I never really liked this game thaaat much even as a kid and I never knew why until this last playthrough.
The most important thing is that I find the enemies really annoying in this game. Rabid Hounds, Beast Masters, Hades-Minotaurs, Fates Juggernauts... All of them have one or several things about them them that can be a right pain, and the game made most returning enemies tougher to boot. More than the first game, enemies just block a lot of your attacks so you can barely finish a combo without a counter, but there's less rhythm to it than GoW 1. Additionally they can be a lot harder to get into the air, even with the spear. When you put a lot of these enemies together alongside larger foes, or complex enemies like Satyrs, all the wrong elements come together.
What a lot of your playstyle in 2 is going to come down to if you're on Hard mode is a game of evading and poking. 1 or two hits, and then block. And you will inevitably get swarmed, at which point you will need to use Cronos's Rage or Titan's Rage to get space and finally do some real damage. Focusing on taking out small enemies first will almost never work in a lot of arenas, you need to be winging it and doing what you can.

And this jab-and-run playstyle or blocking doesn't just apply to fighting the normal enemies. I wished for more bosses, and some of a human-sized variety, but I never realized how badly designed some of these bosses are.
Theseus blocks a lot, and then later retreats for most of the fight to have you fight adds. The Barbarian summons adds, blocks, and has a phase where he's huge and your dodge roll doesn't carry you far enough away from his swings to avoid damage. And finally Zeus is the worst one when it comes to poke and running where unless you're stunning him with Cronos's Rage there's literally nothing else you can do but get one or two hits in. His bare-fist melee starts with an unblockable too, so in his fist-phase it's just better to move out of the way of 2/3 of his attacks, but the Lightning you CAN’T dodge on the other hand.

My favourite fights are the Mole Cerberus and Lakhesis, and I like Euryale and Perseus, but tbh they all have little issues (except for precious Mole Cerberus!) so it feels like the overall take-away is mid.
Euryale and Lakhesis both have a phase where they run away to high-ground, and Perseus blocks just as much as the other bosses, but with his hit-and-run, magical-item focused moveset it kind of fits him.

I don’t really like the weapon selection in this game either. The Blades of Athena are kind of gutted moveset-wise, for one thing, and it feels really bad to use them when you know they aren’t as versatile anymore.
The Barbarian Hammer is supposed to feel like the Artemis Blade (kinda) and crush guards easier, but they made it so you can’t dodge with it, or switch weapons while blocking, they made it have no L1+X, L1+O or R1 moves either, it can’t block midair because L1 is used for a slam, the level 3 ghost army costs 17500 rorbs, and the only only chain you can do is square into triangle on the second hit…. so it mostly sucks.
The spear is great meanwhile, but … I just also think it could use just maybe a move or two extra to really feel oh-so-right.
And The Blade of Olympus is the proper Artemis Blade replacement, but given you only get that in NG+ I feel I shouldn’t include it in the evaluation.

All this to say that I don’t think GoW 2 is a great action game. Especially with the bosses, it’s become obvious why the Action-Crowd never really latched onto to this series.

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I’ve mostly focused on the combat so far though because I feel it’s probably the place where I can be most objective, and people will see eye-to-eye with me. There’s all sorts of little things that bug me though that feel harder to get people on my side with.

Like how the rorb economy is shockingly stingy, and heavily favours the late game for giving a lot of rorbs at all. Or how the puzzles and collectibles are harder but feel more obtuse than clever.
Or how the Island of Creation never really feels like it has a good sense of direction, and many of the steps we take to complete our journey feel random and confusing (Like doing a detour for a weighted block so we can tip an amphitheatre into the swamp water, without the game sign-posting that that's what we're trying to get. Or needing a shield and being shit out of luck if Perseus wasn’t there).
Or meeting a cavalcade of Greek Myths because we can’t shove them all into 3, but failing to make most of them interesting (Looking at you Icarus).
There’s all sorts of small things that don’t jive with me in this game and result in it feeling a lot weaker and off.

And lastly, the story: I feel this story is a lot more shallow than the first. Kratos just… Acts simple-mindedly, There’s room for depth and nuance in his revenge, or some questioning of his own determination, but Kratos doesn’t seem like he has much.
The most telling line is at the end, where Kratos says “I do not seek to destroy Olympus, only Zeus.” While one could interpret much of his actions as self-loathing and self-destruction… This particular line means that even though he hates the Gods, this was only ever an ego thing with Zeus and Zeus alone. This wasn’t about his past with the Gods, or how his life has been controlled and guided by them, this was only about him not being able to see that he was abusing his power, and thinking that no one had the right to transgress him. It was one, simple, petty grievance turned into a whole entire quest, and spurred on by the obvious manipulations of Gaea that he eats right up, and it just feels like there’s something missing the entire time.

There are other elements to consider: Zeus being equally a paranoid villain in his own right who sprinkles cruelty on top of punishment. How Kratos’s choices might have been tartarus or revenge. The tale of cycles the game is gesturing at, how others should not sacrifice others for the sins of one man, yet Cronos, Zeus and Kratos all will be guilty of this. Whether him not even considering going back in time to save his wife and daughter is a plot hole or a deliberate writing choice? (I’d like to think he’d choose to just live with who he is anyway. To choose suffering.)

But in the end I feel whatever depth what they were going for though just didn’t have proper time or clarity. It’s all mixed up, and all of it steeped in a story of two men that refuse to be slighted by each other first and foremost.
While the Gods are petty, so is Kratos, and the line between bad and artful character regression is a bit blurry here.

While God of War III was bonkers, and God of War 2018 was good to look at, God of War II smashed and slashed its way through the PS2 era, besting its predecessor gameplay-wise.

God of War II's set-pieces are mesmerizing and something that I would continue to gush about. Colossus of Rhodes still lives in my head, rent-free. Not only that, but its level design is an exemplar of linear game design.

Where God of War II ultimately faltered was its storytelling. God of War handled this well, a Greek tragedy retold in a contemporary format, while God of War II decided to go all-in on the "revenge" aspect. It also presents the "sequelitis" problem, where everything needs to be grander in their sense of scale. Still somewhat good, however.

God of War II is perhaps one of my favorite PS2 games. It's an excellent adventure, and one the best-presented "cinematic" video-games that have existed.