God of War is one of the best games of 2005, incorperating an amazing story and highly intuitive gameplay
God of War has an incredible story, combining already written Greek mythology with the tale of Kratos. You will be interacting with Ancient Greek gods and numerous beasts of mythological lore. As mentioned earlier most of the story happens in flashbacks to give you hints into Kratos, but the Gods will update you along your journey, tell you what you need to do and how to do it. The story revolves around two aspects, Kratos desire to kill the God of War, and the Gods need for Kratos to save the city of Athens. There isn't alot to say about the story except that its almost like watching a movie, so you will definetly enjoy it. However the story isn't the best part by any means, great as it is, this game is all about combat.
Lets just start out by saying Kratos is one bad ass Spartan. Through his prior relationship with Ares, Kratos is equipped with the Blades of Chaos, forged in the fires of Hades these blades are attached to Chains which are forever branded and bonded to Kratos' arms and with them he unleashes a ruthless fury. Kratos has multiple attacks and combos he can do with the blades, a normal attack and a strong attack, combos of both in air and on the ground. Thanks to the chains attached to the blades Kratos is able to attack enemies at more of a distance than with a traditional weapon. The battle in this game is pretty intense and you are often incredibly outnumbered. At times you will literally be fighting a group of enemies for 15 minutes or more and most of the time you have to defeat every enemy before you can advance. Again thanks to the chains, Kratos can hit multiple enemies at a time. Kratos also has the ability to grab an enemy and perform a killing move, for example when you are close to a Harpy you can grab it and rip its wings off by pressing the circle button. For some enemies you will be forced to tap the circle button quickly in a tug of war type of manner with the enemy, and some require you to follow a button prompt, pressing the correct button or analog motion as it appears on screen. Doing it correctly results in a kill, such as ripping off a Medusa head or stabbing a Cyclops in the eye. It is important to note that not every kill move results in Kratos gaining experience, but for some its is the only way to defeat them. Kratos has many moves for his weapon that will have to be unlocked, and thats where experience orbs come into play.
Orbs play a big role in God of War, and there are 3 types Magic, Health and Experience. Magic and Health orbs are both restorative in nature and can be sometimes obtained from dealing massive amounts of damage to enemies but are more often found in chests. Blue for magic, green for health. You won't have too much difficulty finding health and magic chests or too much trouble replenishing your health and magic through combat. Red orbs are for experience and you will obtain most of them from combat. The more you punish an enemy, the more consecutive hits, the more experience orbs you will recieve. You will also find many chests that will give you large amounts of experience orbs. Experience orbs are very important as they are the key to all of Kratos' attacks and improving the magic he obtains throughout the game. You can distribute experience to your weapon or skills as you see fit. When each magic or weapon levels up you gain stronger attacks and magic or new attack combos for your weapons.
Magic is obtained as gifts from the Gods and are usually a signature of what the God represents. At certain points in the game, one of the Gods will present their image to you and tell you that you need the strength of the gods to proceed and offer you a challenge. Overcome the challenge and you will recieve their gift. There are only a few magical gifts in the game, the Rage of Posiedon, the Fury of Zeus, the Blade of Artemis, Gorgon Stare, and the Army of Hades. Each of these magics have their own unique attack and all but the Blade of Artemis require Magic Points. The Blade of Artemis is a stronger weapon then your Blades of Chaos but takes incredibly long to level up. The only magical ability that is not a direct gift from the Gods is the Gorgon stare, Athena will grant you the opportunity to fight Medusa and remove her head which you can then later use to turn your enemies to stone.
Graphically this game is amazing, but thats nothing you wouldn't already expect from a game made by Sony for the Playstation 2, however the graphics in God of War are even better than you expect. Every texture is highly detailed, from the motion of the water, the blowing sand and grass, ropes, walls. There are also several CG cutscenes that rival that of even Square Enix. Everything graphically about this game is near perfect. To go along with amazing graphics the game has a very good soundtrack. Ambient sounds are very well done and add a touch of atmosphere as you move around. The soundtrack is inspiring as well, utilizing a full orchestra to create a dark and forboding atmosphere.
There are a few things that I did not enjoy in this game and one aspect I felt was missing that would have made the game even better. God of War lacks a rotating camera and I felt there were many times throughout the game where being able to rotate my view would have been of great assistance. What I also did not truly enjoy was the insane number of puzzles and obstacles you had to drive Kratos through. While the puzzles are often simple to decipher the answer, the manner in which you must move through puzzles and the game itself can be quite annoying. I already mentioned the insane amount of times you will be outnumbered, and I mean really outnumbered, but also this game requires alot of making the character balance on beams, slide and swing on ropes, balance on the beams while blades spin around at you. It was irritating that even the slightest touch from an object on one of these puzzles would knock you off. In my opinion this is why the game did not recieve a 10. I simply was getting too frustrated, especially toward the end of the game with the things the designers made you do just to get a door opened.
As God of War is not actually an RPG, we are classifying it under our Elements section which requires me to explain what elements of an RPG this title had and why I thought that. So here goes.