Introduction
God of War. One of the most influential action series in gaming history. Known for its intense and violent action combined with gorgeous cinematic gameplay, it’s a line of games that’s managed to maintain an impressively consistent popularity over the years.
Taking the role of angry slave to the gods Kratos, players have been violently tearing through hordes of mythical creatures and gods for over a decade. Since its launch in 2005 this franchise has gone on to sell millions of copies worldwide and garnered a sizeable fanbase.
With the fifth main game in the series being released this Friday, I figured it’s the perfect time to take a look back at what made these games so great at the time and see whether they hold up to today’s standards.
I’ll be going through each game from start to finish in three videos covering the original series entries, focusing only on the story modes and not so much the extra challenges or bonus missions. Each video will start with a bit about the development history and then be split into 10 sections, each covering a different aspect of the game’s design.
As far as the other games go, I could cover Ascension, but it feels more like a spin off game with its focus on the now dead multiplayer elements. And yes, I’ve played the PSP titles and they’re pretty good, but much like Sony I’ve decided to pretend the portable market doesn’t exist. Maybe if this series does well I can come back to cover them in the future.
With that out of the way, let’s start the retrospective off with a look at the game that started it all, a legendary adventure that spawned one of Sony’s most successful franchises…
Development History
The development of God of War began in 2002 under the working title, Dark Odyssey. Inspired by the combat system in Devil May Cry and the puzzle solving from Ico and Prince of Persia, there were three aspects of the game known from the outset- it would be based in Greek mythology, it would be a cinematic experience, and it would be violent.
One of its most prevalent influences was The Legend of Zelda. The puzzles, new powers, and even the ability to break pots for a reward are all here, just wrapped in brand new package with an M rating and fluid combat system.
David Jaffe, the game’s director, was given nearly absolute creative control. He wanted to make a game that he would personally want to play. He was given a huge budget and a ton of trust from Sony due to his success with the Twisted Metal series.
The goal was to make the best version of a video game that could exist at the time and not necessarily reinvent the wheel. Most importantly, the game had to make players feel the way he did when watching Raiders of the Lost Ark as a kid.
After its reveal at E3 2004, the hype was real. Everyone was excited to get their hands on this testosterone-induced slaughterfest. And upon release, sales went wild reaching over 1 million copies in just over a year and going on to sell over 4 million in total.
Since then the series has cemented itself as a staple of the Playstation brand and a gaming classic, spawning 2 sequels, a prequel, 2 PSP spin offs, and a mobile game. It even has a comic series and a couple of novels to its name.
Kratos’s saga has undoubtedly become one of the pillars of the action genre, even going so far as to inspire the likes of Dark Souls and similar combat-heavy games to come. And the best place to start when discussing such a groundbreaking series is at the beginning.
Opening Sequence
God of War starts by showing Kratos standing on the edge of a cliff. He contemplates everything he’s done in his life and then jumps to his death. We then flash back to three weeks earlier. Kratos is on a ship in the Aegean Sea and after killing a bunch of zombie pirates in the tutorial, Poseidon tasks him with killing the Hydra.
This opening sequence does everything to highlight the best and worst parts of the game to come. For the time, the scope and quality of the cinematic camera and cutscenes were incredible and while they’re definitely dated, I’d say they still hold up to this day. The enemies look great and the Hydra heads are still intimidating all these years later.
A lot of this can be credited to the excellent cinematography present here. No game before God of War utilized its camera this well, particularly when it comes to dynamic changes in accordance with the on-screen action. It may not be the first game to implement this feature, but this was the first game to get nearly everything right.
Along the way to his goal, Kratos can use his entire starting arsenal of attacks to dispatch his enemies. This move pool isn’t the deepest in the world, but the tight controls combined with the satisfaction of tearing your opponents limb from limb keep the combat engaging.
Occasionally, the game will also prompt the player to begin a sequence of quick time events, usually in order to kill a mini-boss. While many games tend to use these to excess in order to provide a cinematic experience, God of War gets the balance just right. It uses the QTEs to both emphasize the impressive scale of the battles taking place as well as offer a satisfying means to finish a fight.
There are also little touches thrown in that really add to the experience. If Kratos blocks at the appropriate time, everything slows down to emphasize the clash. Also, since Kratos gets small amounts of health from his defeated enemies and there are blue and green chests granting health and magic recovery after almost every battle, the game constantly encourages fast, aggressive gameplay which really fits both the combat and setting.
There are also hidden chests everywhere, offering red orbs that can upgrade Kratos’s abilities. While I do wish their purpose was explained now instead of later, at least collecting these is just as addicting and rewarding as getting bolts in Ratchet and Clank.
However, as great as this intro is, it does show off some of the… less impressive aspects of the game. For one, combat while climbing is slow, frustrating, and honestly kind of pointless. It’s as though the developers thought they couldn’t give the game a single quiet moment and added this in to keep things moving, but sometimes a bit of a break between bits of action is nice and it could have been used to great effect here.
Another is block sliding. Not only is Kratos’s positioning to bring up the prompt to grab onto a box incredibly specific, but these guys shooting arrows from the pedestals can blow the box up with ease.
It probably would have been better to have them aim for Kratos while making the box indestructible. That way the sequence stays tense and immersion isn’t threatened by box’s reappearance every time it’s destroyed.
Lastly you have the plank walking sections. Everyone’s least favorite part of the game. Not only is it boring and hard to control as Kratos walks along these beams, but it’s also a little silly to see this grizzled spartan warrior daintily tip toeing his way through the stage.
As Kratos makes his way through the fleet, he meets Poseidon, who tasks him with killing the Hydra ravaging his seas and grants the power of Poseidon’s rage, a sort of lightning strike with a large area of effect to use in the upcoming fight.
Kratos then finds the Hydra and after watching it eat a bunch of crew members, the battle begins. There are some great aspects to this fight. Having to take out the two smaller heads in order to fight the larger one is cool and dropping a conveniently placed spike through each of them is incredibly satisfying.
Kratos then climbs the mast to the main head. This fight is pretty simple, just wait for it to strike and then stab it a few times. However, while this entire encounter is definitely fun, it’s not without flaws.
For example, throughout the game many enemies seem to take way too many hits to kill. It’s not too bad with the smaller opponents, but some of the bigger monsters take way too long to go down considering you’ve seen their entire move pool about a tenth of the way into the fight.
