This review contains spoilers
About a month ago from the time of writing this review, I dug out my family's old PlayStation 2, reflecting upon its acclaimed library and the incredible legacy it holds in the gaming sphere to this day, being blessed by what I'd argue is one of the most impressive overall game line-ups of any console in history. Amidst all the titles I was excited to dig out, few grabbed my immediate interest quite like 2005's God of War, the influential and renowned hack-and-slash title developed by Sony's Santa Monica Studio. I had a degree of familiarity with the series through the Norse mythology inspired saga of the franchise that started in 2018, but had always wished to go back to where the journey of one of PlayStation's most recognisable icons, Kratos, began to see if the franchise's debut holds up compared to its latest instalments.
From the moment you select the "New" game option on the title screen, you're greeted with a dramatic opening cutscene, bolstered by dramatic, mythology-like narration, depicting our main character about to throw himself from "the highest mountain in all of Greece". However, the game's opening hook quickly has a pin put in it as the opening mission cuts us back to three weeks earlier, where the adventure properly commences and you're immediately thrown into an intense confrontation at sea with hordes of undead soldiers and a large hydra. Immediately, the player is given the opportunity to learn the basics of combat, centred around Kratos' signature weapon: the "Blades of Chaos", two blades attached to chains wrapped around his arms that he swings to attack enemies. These unique weapons provide the player with immense range as entire legions of enemies are caught up in the wild and furious blows Kratos can unleash, more of said attacks being unlocked and added to your moveset constantly, from aerial launch moves to send your opponents airborne to shoulder charges for quick manoeuvres and keeping the pressure on specific targets. This creates a consistently growing feeling of your character becoming much stronger as you both level up and grow to understand your abilities better that leaves you feeling like you are the strongest in the room in every room you enter as long as you use your tools right.
This doesn't mean it's a walk in the park, however, as the variety of beasts, undead soldiers and other mythological perils have all sorts of different means of attacks, whether it be archers firing on you from a distance, harpies descending from above or minotaurs attempting to overwhelm you through sheer might. Only by using everything your blades and the additional godly powers you obtain throughout the game have to offer will you get the best out of your action experience, with each tool in your arsenal providing specific utility such as throwing Zeus' thunderbolts to take out distant enemies or the circling attack of Poseidon's Rage to fight your way out of being surrounded. Besides the combat, the game's difficulty also comes from a series of strict platforming gauntlets, where you'll venture across dangerous tightrope-esque segments traversing the higher areas of large temples or climbing all sorts of ropes and surfaces while fighting off enemies, as well as the puzzles, which will have require you navigate and unlock paths through various rooms via pushing heavy items around to hold down buttons or pulling various levers to reveal your next destination.
The combination of fierce combat encounters and tight puzzles provide enough variety for what is about a 10 hour adventure, something made even more worth your while through the game's story. While the hook of said story is simplistic, the bulk of the time is spent focusing more on the personal stakes, as we slowly learn Kratos' tragic backstory while he aims to stop Ares from destroying the city of Athens in exchange for gaining favour with the gods of Olympus so they can erase the visions of the past that haunt him. While time has certainly begun to test the age of the visuals, the core narrative works effectively in how it slowly peels back the layers of our central protagonist's great tragedy while constantly raising the scope of the adventure. As you traverse the rich environments of the game, you'll often arrive at large bridges or cliffs overlooking immense battles or sprawling scenery, accompanied by an incredibly robust orchestral score that is every bit as bombastic and sweeping as the scene calls for. Every location, every story beat and every battle is given just the right amount of heart-pounding intensity through the soundtrack's blaring horns and booming choir, making the whole package feel truly cinematic and grandiose.
