God Of War was a frustrating and disappointing experience for me. Every time I started really getting into it, something would happen that would annoy me or sour the game in some other way. I'd get to a cool new setting and the game would have me do something dumb like a shitty insta-kill platforming segment. The game respawns enemies during combat encounters, which I'd be fine with normally, but instead of spawning in different enemies in different formations throughout different fights, it simply respawns the exact same enemies in the exact same spots, which makes combat feel like a slog when in combination with damage sponge enemies.
The final boss in this game is one of the worst final bosses I've ever played. Like a lot of the game, each phase was really cool in concept and got me very excited, only to let me down with how shitty they were to actually play. The game also crashed during the third phase, making me do the entire thing all over again.
While I disliked this game on a gameplay front, I vastly enjoyed everything else. The music and visuals were great for the PS2, and I liked the story a lot. I found myself impressed many times with some of the things the developers managed to pull off.
Despite all this, the 'game' half of 'video game' still matters a lot, and in this case I wasn't very fond of the game part. also i was planning to rate this game 3 stars but that fucking terrible final boss made me bring it down by half a star

Looks (intentionally) disgusting, but is actually one of the best designed games I've ever played. Each level is full of alternate paths which open up with every upgrade you find. In addition, there are many different weapons, which you can bring with you to the exit to use in any level. There's a ranking system, stock markets, fishing, fun dialog, multiple endings, and just so much content.
However, there are a few things that are holding me back from giving this game a full five stars. These range from some annoying levels to inconsistent upgrades. The one most worth mentioning is that the AI is absolutely awful. When enemies spot you, they'll usually run around in circles for about 15 seconds before stopping to fire off one or two shots, which don't even hit you half of the time. They don't fire while moving, they don't employ any interesting tactics against the player, and there's no way to distract or meaningfully interact with them other than being spotted and killing them. The enemy AI feels vastly underdeveloped in comparison to every other aspect of the game.
Even considering these issues though, I'd still heavily recommend this game. Once you get used to the visuals, you'll find an amazing game.