Despite its length, God of war is a must polay for all PS2 owners.
You play as Kratos, a mighty spartan (the game is set in ancient greek/roman mythology times. The game focuses entirely on it). Kratos has a problem however. He has a very dark past, and haunting memories because of it. It is a very bloody past, fille diwht murder and grief. Kratos is haunted by these memories, and asks of the God of beauty Athena to rid of them,and to have his sins forgiven. Athena agrees to ridding him of his sins, but he must stop Ares (the God of war). Ares is causing havoc all around Athens, and is running amok. Kratos must find a way to stop the God of war.
The games gamepaly is flawless. Its basically a beat em' up with swords. You have the blades of chaos, which are two mighty blades strapped to Kratos's arms. You use these to battle the various ebasts from Hades such as undead, harpe's, minotaurs and so on. You get differant weapons throughout the game such as the balde of artemis (one mighty a** blade) Meduzas gaze (the ability to turn enemies intos tone) and the army of hades (a very storng attack consisting of souls of hades) along with others. You obtain these abilities fromt he various gods of the game, such as the god of the sea posseidon, the god of the udnerworld hades, and the goddess of the moon artemis.
The game is very gory, and itsnt for everybody. Some may find this a drawback, but I found it to be a great factor. The gore is very realistic. The sequences with the gore, can be very disturbing to some...you can ltierally hear the bones crack. But, its raw and very real, which makes it great.
God of war uses a combo system which is very close to old school ebat em' ups. The more hits you do with the special blades of chaos weapons (or other weapon combo's) the higher your combo goers. The highest combo I got was a 196.
God of war also uses a soul system just liek Onimush aand devil may cry. Red souls can be used to upgrade your weapons, green souls can be used to rejuvenate health, and blue rejuvenate magic. All these souls are important to progressing inthe game.
The only problem I faced with god of war was its length. Though god of war asks you to go allot of palces (such as a dessert, the temple of pandora, and even the depths of hades) it is short. However, this is the only flaw to the game. Other hten this hte graphics are perfect, the gameplay is amazing, and the voice acting is great.
I suggest if you own a PS2, to pick up god of war. Believe me you wont be dissapointed. It shoudl go down as one of th ebest PS2 games of all time..its that well done. Between its difficult challenges, and neat extras, it is a very pelasing experience.