this was such a revelation.
i havent really touched this franchise at all until now, only having played god of war 3 at a friends house years ago and remembering basially nothing about it except that the boss fights were HUUUUGE.
and i really dont regret looking into it
god of war 1 has an absolutely amazing world design, the different parts of the world we explore here feel alive (as much as it can be while people are dying all over the place), feel different from each other. they even look spectacular still to this day in some shots. the entrance to the architects tomb for example really blew me off in some way, the whole poseidon challenge, the ship right at the beginning of the game. i really, really liked how these felt. how many different platform ideas were put into it, how from hack and slash to puzzling everything felt just right and the right amount of hard and easy.
i enjoyed this game a lot. i still think its really enjoyable and lacks nothing too important.
some jumps can be a bit tricky but other than that i had absolutely zero problems and found the gameplay loop and different upgrades you get just enough to make it not too boring.
#kratosstannumber1

got ending A and B, finshed the game with 95% completion
great music, visuals, combat. i only got a few complaints:
exploration doesnt feel as rewarding as other metroidvanias.
i dont like it that you can only equip 3 relics (exploration abilities) at a time and you have to switch around a lot in the menu (kinda like the iron boots in ocarina of time) there is no reason not to make them toggleable like in symphony of the night. also i encountered a few bugs, like not being able to continue after dying with my controller (had to press a button on my keyboard) or sometimes my dead body that i wanted to recover ended up being unreachable.
overall tho very fun game. would definitely recommend