It’s also got a problem with poor attack telegraphing. Figuring out which side of the mast the Hydra will strike and being able to dodge out of the way in time seems to be more about luck than skill. And its ability to push Kratos off the mast with a roar doesn’t hurt all that much and only serves to make the fight more drawn out than it needs to be as he slowly climbs back up the ropes.
Eventually you get rewarded with the ability to plunge its head through the mast of the ship to conclude the challenge. Upon its defeat, Kratos enters the beast and finds the ship’s captain in its throat, which is not only convenient, but surprising considering he held on throughout the entirety of the boss battle.
The captain thanks Kratos for rescuing him and just as it looks like our hero is going to pull him out, he takes the man’s key and drops him into the stomach, revealing that Kratos is more of an antihero than a champion.
I love this reveal because up to now most players probably assumed Kratos was only ruthless towards his enemies because they’re undead minions, but in this short sequence we not only get a funny and entertaining cutscene, but we’re shown that Kratos is not a hero. He’s a guy who gets the job done by any means necessary.
He takes the key back to the captain’s chambers to find the slaughtered women and children, reminding him of his dark past. While he’s tried to suppress his visions with drinks, violence, and banging every woman in Greece, the memories still haunt him. As a result he calls upon Athena, wanting to know when he’ll have the chance to be free of his torment after 10 years of service to the gods.
Athena tells him that the gods will ease his mind if he completes one final task of ending the bloodshed started in her city of Athens by killing the god of war, Ares. Kratos then embarks for Athens to begin his final task and man, what a way to start a game!
In this first half hour or so, we get through the tutorial, fight a monsterous first boss, we’re given motivation for the fight ahead, and learn about our protagonist’s true nature. It was impressive in 2005 and holds up incredibly well today.
Not to mention the most impressive aspect of this level, the continuity. There’s no loading screens, no waiting around, and the Hydra heads appear around the ship every once in a while.
This not only improves the cinematic feel of the game, but also aids in immersion and pacing, making for one of the best first levels ever made. Not necessarily in terms of quality, but instead in terms of showcasing what the upcoming adventure will be like.
The story is also driven forward by real aspects of Greek mythology. For example, the gods being forbidden to fight one another by Zeus is accurate, hence why Kratos is tasked with stopping Ares instead. Although some aspects, such as Poseidon having trouble with the Hydra, have no basis in the mythos.
This is part of what makes God of War such an interesting game from a narrative perspective. The writers were tasked with creating an original Greek hero and transplanting him into the actual mythology and for the most part, they succeeded.
After all, what fits into Greek mythology more than an angry shirtless man with a dark past killing and fucking everything in sight?
Story
To me, God of War’s most underappreciated aspect is its story. Many people talk about the combat, visuals, and music, but I rarely hear anyone praising this modernized version of a Greek tragedy or more specifically, the way it’s told. But I’m getting ahead of myself.
Prior to the events of the story, Kratos was a feared and respected Spartan warrior, capable of leading large armies to victory throughout Greece. However, in a battle against a barbarian horde, he was defeated and about to lose his life when he offered a deal to the god of war, Ares.
Ares sees potential in Kratos and promises to destroy his enemies in exchange for the spartan’s service. He then permanently binds Kratos to the chains of chaos as a symbol of this agreement and defeats the barbarians.
Following this, Kratos goes on to serve him by conquering most of Greece through ruthless and violent means. One day, he’s tasked with destroying a village erected in the name of Athena. Put into a blind rage by Ares, he ignored the warnings of the village Oracle and slaughters everyone inside the temple. He then realizes that Ares tricked him and his own wife and daughter were among those killed.
The Oracle fuses the white ashes of his loved ones to his body as a reminder of his sins and Kratos swears revenge against the god of war. He helps the other gods for 10 years in the hopes that they will forgive his misdeeds and this is where our story begins.
After the opening, Kratos travels on to the center of Athens. He sees a gigantic Ares ripping through Athena’s men and continues on to the Temple of the Oracle.
Here he meets an old grave digger, who is surprisingly the one person in the game Kratos doesn’t seem to want to kill. He questions why the old man is digging a grave to which he responds that the hole is meant for someone very important. Kratos is confused and moves on to find the Oracle.
This commences a practically comical scene in which Kratos follows the Oracle, only to have her whisked away by the forces of Ares. Over and over again. After finally reaching her, she tells him that the only way for Kratos to kill Ares is with the power from Pandora’s box.
Unfortunately for Kratos, the gods weren’t too keen on the idea that someone could obtain their level of power and locked it up in a temple located on the back of the titan Chronos, cursed to wander the Desert of Lost Souls until corrosion from the sand tore away his flesh.
Kratos sets out to the temple, which was designed so that only one worthy of becoming a god could reach the box within. He meets the resuscitated corpse of the first warrior to enter and perish in the temple, who’s very nonchalant about letting Kratos enter and warning him of the impending dangers.
Kratos enters the temple, solves its puzzles, defeats the enemies inside, destroys a metal band’s album cover, and reaches Pandora’s box. Just as he’s about to figure out how to carry it back to Athens instead of just, I don’t know, OPENING IT, Ares throws a spear from miles away and impales Kratos on the fucking wall, which kills our protagonist while the box is taken to Athens.
Following this, Kratos descends into Hades, where he hilariously knocks the ship captain from earlier down into the pits in order to reach the top of a platform. He fights his way through the afterlife and eventually climbs his way out to find the grave digger once again.
When Kratos asks just who this old man is, he’s pretty cryptic about the whole thing, but tells Kratos that Athena isn’t the only god wanting to help him out. So yeah, he’s Zeus in disguise. Got it.
Kratos runs up to the god of war and before he can be stopped, opens pandora’s box to receive its power. He grows to Ares’ size and begins the final boss fight.
Ares attempts to win with brute strength, but when that doesn’t work he traps Kratos within his own mind, forcing him to protect his family from the numerous clones Ares manifests. Upon coming to terms with his failings, an even more enraged Kratos grabs the sword of the gods from a nearby statue and uses it to defeat Ares, fulfilling his promise to the gods.
Athena then tells him that he has earned the praise of the gods and is forgiven for his sins, but that no one has the power to take away his memories. This drives Kratos to the cliff from the beginning of the game, where he falls in an attempt to end his suffering.