Amidst all the dramatic mythological flourishes, however, there are also some crude sequences of extreme violence such as the absurdly over-the-top finishing blows you deliver to enemies or moments where you will solve puzzles in truly twisted ways I wouldn't dare spoil. It's clear these scenes are not meant to be taken seriously and more so just to emphasise the title's aesthetic flare and give the player a bit more meaning and entertainment value to their actions. Despite the ridiculous nature of these scenes, they never overstay their welcome and do a great job in playing into the game's identity and making the adventure even more memorable. God of War is, in many ways, a masterclass of catching your eye and keeping you engaged through the variety of its locations, the scope of its set pieces, the extensive soundtrack and its simplistic but captivating narrative.
That doesn't mean the entire experience is perfect, as some of the platforming gauntlets involving slow, meticulous tightrope and climbing segments can sometimes overstay their welcome and prove a lot more frustrating than is necessary. Furthermore, some of the quick time events that can aid in (or are sometimes required for) taking down enemies disappear off the screen after what feels like half a second, giving you barely enough time to even process a prompt was there. This gets especially frustrating in the bosses where you can be stuck redoing an entire sequence of quick prompts just because it suddenly switched to one button press directly after having you rapidly mash another. Some of the combat segments also call in way too many waves of enemies than what feels natural and at times had me wondering if there was some kind of puzzle going on that would make the hordes stop rather than just slicing through seemingly endless waves of an often very limited range of enemy types per room, not helped by the fact some enemies really like to block most everything you throw at them until you just stick around and wait to parry one of their own attacks. Furthermore, the upgrading system is based on these red orbs you collect from enemies after defeating them that you can then fuel into your weapons in the pause menu, a certain number required to raise the level of your weapons, but this becomes a tedious process solely by how slow it can become to power up your personal armoury in the later stages of the game as you're stuck holding down one button slowly watching the number of orbs count down until you're done with no fast way to instantly level up the item of your choice. While these problems did cause some frustration on my playthrough, they are representative only of very small parts of the game and are all pretty tolerable for what it ultimately a 10 hour journey to begin with.
For the very few places where God of War stumbles, it absolutely soars in others, combining a striking aesthetic combination of visuals, story and music with an accessible but expressive combat system that'll leave most players satisfied. It's overall an impressive feat of game design that makes it very easy to see what made this title such a household name in its generation and one I'd be able to argue even mostly holds up today as a short but effective thrill ride. Normally I'm rather hesitant to give high review scores to the first title in a series to leave room for any potential improvements the sequels might provide, but it would be a disservice to this title not to recognise its triumphs in most of what it sets out to achieve, ultimately offering the player an addictive and atmospheric hack-and-slash tour de force.
From the moment you select the "New" game option on the title screen, you're greeted with a dramatic opening cutscene, bolstered by dramatic, mythology-like narration, depicting our main character about to throw himself from "the highest mountain in all of Greece". However, the game's opening hook quickly has a pin put in it as the opening mission cuts us back to three weeks earlier, where the adventure properly commences and you're immediately thrown into an intense confrontation at sea with hordes of undead soldiers and a large hydra. Immediately, the player is given the opportunity to learn the basics of combat, centred around Kratos' signature weapon: the "Blades of Chaos", two blades attached to chains wrapped around his arms that he swings to attack enemies. These unique weapons provide the player with immense range as entire legions of enemies are caught up in the wild and furious blows Kratos can unleash, more of said attacks being unlocked and added to your moveset constantly, from aerial launch moves to send your opponents airborne to shoulder charges for quick manoeuvres and keeping the pressure on specific targets. This creates a consistently growing feeling of your character becoming much stronger as you both level up and grow to understand your abilities better that leaves you feeling like you are the strongest in the room in every room you enter as long as you use your tools right.
This doesn't mean it's a walk in the park, however, as the variety of beasts, undead soldiers and other mythological perils have all sorts of different means of attacks, whether it be archers firing on you from a distance, harpies descending from above or minotaurs attempting to overwhelm you through sheer might. Only by using everything your blades and the additional godly powers you obtain throughout the game have to offer will you get the best out of your action experience, with each tool in your arsenal providing specific utility such as throwing Zeus' thunderbolts to take out distant enemies or the circling attack of Poseidon's Rage to fight your way out of being surrounded. Besides the combat, the game's difficulty also comes from a series of strict platforming gauntlets, where you'll venture across dangerous tightrope-esque segments traversing the higher areas of large temples or climbing all sorts of ropes and surfaces while fighting off enemies, as well as the puzzles, which will have require you navigate and unlock paths through various rooms via pushing heavy items around to hold down buttons or pulling various levers to reveal your next destination.
