As Ares besieges Athens out of hatred for Athena, Kratos embarks on a quest to find the one object capable of stopping the god once and for all: Pandora's Box.

The gameplay of God of War focuses on combo-based combat, achieved through the player's main weapon—the Blades of Chaos—and a secondary weapon acquired later in the game.

God of War received critical acclaim, being highly praised for its graphics, sound, story, and gameplay and has been cited as one of the greatest video games ever made.

God of War is a third-person single player action-adventure video game with hack and slash elements, viewed from a fixed camera perspective.

[1] Platforming elements require the player to climb walls and ladders, jump across chasms, swing on ropes, and balance across beams to proceed through sections of the game.

Later in the game, Kratos acquires a secondary weapon called the Blade of Artemis: a large sword that offers alternative combat options.

[4] Early in the game, Kratos acquires a special ability called Rage of the Gods, which provides temporary invulnerability and increased attack damage.

[8] Similar in function is a quick time sex mini-game that occurs when Kratos encounters female twins; this became a regular feature throughout the series until God of War: Ghost of Sparta (2010).

[13] The massive temple, constructed by the architect Pathos Verdes III, is filled with traps and monsters, and has three sections dedicated to the Titan Atlas and gods Poseidon and Hades, respectively.

Minor characters include the Oracle of Athens (Susan Blakeslee), the gravedigger (Paul Eiding), the body burner (Christopher Corey Smith), and the boat captain (Keith Ferguson).

Other characters appear in flashbacks, including Kratos' wife Lysandra (Gwendoline Yeo), his daughter Calliope, the Barbarian king, and a village Oracle (Susan Blakeslee).

Although Ares believed this act would free Kratos to become the perfect warrior, the horrified and saddened Spartan instead renounced his pledge of servitude to the god and swore vengeance against him.

The oracle of the destroyed village cursed Kratos by bonding the ashes of his dead family to his skin, turning it ash-white and earning him the nickname, "Ghost of Sparta".

After a strange encounter with a gravedigger who encourages him to continue his task, Kratos battles his way to Athens' oracle, finds her, and learns that the only way to defeat Ares is with Pandora's Box, a mythical artifact that grants the power to kill a god.

[17] Kratos enters the Desert of Lost Souls, and Athena tells him Pandora's Box is hidden in a temple chained to the back of the Titan Cronos—a punishment by Zeus for Cronos' role in the Great War.

Kratos summons Cronos, climbs for three days before reaching the Temple entrance, overcomes an array of deadly traps and an army of monsters, and eventually finds the Box.

[19] Game director and creator David Jaffe said that while the idea for God of War was his own, the concept owed a debt to Capcom because he had played Onimusha and said "let's do that with Greek Mythology".

[20] The development team gave themselves "lots of freedom" to modify the myths, and Jaffe said they took the "coolest aspects of the subject" and wrote a story using those elements.

[23] For God of War, Jaffe said the creative team's goal was to "make the player feel brutal, letting their inner beast free and just going nuts".

The gameplay was described "as merging the action of Devil May Cry with the puzzle-solving of Ico" and that players would be able to "sunder enemies with a single move, such as by ripping them in half".

[26] He said he understood modular game design—the need to have great looking, high-detail levels without having to build and texture every minuscule piece of the environment[27]—but "[he] was going to get bored" if they did not step outside of those boundaries.

[51] Padilla wrote, "God of War is the best thing to happen to Greek mythology" since Harry Hamlin played Perseus in Clash of the Titans.

"[52] Mikel Reparaz of GamesRadar noted the amount of detail, elaborating that as a consequence of the aging hardware of the PS2, "the graphics occasionally stutter or even slow down."

He still gave the game a perfect score, concluding, "these problems are minor nits next to God of War's creative design, riveting plot and sheer balls-out fun.

Other minor complaints from Sell include its lack of replayability, the amount of time it takes to upgrade items, and the final fight with Ares, which he said is "a little disappointing".

He said players may be overwhelmed by the number of enemies, but they will eventually get their "brain and reactions in gear and move onto the next gripping section and feel hugely satisfied".

[59] In November 2012, Complex magazine named God of War the eleventh-best PlayStation 2 game of all time,[60] and placed it sixteenth on the list made again in 2022.

Dave Valentine of Square Enix Music Online rated it 8 out of 10 and praised the composers for avoiding the production of "a neverending dullness of action themes".

[86] During the God of War – Game Directors Live documentary, filmed on September 1, 2010, Jaffe said the "script went out a year and a half ago to Daniel Craig, who plays [James] Bond, but he turned it down."

[91] In November 2012, the writers told GameSpot that God of War would "improve on films like Clash of the Titans and Immortals by taking a step in a bolder direction."