God of War for PlayStation 2 Reviews by Gamers

Seriously, the fighting in this game is as good as any I've ever played. And the puzzles are really cool for the most part. But there are just a few dull, repetitive bits that kind of ruin the fun of the game for me. Right at the beginning, dragging a crate so you can climb up and kill archers, but the archers keep shooting the crate so it blows up and you have to start over...man, that's boring AND frustrating. And towards the end, when you're climbing the spinning pillars with blades on them, I think that might be the single most annoying thing I've ever had to do in a video game. There are a couple other moments, too. Somebody oughtta tell the designers that difficult is fun, but silly and repetitive is not.
At it's best this is a brilliant game, but you have to get through some irritation to get to the end, and that irritation made me rate it a 7 rather than a 9 or even 10.

This is by no means a bad game. There are many aspects in which I think it is definitely great; the artwork is beautiful, the music is brilliant, the story is engaging. But there are also certain aspects that, though still good, aren't particularly spectacular.

Gameplay is pretty basic. There's not much of a learning curve. If you've ever played a game where you can just blindly hit buttons and do combos, you'll have little trouble with this game. At heart, it is a button masher. It does get challenging though. Often times, you'll be overwhelmed by large numbers of enemies. Here is where developing technique and skill helps, as pulling off certain combos on certain enemies rewards you with health, magic, or red orbs to level up magic and weapons. It is a nice evolution in these types of games. But don't worry too much about bosses; they're nothing particularly difficult. Most bosses really just take pounding and then you have to go hit a lever or there will be a Circle prompt and then you have to do what they require (usually it's hit O rapidly or hitting a sequential series of buttons). In fact, I think some of the normal enemies are harder than bosses.

There are also a number of puzzles, which is nice. It tends to break up the monotony of the repetitive combat. Nothing is too hard though; you won't get stuck. Another nice break from the monotony are traps you will encounter. Walls with spikes will try to crush you and you must time it. You must run across rotating logs with spikes on them. It is a credit to the game makers that they were able to break up the monotony of a button masher, but I can't help but comment about how the reason battles and traps are challenging is that you can't control the camera, so it is always shifting around at inconvenient moments.

The mythology is cool and the final 10 minutes are insanely good. It's a good game, but I really don't see why it was so hyped. But then, I'm not a huge fan of these types of button mashing games.