The combination of fierce combat encounters and tight puzzles provide enough variety for what is about a 10 hour adventure, something made even more worth your while through the game's story. While the hook of said story is simplistic, the bulk of the time is spent focusing more on the personal stakes, as we slowly learn Kratos' tragic backstory while he aims to stop Ares from destroying the city of Athens in exchange for gaining favour with the gods of Olympus so they can erase the visions of the past that haunt him. While time has certainly begun to test the age of the visuals, the core narrative works effectively in how it slowly peels back the layers of our central protagonist's great tragedy while constantly raising the scope of the adventure. As you traverse the rich environments of the game, you'll often arrive at large bridges or cliffs overlooking immense battles or sprawling scenery, accompanied by an incredibly robust orchestral score that is every bit as bombastic and sweeping as the scene calls for. Every location, every story beat and every battle is given just the right amount of heart-pounding intensity through the soundtrack's blaring horns and booming choir, making the whole package feel truly cinematic and grandiose.
Amidst all the dramatic mythological flourishes, however, there are also some crude sequences of extreme violence such as the absurdly over-the-top finishing blows you deliver to enemies or moments where you will solve puzzles in truly twisted ways I wouldn't dare spoil. It's clear these scenes are not meant to be taken seriously and more so just to emphasise the title's aesthetic flare and give the player a bit more meaning and entertainment value to their actions. Despite the ridiculous nature of these scenes, they never overstay their welcome and do a great job in playing into the game's identity and making the adventure even more memorable. God of War is, in many ways, a masterclass of catching your eye and keeping you engaged through the variety of its locations, the scope of its set pieces, the extensive soundtrack and its simplistic but captivating narrative.
That doesn't mean the entire experience is perfect, as some of the platforming gauntlets involving slow, meticulous tightrope and climbing segments can sometimes overstay their welcome and prove a lot more frustrating than is necessary. Furthermore, some of the quick time events that can aid in (or are sometimes required for) taking down enemies disappear off the screen after what feels like half a second, giving you barely enough time to even process a prompt was there. This gets especially frustrating in the bosses where you can be stuck redoing an entire sequence of quick prompts just because it suddenly switched to one button press directly after having you rapidly mash another. Some of the combat segments also call in way too many waves of enemies than what feels natural and at times had me wondering if there was some kind of puzzle going on that would make the hordes stop rather than just slicing through seemingly endless waves of an often very limited range of enemy types per room, not helped by the fact some enemies really like to block most everything you throw at them until you just stick around and wait to parry one of their own attacks. Furthermore, the upgrading system is based on these red orbs you collect from enemies after defeating them that you can then fuel into your weapons in the pause menu, a certain number required to raise the level of your weapons, but this becomes a tedious process solely by how slow it can become to power up your personal armoury in the later stages of the game as you're stuck holding down one button slowly watching the number of orbs count down until you're done with no fast way to instantly level up the item of your choice. While these problems did cause some frustration on my playthrough, they are representative only of very small parts of the game and are all pretty tolerable for what it ultimately a 10 hour journey to begin with.
For the very few places where God of War stumbles, it absolutely soars in others, combining a striking aesthetic combination of visuals, story and music with an accessible but expressive combat system that'll leave most players satisfied. It's overall an impressive feat of game design that makes it very easy to see what made this title such a household name in its generation and one I'd be able to argue even mostly holds up today as a short but effective thrill ride. Normally I'm rather hesitant to give high review scores to the first title in a series to leave room for any potential improvements the sequels might provide, but it would be a disservice to this title not to recognise its triumphs in most of what it sets out to achieve, ultimately offering the player an addictive and atmospheric hack-and-slash tour de force.