Athena saves his life and gives him the power of a god as well as a seat in Olympus as the new god of war. Kratos sits at his throne and watches over the world for the rest of eternity and the credits roll.
Now that is an epic story. With twists, turns, and surprises all enveloped in a well-designed setting. And while the plot itself is pretty subjective in terms of quality, the way its presented is usually executed really well.
For example, I love how the game utilizes quiet moments. Yeah, there can be long stretches of nonstop action, but the game does know when to slow things down and give the player time to breathe before moving on to the next segment.
I do think the game could have used more of these segments just to allow players to take in the atmosphere of the wonderfully constructed world, but I can still appreciate what we were given and understand that the average gamer demands this kind of constant stimulation.
This leads me to the pacing. In the first and last couple of hours, it’s spot on. The intro delivers a solid mix of action and story that expertly suits the tone of the game. And the ending makes for a great power trip followed by a finale that’s both satisfying and befitting of a Greek tragedy.
However, it’s not perfect. For the entirety of Pandora’s Temple the plot screeches to a halt, with only a few bits and pieces of story scattered throughout, which is a real shame. To give an example from a similar game, in The Legend of Zelda games, entering a dungeon presents the player with a bunch of challenges and enemies while the story elements develop before and after each one.
God of war is the same way, except it only has one large dungeon and it takes up more than half the game. It just seems to struggle a bit when it comes to balancing the story and gameplay segments.
Even then, the storytelling is still fantastic and somehow the writers managed to make a Greek epic in the modern day without it feeling forced or shoehorned into the mythology.
That reason among all the others I’ve mentioned are why I consider the story to be an underappreciated aspect of God of War’s success. But in order to tell a story, you need to develop your characters…
Characterization
The characters in this game don’t have much to them outside of the lead, but they do come together to make the ancient Greek setting really set in. Starting with our protagonist, Kratos is a wonderful anti-hero that gets more development than people give the game credit for.
Yes, he’s an angry sociopath who kills everything in his way, but he wasn’t always like this. While the flashbacks do reveal him to be a ruthless spartan, they also show that he had a soft spot for his wife and child. He cared about his daughter’s safety and actually listened to what his wife had to say (even if he did completely ignore her advice).
After their deaths, he loses the one thing that grounded him and after 10 years of service, we have the Kratos we see in the game. It makes sense for him to be a bit of a sourpuss when he’s been haunted by the memories of his dead family that entire time.
As a side note, this is also why I don’t understand people having an issue with Kratos being a father in the upcoming game. He already was a father as loving as a ruthless spartan warrior could be. It’s not that big of a stretch to assume he’d be able to live with his grief after enough time has passed and raise another child meant to carry on his legacy.
That said, I also love the little touches they gave to reinforce Kratos’s status as an anti-hero. For example, if you kill a civilian running from the chaos in most games, something negative or neutral would happen, but in God of War, Kratos gets some health back, so the game encourages players to be completely cruel and merciless.
There’s also this fantastic sequence in which Kratos slowly drags a captured warrior up a hill as he begs for his life, only to burn him alive in order to open a door. It’s absolutely heartless and even made me feel a bit of sympathy for the guy.
The best piece of development for Kratos that we get however, is actually part of a side story that takes place during the adventure- the messages left behind by the Temple’s architect. Throughout the temple, you find notes by its creator who was tasked with making increasingly elaborate puzzles and traps, going insane in the process.
I love how his and Kratos’s journeys parallel one another. The architect became obsessed with his work, determined to create unsolvable riddles and challenges to keep pandora’s box safe for all of eternity. His obsession eventually overcame him and in his madness he killed his own family and used their bodies as keys to the temple.
Meanwhile Kratos became obsessed with power to the point where he killed his own family in the process and is forever haunted by the nightmares of his misdeeds. And It’s not just their similar actions, but the consequences.
The architect is proved to have failed as Kratos eventually reaches the center of the temple and claims Pandora’s box, while Kratos, despite being given the power of a god, is still eternally cursed with his nightmares.
All of this ties together the theme of the game- the dangers of single-mindedness. The architect obsessed with his design, the god lusting for control, and the mortal originally desperate for power now overcome with a need for revenge.
Even better is that Kratos never gets what he really wants. He wants to kill Ares, yeah, but even more importantly he wants to be free from his nightmares. But his brutal actions stemming from his vengeance-driven mind ultimately show that he hasn’t learned anything and as such, never truly receives the reward he wants most.
Now while the game does do a fantastic job developing the character of Kratos, I do think it’s important to point out its flaws. First, the entire story of Kratos killing his wife and daughter is revealed slowly over the course of the game.
From the start, we only know that Kratos has beef with Ares and is planning to kill him. This is done to the game’s benefit as well as its detriment. See, the story is intriguing. Figuring out why Kratos is angry enough to kill a god is a great way to keep players invested. That said, it also leaves us with a main character that has little motivation known to the player.
While I do enjoy the reveal, I also think the big twist should have come around the end of the first act as it would have made the rest of the story after getting to Pandora’s Temple feel like it had some meaning.
As far as the other characters go, it’s a bit more of a mixed bag. See, the main issue with this game’s supporting cast is that of all the side characters we meet along the way, everyone seems to either die or have no relevance to the plot outside of giving Kratos a new power or cryptic advice.
On the plus side, you have entertaining characters like the gravedigger, whose ambiguous nature and casual attitude make him stand out in this serious setting. I also appreciate the little touches like having the same voice actor play both him and Zeus. He’s also one of the few people Kratos doesn’t kill over the course of the story, which rewards our protagonist with a means to escape from Hades towards the end of the game.
Then you have the hilarious gatekeeper at Pandora’s Temple. The guy’s been living for centuries, only to see hundreds and hundreds of warriors enter without success. It’s refreshing in such a serious game to have the writers ask what kind of attitude this person would have after all these years, resulting in a zombie with the indifference of a modern day office worker who’s given up on warning people about the dangers inside.
Towards the middle of the quality spectrum we have the gods themselves. I hesitate to even call them characters as their appearances are so brief, but it’s not their development I want to discuss so much as the way they help to make this feel like a real Greek myth.
For starters, the writers deserve some praise for writing Hades as another of the gods and not some evil god of death. In Greek mythology, Hades was just seen as a guy doing his job and was probably one of the least dickish of the all gods, not some grim reaper who delighted in death and torture. It shows that the writers really did their research and took proper care in how they utilized this rich source material with the respect it deserves.
