What an incredible, genre-defining start to an excellent series!
Fighting dudes feels awesome! The puzzles were decent. Only used a guide once or twice, and upon reading the solutions I realized I probably could've figured it out if I spent an extra minute looking around.
The story is dumb sometimes but I think that's part of the charm. Kratos totally deserved what Ares "did" to him since he was a big bloodthirsty asshole. The game looks pretty good for 2005 too. I loved all the little details, dudes fighting in the background of stages and bodies hanging in the foreground when climbing.
A few cons; upgrading your weapons and magic sucks! The xp counter in the corner basically means nothing. And the 10k xp upgrades take a full minute of holding X to do. You better have done the upgrades before the next check point or else you're gonna waste a lot of time upgrading poseidon's rage just before all the Kratos clones attack your family.
I played on normal and the final stage of the Ares fight felt kinda bullshit. Half a dozen deaths later, I said yes to the game switching to easy mode because it stopped being fun. That probably says more about my skills as a gamer than it does about the boss fight itself.