and materials, which the game hands out anyway.

The mode choice, on a fresh file

Because the mode is locked to the save file you create, day one on PS4 involves the same permanent decision PS5 players faced in February:

• Standard — the right choice for a first playthrough.
• Hermes Mode — the speedrun mode. Correct immediately if you already finished the game on PS5 and know the map.
• Erebus Mode — one hit kills both ways. Correct if you have finished the game before and want the map to be dangerous again.

There is no way to change that choice afterwards, and no New Game Plus to soften a restart.

What day one does not tell you

Three things a buyer reasonably asks, and the honest state of each:

Those are not omissions in this guide — they are omissions in the announcement. A page that filled them in would be guessing on your behalf, and the guess would be indistinguishable from a measurement once it appeared in a search result.

What the PS4 version is not missing

Worth stating clearly because "PS4 version" often implies compromise:

• The story is complete. Nothing is trimmed.
• The collectibles are all there. All 594 across 21 regions.
• The patch is the same patch. Hermes and Erebus ship to both consoles together.
• The price is the same. No premium, no discount.
• The platinum is the same platinum. 4/10 difficulty, 20+ hours, 36 trophies, 0 missable.

The only structural difference is the hardware it renders on, and that difference has not been quantified publicly.

Should you wait?

No. There is nothing to wait for: the game is finished, the patch is day-one, and no further PS4-specific announcement is pending. The only thing that would change the picture is published technical data, and that is a question of when, not whether the version is worth buying.

If you are choosing between PS4 and PS5 and own both consoles, the PS5 version has nine months of patches behind it since 12 February 2026, including the 1.005.000 fix for the two unreliable trophies. That is a genuine reason to prefer it, and it has nothing to do with resolution.

What this page is not

It is not a review of how the PS4 version plays. It released today; this site has not played it, and the difference between "shipping with these features" and "runs well" is exactly the gap that a launch-day guide should not paper over.