This is also seen in the use of Medusa. When Kratos kills the gorgon queen, he rips off her head and continues to use it as a weapon for the rest of the game, parallelling the acts of Perseus in the actual legend. It’s all these little touches that really make this story feel like one that naturally fits into the existing mythology.
Then again, the Oracle is a pretty annoying character. Seeing as how Ares just keeps dragging her away instead of killing her, it makes the entire sequence feel a bit too “video gamey.” I feel like the writers wanted to inspire a sense of urgency, but it just ends up being funny.
Ares is also pretty underdeveloped as a villain, used only as motivation for Kratos’s journey and not much else. Which is a shame, as the writers could have thrown in a few more references to the source material with one of the most-known Greek gods.
Also, while I can understand that this is meant to be a solitary adventure with Kratos going through trials to gain strength and wisdom, it does get a bit too empty at times. While some side characters are interesting, none of them get more than 5 minutes of screen time.
Fleshing them out more could have done a lot to make this game feel slightly more immersive and the world a bit more real, especially considering how many NPCs show up and immediately die just to show how brutal an upcoming enemy will be.
You’d think at least one of these Athenian soldiers would do more than run away and cry as they’re torn limb from limb, but no, having a brave minor character wouldn’t give the writers a chance to show off how badass Kratos is, but we know he’s cool. We don’t need it proven to us over and over.
However, in spite of these minor complaints, this is a stellar final product from a fantastic team really giving it everything they had and it resulted in one of the most iconic characters in gaming history.
Presentation
Next we have the presentation. Graphics are a tricky subject to tackle when discussing an older game. As time goes on, graphical fidelity is improved, meaning that most games striving for realism in their models will eventually become antiquated.
Because of this, I’ve decided not to focus on the exact quality of the renderings and instead I’d like to talk about the art style itself and how it affects the game. If you want my opinion on the graphics, they’re still surprisingly serviceable, though noticeably dated.
With that out of the way, what exactly does God of War hope to achieve with this particular style and how much of that effort was successful?
To start off, everything in this game is made to be cinematic. Even the aspect ratio is shrunk down like it would be in a film, all of it combining to make this game feel like a playable Greek epic. They even added in the fucking Wilhelm scream!
The camera angles are controlled by the game, meaning that every battle and every sequence is framed the way the director wants it to be. For example, running up the stairs to see Athens for the first time, the game slowly pans the camera upward to reveal a destroyed city and a giant Ares killing the population. It’s little moments like this that show just how much thought and care was put into the cinematography.
Then there’s the scale of the game. Not only is the world expansive, but each area contains little passageways and alternate routes making the structures feel like real places. There’s even a part of the game where Kratos walks over a stone sword sticking out of a statue only for him to use that same sword after growing during his fight with Ares. These small callbacks and the huge scope truly make the game feel larger than life.
On top of that, many of the levels are circular. Meaning that if you start on the ground and work your way through a long set of caverns, you’ll eventually make your way out and be at least somewhat close to your next destination. It makes the world feel connected while also cutting down on travel time and backtracking.
Then there’s the quick time events. These dreaded button prompts have been criticized by gamers for years as a lazy means to simulate input without the need for deep combat. God of War is often considered the series that popularized the technique and for good reason- this game uses quick time events properly.
See, in God of War, the purpose of a QTE is either to deal massive damage to an enemy or finish them off. It’s never used as a replacement for combat, but instead as a conclusion to it. The player does use the events to pull off some incredibly damaging moves, but they have to be earned first.
Compare this to a game like Dark Souls. In that series, a fight ends when the enemy health reaches zero. The finishing blow is almost always going to be some sort of attack that the player’s performed hundreds of time over the course of the game. While in God of War, the ending to a big fight is always a spectacle.
Ripping a gorgon in half, impaling the hydra on the mast of the ship, slowly shoving your blade down a minotaur’s throat. It’s all incredibly brutal and really puts the player in Kratos’s sandals.
That said, there are drawbacks. For one, these animations are repeated throughout the entire game and never get a variation. The effect definitely wears off after a while and makes the QTEs seem superfluous.
Also, it gets really noticeable really soon that none of the other enemies attack Kratos while he’s slowly annihilating their fellow combatant. They will literally stand around in a circle and wait for the animation to finish before moving to fight.
It’s not game-breaking and I know it would be frustrating if these events could be interrupted, but I would’ve preferred shorter events that required effective timing over these longer ones that can sometimes break immersion.
Lastly, I’d like to touch on one of the most impressive aspects of this game- the lack of loading screens. Outside of hopping into the game, players will rarely see a loading screen at any time. Regardless of the grand scale of battles ahead or gigantic environments about to be rendered, the worst the game has is a one second loading icon that disappears as soon as you noticed the game stopped.
These transitions are hidden in various areas, such as during cutscenes and while running down long spiral staircases. It keeps the story flowing and makes the game feel like a true adventure. It’s also made clear that the developers intend for players to spend one or two days in total to blast through the game in a single, seamless experience.
But visuals are only part of the presentation. It would be impossible to discuss the God of War series without mentioning the incredible soundtrack. Lead composer Gerard Marino and a whole host of other composers utilized a chilling operatic score that improves upon the experience throughout the entire playthrough.
The classical music combines Greek and Persian lyrics to create a wonderful atmosphere whether it’s the chilling music in the Desert of Lost Souls…
Or the high-energy epic playing while in combat…
The music of God of War is not only suited to the gameplay and setting, but one of the most iconic in all of gaming. While the maybe could’ve used one or two more tracks to add some variety, what we were given is still fantastic.
On the other end of the spectrum we have the voice acting. The main characters such as Athena and Ares do a great job of playing their parts, even if they do come off as stiff every once in a while. And who could forget Terrance C. Howard as Kratos playing the part perfectly, really bringing the ferocity and tragedy of this iconic character to life…
However, the side characters don’t always have the best performances. The gods granting power-ups often sound like they just got out of bed and of course, there’s the repetition issue. While the performances of the oracle and trapped warrior aren’t necessarily poor, the frequency of their lines and unrelenting repetition during their sequences gets annoying very quickly. A poor utilization of otherwise passable performances....
