Different from most of the previous games, God of War had three difficulty level: Mortal, Spartan, and God.
The difficulty setting was necessary. After all, the enemies in God of War were real gods, not minor gods but the 12 Olympians, the 12 major deities.
In the previous games, other than Dark Souls, which no one had passed yet, there had been few battles against opponents above the peak level of humans. Even Almighty Demon Lord Chong Lou had lowered his strength to the upper limit of humans when he battled Jing Tian.
However, in God of War, the System created this world with an ultimate difficulty level. Without lowering the difficulty through the difficulty levels, many players would never be able to handle the enemies in this game.