Combat
But hey, God of War is a game, and when it comes to combat I have three words: Square. Square. Triangle. Done. Okay, okay, I’m kidding, but seriously, the combat in this game is where it begins to show its age. But before diving into specifics, I’d like to start by taking a look at how combat works.
In essence, God of War’s mechanics are relatively basic. Kratos can swing his blades around with both light and heavy attacks, grab onto enemies and throw them away, block incoming blows, jump to attack in the air, charge through groups, and dodge roll.
The most impressive aspect to each of these moves is how well everything flows. When fighting in this game, everything just feels right. Not just responsive, but the way Kratos is able to move from one attack to the next, from the ground to the air, and from quick room clearing to precision blocks and counters is just as impressive and effective today as it was 13 years ago.
Then there are the powers offered by the gods. There’s Poseidon’s Lightning, Zeus’s Lightning, rage of the gods, which is a lightning bolt that gives you superpowers, Medusa’s head, and Hades’ army. Each of these is useful, but has a major drawback- their use of magic.
The little blue bar holds all the power available to use these abilities. It can only be refilled by killing a gorgon with a quick time event or by opening up a chest. The problem is, this restricts the ability to use these powers immensely.
See, there aren’t many area of effect attacks, so Poseidon’s rage becomes absolutely vital when facing off against large groups of enemies since the army of Hades isn’t unlocked until nearly the end of the game. Meaning that you’ll be using this power more than any other due to its usefulness.
Outside of that, Zeus’s fury hardly does any damage, so it’s mostly used to take out archers in non-fighting sequences and Medusa’s head takes a long time to activate and is unlikely to freeze more than one enemy at once, making it useless unless it’s upgraded.
However, rage of the gods is a pretty cool mechanic. Using it reduces the damage received while improving damage output, making it super useful when taking on larger enemies or a massive boss and it’s charged up during combat instead of by finding blue orbs. It does take a bit too long to charge up in my opinion, but when activated it’s a blast to demolish hordes of enemies.
I wish the other god powers were like this. Imagine if instead of getting magic by finding chests lying around you instead had to charge up each of these abilities by performing certain tasks, such as completing long combo chains or fighting enemies in the air.
It probably would have added some much needed depth to fighting by encouraging the player to use different playstyles to charge up their various powers.
Although, when the Blade of Artemis is unlocked, combat improves a lot. The new sword has less reach and versatility than the blades of chaos, but delivers a punishing amount of damage. Deciding whether dealing extra damage is worth the risk of needing to get close to an enemy adds a bit more depth to the simple combat.
Players also have the ability to upgrade each weapon as well as the new powers. This is an okay concept with iffy execution. Upgrading most of the powers simply gives the vague description of dealing “more damage,” which is nice, but having new bonuses tacked on the make combat deeper would have gone a long way to make the game more diverse.
Plus, it’s almost a requirement that the two physical weapons get upgraded first since they’re the only means of dealing damage available that aren’t limited by the magic meter. This would be fine if their new combos did much to vary combat, but that brings me to the most disappointing thing about fighting in God of War- the repetition.
The game does try to change things up every once in a while, some of these attempts are creative, but many just feel forced and gimmicky. Having to kill the centaurs in a few specific spots in the room would make for a cool idea, but the small effective areas and ease with which the ending animation can be failed makes it tedious.
See, while the square square triangle comment earlier was a joke, it’s still a fair criticism of the way most of the fights in this game play out. From the beginning of the game, this combo not only deals a respectable amount of damage, but also keeps your opponents at bay and stuns the smaller ones for a bit after the third strike lands.
No other combo in the game is this useful. They either do too little damage, have little to no knockback, or are just too tedious to pull off in comparison to the original. The only others that I used somewhat often were the triangle combo to deal a bunch of damage and the square combo to clear enemies away. It’s a shame combat with such fluid controls ends up being a bit too shallow to realize its full potential.
I may have been more willing to experiment and find new ways to defeat the different kinds of opponents, but about halfway through, the combat just got tiring for me and so I repeated this combo over and over just to finish each new fight in a respectable amount of time.
Finally, we of course have the quick time events. I mentioned them briefly when discussing the presentation, but they also have a unique use in normal combat outside of just spectacle.
While the undead soldiers can simply be thrown around, the other enemies in the game can each be damaged until becoming open to a grab attack, played out in a quick time event. While these are cool and brutal, they often have benefits as well.
Some, such as with the cyclops deal a ton of damage to a powerful enemy. Others, like the minotaur and gorgon give the player extra health or magic. But most importantly, all of them allow for enemies to be killed sooner and grant additional XP to the player.
Although I do wish the button prompts were a bit less strict, there’s no denying the fun and usefulness of these animated slaughter fests.
Luckily, the camera is solid. As mentioned before, the game has a cinematic camera that the player can’t control. This had all the potential in the world to be irritating and while getting hit by an enemy you can’t even see does get there sometimes, it’s usually great. The wide shots of a battlefield and close up zooms when performing a quick time event really make each encounter dynamic.
There are also two other methods of combat in the game- climbing and rope attacks. See, while Kratos climbing up a vine or across a rope tether seems like the perfect time to stop and take a break while offering some neat platforming challenges, the developers instead decided to litter these with enemies.
When climbing, Kratos can do either a quick or strong blade swipe to send enemies falling. The combat is as shallow as it can possibly be and the enemies never change or become more difficult to kill.
You’re not actually partaking in combat so much as playing the role of a meat grinder into which opponents throw themselves. Although I will admit it is kinda funny to block the ledge they’re jumping to and watch them fly down the side of a cliff. See ya later!
And rope combat is just as tedious. Again, it’s always the same basic enemy type and there’s still the light and heavy attacks, but this time around you can also grab enemies for an instant kill if they’re close enough, but the combat can only move left or right.
Enemies can attack from both sides and I swear it’s impossible to get through one of these sections without getting hit at least once. It’s not fun, it’s not cool, it’s just unnecessary and annoying.
However, the combat definitely hits a lot of highs and really makes you feel like a brutal, supernaturally strong Spartan warrior and that’s amazing. With a few tweaks here and there I really think God of War could have been nearly perfect and it’s pretty obvious how much influence these controls have had on games like Dark Souls and the like.
In the end however, it just feels like they ran out of ideas to make the combat more complex and decided to either throw weird twists on it or bombard the player with nonstop encounters. The end result is a combat system that’s incredibly fun and flows well, but creates the illusion of depth while actually having very simple and repetitive gameplay.
Enemies
Of course, combat can’t exist without something to fight and the enemies in God of War serve to highlight all of the positives and negatives present in the combat. The enemies are cool, monsterous, and at times challenging, but also repetitive, frustrating, and tedious.
Starting with the undead warriors, these will be the most common opponent found in the game. Personally, I think these are the worst utilized enemies on display. They do almost no damage, are easy as hell to kill, and aren’t very flashy or interesting.
Yet the game continues to throw them at you like they do anything. While they’re usually peppered into fights with other, bigger enemies, they feel more like distractions than challenges and add no depth to the combat whatsoever.
Then you have the litany of other opponents found in the game. Nearly every other enemy has some sort of new mechanic that makes them unique and fun to fight. The gorgons can turn you to stone, the minotaurs can slam their hammers into the ground, the cerberus puppies need to be killed quickly before transforming into a much larger threat, and the satyrs require patience and good timing to defeat.
The harpies are interesting as they start off as mere annoyances that can easily be killed with a grab, but eventually become a real threat when they learn to use an unblockable dive bomb attack. The new mechanic is really cool and changes up combat a lot.
However, some enemies aren’t so lucky. While it is cool to fight the cyclops and centaurs, their move pools are pretty small and their health bars are annoyingly large, making their fights incredibly long and repetitive. This is actually a problem with the entire game.
Despite offering the player a bunch of different enemy types to fight, the centaurs, cerberuses, sirens, and satyrs are hardly used outside of their respective introductory areas, which is a shame and varying combinations of different enemy types would have done a lot to make the game less repetitive, but instead you’re stuck fighting minotaurs and legionnaires for most of the game.
This leads to the biggest issue with enemy encounters- the massive health bars. With better design, the enemies would eventually learn new moves and come in varied types of encounters to keep combat fresh and interesting.
But in God of War, enemies simply come into combat with better armour, making the fights tactically unchanged, but much longer and more tedious. This is an even bigger issue if the player doesn’t upgrade the blades of chaos as simple fights can be dragged out to unbearable lengths against enemies you’ve seen since the beginning of the game.
Rather than make the composition of each enemy encounter unique or the movesets of different enemies more varied to keep combat challenging, they simply throw the same monsters out but with larger and larger health bars.
Once you learn how each beast works, defeating them is a pretty simple task. So at that point, it basically becomes a war of attrition seeing whether your superior skill or the enemies simply not dying will be the catalyst for the final outcome of each fight.
While the sword unlocked later on does make for quicker fights in a one on one battle, these are exceedingly rare and it’s small hitbox makes the weapon practically useless when fighting large groups, so its benefits are mostly outweighed by the issues.
I would have much preferred Kratos and the enemies all having smaller health bars just to speed things up. Or at the very least, more new moves to keep these constantly reappearing monsters interesting.
However, one thing that does help with this is a really cool addition to the combat- Enemies are capable of hitting one another. This is an impressive way to add depth to a combat encounter since luring smaller enemies into the splash zone of a larger opponent’s attack is not only satisfying, but makes the game feel more rewarding to play. However, there is one issue that keeps this feature from reaching its peak.
The AI is practically braindead. Enemies simply make a beeline for Kratos and strike when they have a chance. None of them work together, try to go around, or even attack in groups.
The only enemy to offer a more complex challenge is the styr, who can counterattack when hit on his spear, but even that becomes irritating when he’s thrown into a large group of enemies since attacking them means a higher chance of hitting this dick on a stick and getting your combo ruined.
On top of that, the spawning system is really odd. See, in most games, when an enemy is defeated, the next one in a conga line would spawn into the room. In God of War, there seems to be multiple lines of enemies that deplete in order.
This means that there will be times where one line of enemies is defeated while another isn’t, leading to a few minutes of killing opponents spawning one at a time until the group is completely killed off.
That said, I love how each new enemy is introduced. In most games, you’d be presented with a new type of foe in a one on one fight, and then that enemy type would be slowly integrated into increasingly difficult encounters with different groups of other monsters. Not here.
In this game, new enemies are presented in one on one fights, and then when defeated, two more typically spawn. Not only is this great design as it forces the player to prove their proficiency in handling a new enemy type before moving into more complex combat situations, but also demonstrates the absolute brutality of the setting and feels immensely satisfying to overcome a new challenge.
In other words, the game looks at the player and says, “Oh, that? You thought it was a mini boss? Ha ha! No. That’s a regular enemy now. And he’ll be popping up a lot. Good luck!”
This constantly keeps players on their toes and makes them wonder- if this is typical fodder, what are the real boss battles like?
Bosses
When many people think of the God of War series, epic fights against massive gods and monsters probably come to mind. Destroying the fiends of Greek mythology one at a time until Kratos is left unopposed. Those people, like myself, forgot that the first game only has 3 bosses.
That’s right. And since I’ve already gone over the Hydra, that only leaves two other bosses in the game. Pandora’s guardian and Ares himself. Honestly, it’s pretty disappointing going back to see how few major fights are in this game, but while the game lacks in quantity, the quality is on point.
Facing off against the goat demon is an awesome fight with a lot of different elements. First, Kratos can’t just run up and smack this thing until it falls over. He first has to run up to a platform and strike it until the armor is broken.
What’s even more impressive is how the game accounts for players trying to sequence break. Trying to shoot the demon early leads him to dodge and get pissed off, while attempting to run past him will get your ass handed to you.
Eventually you have to go down into the pit and jump on to deal extra damage. When the armor breaks, he gains a lot of speed and becomes more difficult to fight. And the entire fight wraps up with a ballista shot through its chest, pining the beast to the temple door.
This fight isn’t necessarily groundbreaking, but it’s incredibly fun and satisfying. The guardian has multiple phases and abilities, two different battle spots, and the fight lasts just long enough to be challenging without becoming a slog. I love it.
Then you have the final battle. Everything in the game has led to this moment. A trip around Greece, literally to hell and back, the moment you kill a god. And it’s… alright.
Not to say the fight isn’t fun or challenging, it is both of those things. Unfortunately, it’s also pretty annoying. See, instead of making the combat balanced and fair, the designers just had Ares spit out health and magic like candy while fighting him and also gave him incredibly powerful attacks.
His abilities are cool, but he just feels like a pretty standard fight for the first phase. Not bad, just pretty underwhelming for the god of war. The second phase is where things get really annoying.
Here, Kratos is tasked with protecting his wife and child from the clone manifestations Ares has sent into his mind to kill them. It’s a pretty simple endeavor of killing all the clones without letting your family die. He can also perform a sort of hump-hug that gives his health away to them.
This segment lasts far too long and outside of being a cool moment of Ares using Kratos’s past against him, it serves very little purpose outside of extending the fight. After this, Ares takes away the blades of chaos and Kratos uses the stone sword he walked across earlier in the final fight.
While this is incredibly cool, the actual fight is really strange. Typical combat mechanics are thrown out the window for the sake of a neat finale. That said, the fight does end with one of the most badass moments in all of gaming.
So that’s everything in the game. Not much to talk about, but certainly a good set of fights with a couple of issues. But God of War isn’t just about action. There are actually another couple of gameplay elements that are rarely mentioned, but add a lot to the overall experience,
Platforming
While many people believe God of War to be a pure action game, I personally consider it more of an action platformer. While the actual platforming isn’t typically that challenging, it can be really fun or frustrating depending on how sadistic the developers felt when they woke up in the morning.
As far as platforming goes, we have the climbing sectioned mentioned earlier, which are garbage, and then the ones that take place on the ground. Some of these are great, such as dodging all of the saws to get through a room or the challenge to reach the oracle, but then we have the biggest annoyance in the game- plank walking.
Yes, I mentioned it before, but I can’t help pointing out once again that plank walking is boring, pointless, and tedious. Usually used for no reason other than to slow things down, if Kratos falls he can always get back up, meaning that there’s no tension here. And the weak controls make everything feel awful.
On top of that you have some timed challenges that are as simple as moving a block around to use it as a platform and jump off. Unfortunately, sequences like these tend to be incredibly slow and incredibly punishing with instant death. This room in particular had me busy for over 30 minutes as a kid, which is pretty bad in an 11 hour long game.
Luckily there aren’t too many of those sections in the game, but there is one area in which all of these elements come together to deliver a truly frustrating experience. Hades.
When in hell, there’s a portion of the game in which Kratos has to walk over rolling logs with blades sticking out. Even worse is that this is the only part of the game where I have to complain about the camera.
See, normally it does an okay job of showing you the entire surrounding area to get a good view of the fight, but here, you can’t see where you’re going because it has to point down to show your toes so you know whether Kratos is about to fall off. It’s asenine and should have been removed from the game entirely. Much like the final climb.
At the end of Hades, it turns out there’s a conveniently placed spinning column that also has sword sticking out of it like a custom made Halloween candy. Kratos has to climb up this pole to reach the grave outside and arrive back in Athens. The issue here is with the design.
First, if Kratos so much as looks at one of these blades, they hit him. I don’t know who designed their hitbox, but I’m pretty sure playing this section would give a fighting game player an aneurysm.
Second, getting hit sends Kratos all the way back to the bottom of the pole, meaning that this agonizingly long climb becomes even more tedious as time goes on. Look, I understand that the idea of hell having a difficult means of escape that really makes you feel like you’re in the depths of Hades fits the theming, but this is a video game. If it’s not fun, it shouldn’t be in the game. And this isn’t fun.
God of War’s platforming is at its best when it’s simple and knows its limitations. When it goes beyond them and tries to be too clever, the game struggles to maintain that same quality.
Puzzles
Hands down one of the coolest additions to the game’s repertoire, puzzles are a staple of the God of War franchise. A great way to break up the action every now and again, these little challenges make for some fun conundrums.
While I wouldn’t call every puzzle a winner and they are a bit too simple for the most part, they’re almost always enjoyable and break up the action really nicely. One of my favorite examples comes soon after acquiring Medusa’s head.
Kratos walks into a room with two minotaurs and a door at the end opened by a button on the other side. The twist is that the door only stays open as long as you stand on the button. Once you step off, the door is closed with no time to reach it.
After a while you’ll eventually realize the minotaurs never stop spawning and they’re no longer giving off experience orbs. This should trigger the thought that if they never go away and aren’t used for a combat challenge, they must be part of the puzzle.
The solution is to turn the monsters to stone on top of the button and run out before they escape, which not only works as a great trick, but also teaches the player that once enemies stop giving off orbs there’s an out of the box solution lying around they haven’t found yet.
Another great problem comes right after acquiring the ability to swim underwater. Pulling the lever in this room causes a few pillars to shoot up out of the ground, which lead to pretty much nothing. By taking a look at the statue you’ll see she’s pointing downwards and lo and behold, there’s an entrance to the next area underneath one of the pillars in the water. Simply pull the lever, swim inside, and get whisked away.
While this may not be the deepest puzzle in the game, it does showcase a creative way the game uses the environment to give clues. It’s a neat little touch that just makes the world feel more deliberate and realistic as a result.
The environmental puzzles even continue in the main chamber of Pandora’s Temple. Spinning around the entire central ring is not only cool, but makes for the perfect opportunity to encourage exploration and get the player thinking laterally.
What’s less fun are the rooms with endlessly respawning enemies that have nothing to do with the solution. For example, in this challenge, harpies continue to fly out of two holes in the wall. Trying to escape brings you to a plank walking section that can’t be passed without the harpies knocking you off.
It turns out the only way to solve this puzzle is to go to the back of the room, grab the large statues, and drag them in front of the holes. I hate just about everything involved in this mess. First, there’s no indication that Kratos should go to the back of the room unless he needs health or magic. The harpies don’t deal much damage, so it’ll take a long time for that to become necessary.
Without getting up on the platform, there’s very little chance the player will see the handles on the sides of the statues. And considering that the majority of the game has invisible walls blocking spots that appear to be solid, it would make sense for a player to assume this platform is as well. All coming together to make this one of the most irritating areas in the entire game.
Luckily this puzzle is an outlier as just about everything else is fun and engaging without being frustrating. The only other major issue is block pushing.
I know this game was inspired by Zelda, but it really could have done without the agonizingly slow block pushing. I get that they’re heavy, but this guy is killing minotaurs and centaurs all day. There is no reason for pushing blocks (or opening doors for that matter) to take this long other than to pad the run time.
One of the most frustrating sequences because of this is the rock wall. Here, the player is tasked with filling in a wall of rocks to move forward, but they need to be rearranged and some need to be rotated. While this puzzle should be fun, the slow pushing animation and the even slower crank turning to rotate each pillar make this section insufferable.
It’s a shame too as very few of the puzzles are inherently bad, they’re just tedious to complete. If these and things like sliding around the entirety of Poseidon’s circular chamber were just sped up a bit more, I think they would have been fantastic.
Still, even if the execution wasn’t perfect, the design was on point. As is the case with most of the puzzles. A fun addition that kept the game varied and prevented things from getting too stale.
Level Design
God of War follows a pretty standard formula. The way most areas in the game work is by starting out with a few basic combat encounters, broken up by puzzles, platforming challenges, new objectives, upgrades, exploration, and bits of story.
It’s this variety that makes the game more consistently entertaining than it otherwise could have been. Even if you’re frustrated by one new mechanic or gameplay element, you’ll be finished with it and moving on before it ever really starts to grind on your patience.
And yeah, not everything is a winner, but with the variety of solutions to puzzles, enemy encounter groups, and tricky platforming present, the game is never boring. Had it just been a slow trek through Greece with a few combat encounters here and there, the game would have felt like a set of unrelated levels instead of a complete adventure.
The game contains frequent save points between major battles as well as the aforementioned blue and green chests to restore magic and health, which allows players to go all out knowing that relief is likely to appear after a battle is finished. Although I do think there’s one improvement that could have been made to enhance the experience.
Some of the restoration chests come down to the player’s choice, offering either magic or health upon being opened at a specific time. I think a cool addition to this would have been a third option to get a bunch of red orbs, which would both reward players who do well and offer a more meaningful choice when approaching a chest. Just a suggestion.
One of the best ways the game breaks up the action is with the hidden chests. As stated before, red orbs are used to upgrade weapons and gain new abilities. These can be found by defeating enemies, but they can also be found in random chests hidden throughout the game.
These will be hidden behind destructible walls, in hidden rooms, and sometimes just sitting out in the open. The point is that the game encourages players to explore the levels when all of the enemies have been defeated in order to find these treasures.
They even made the smart decision of tying the gorgon eyes and harpy feathers, which improve max health and magic respectively, to these chests as well. Meaning that if experience wasn’t enough of an incentive to explore, there’s another set of items worth keeping an eye out for.
That said, while many of these are well hidden and fun to find, some are kind of annoying. For example, before even reaching Athens there’s a spot where the player can choose to either go up this rope to fight the first minotaurs or go through this crack in the wall.
I figured I’d go up the rope first, then come back down, but even after the fight is over the player is locked out from going back down, meaning you can find a secret and miss out on it due to random chance.
The game also blocks progression in weird ways sometimes. I already mentioned the room with infinitely respawning harpies, but then there’s this rope being fired upon by soldiers. It can be crossed, but Kratos probably won’t be able to open the chests on the other side because the arrow interrupt the chest opening animation.
Turns out, you need to get Zeus’s lightning in order to shoot the soldiers before grabbing the chests. Which you would have no way of knowing until after getting the power up. It’s just an odd means of blocking off a reward with lots of poor design choices.
Lastly, there are the two Muse keys hidden in Pandora’s Temple that unlock a hidden treasure room. There are 4 in the game, but only two are needed to unlock the room. Inside there are upgrades for health, magic, and experience, which is a really cool bonus to get before leaving the temple.
So surprisingly, despite its combat-heavy nature and sometimes too shallow mechanics, God of War stays fresh throughout its entire 9 to 12 hour playtime. It’s a game that can be replayed and one that’s still fun all these years later.
However, this game does have one major problem and that’s pacing. I’ve mentioned how the story comes to a near halt towards the middle of the game, but this goes even deeper in the segmented areas themselves. The issue is just how long everything takes to complete and the game’s inability to give the players some quiet time.
Enemies are constantly thrown at the player. It seems like every new room in this game is infested with opponents for no reason other than to eat some time and make the game feel longer. I already mentioned the low enemy variety and damage sponges problems, but what’s worse is the game’s constant bombardment of combat encounters.
If I’m going up a flight of stairs to get to the next room, just let me climb some stairs. I don’t need to kill some monsters on the way up. I don’t need constant stimulus. Sometimes you’ll get three or four combat encounters in a row before finally getting a chance to do something different.
The worst example of this comes with the man being burnt alive. You have to slowly push this cage up a ramp, stopping at each of the rocks to take a break. While this would have been a great opportunity to have a slow walk up the ramp as the soldier begs for his life to showcase the brutality of our protagonist, we instead get constantly harassed by these stupid legionnaires.
They just make this whole experience agonizingly frustrating. It’s not that this section difficult, it’s just that it’s annoying. I don’t relish the challenge so much as I want to get it over with. And that’s where the level design of this game goes horribly wrong.
Is it game breaking? Not really. It definitely brings things down a notch, but the experience as a whole is still enjoyable. It’s just frustrating to think that with a little more forethought this game could have been much, much better.
Final Thoughts
So that’s God of War. It’s a game that has its problems, but no one can deny it’s testosterone-fuelled fun and influence on the gaming industry. With a rich story, brutal combat, and tricky puzzles, it’s a standard of the action genre and a true gaming classic.
That said, I personally found the game to be less enjoyable than I once remembered. I came in expecting some fast-paced action and well thought out puzzles and while I got those every once in a while, when I think back on God of War now I’ll probably remember it as a game with tight, fun combat whose awkward pacing and incredibly slow segments interspersed between frustrating and gimmicky challenges make for a bit of a mess by today’s standards.
A classic for its time that’s just a bit dated. Do I recommend playing it? If it’s your first time, absolutely. The game’s not bad, just… a little messy. There’s still plenty of fun to be had here and the story is worth experiencing first-hand, just don’t go in expecting the greatest action game you’ve ever played.
So consider this video an opportunity to calm expectations for those who might want to give this game a shot. That said, if you have played this game before, let me know in the comments what you think. I’d love to hear about the things I might have missed or that you perceived differently.
However, the series clearly didn’t stop there and next week I’ll be covering the sequel, God of War II, to see what changed, what stayed the same, and whether it lives up to the standard set by its predecessor. Be sure to subscribe if you want to see when that gets uploaded, and as always, have a mighty nifty day today!