A commendable effort to mix up so many different genres, which corrolate to both the plays/aesthetics, music and gameplay. Unfortunately it does come across as a big jack of all trades, master of none. In fact the controls in the game are so simple most buttons aren't used. The only real change between controls are what the B button does in each stage. That isn't to say the game, and its various styles, aren't fun - they just all feel like you're playing the tutorial stages of different games. Which I guess is also where the difficulty complaints come in. Each gameplay style has only 3 total levels, so add in to that the general Mario easiness and the game never really feels like it gets properly going before it's already ended.

As usual collecting everything 100% can add a tiny bit of challenge, but this game is very anti-completionists. Missed a collectable in a level? You have to replay the entire thing. It doesn't matter if the collectable is found in the first 10 seconds, to save it you must recomplete everything. As you might expect from a game where all the levels are done in the style of a play, you go through them at their pace, not your own, so having to redo them involves a lot of dialogue and waiting around. This is made even worse by the fact in the post-game a new collectable is added to every single stage, guaranteeing an entire second playthrough (I did 3 of the levels and in all 3 cases the new hide-and-seek guys were found within the first 1/3rd of the level. If the rest of the game is like that it just adds insult to the fact you can't quit once you find all 3).

But even with the game being easy, and going through the levels more than once being a chore, the presentation and set pieces make at least a one time run through enjoyable.

It does feel like a bit of a throwaway game that could only come out at the end of a consoles lifespan though.

pretty awesome expansion that bolsters a lot of the strengths and a lot of the weaknesses that Ragnarok had. its pretty fun to brutalize the enemies in this game especially since that little dickhead kid isnt around, but somehow even without the worst character around the writing still finds a way to flounder. GoW 2018 handled a "mature" story incredibly well but Ragnarok's big problem is that its idea of "maturity" is giving a bunch of verbose, namby-pamby speeches about how killing is bad. this game does nothing to address the impersonal, pathetic way the main game handles its characters but it does a lot to address the fact that the game is better when atreus isnt there so it gets full points. also, the fan service worked on me. also, getting to actually fight the God of War in this one was given just the right amount of grandiosity and grounding that it needed to. ultimately pretty cool expansion, looking forward to the next mainline title where kratos makes daisy chains with anubis or some shit

you can really tell this is one of the last games ubisoft made with some artistic intent, for better and for worse. it takes a lot of aspects from prince of persia and beyond good & evil and invents a bold new type of game: Sly Cooper for grownups. for a majority of the game the parkour carries it but the combat is pretty terrible throughout (no doubt from that PoP DNA) and the story loses sight of itself way too quickly. Ezio is cool but literally every other character gets introduced with their character trait and then forgotten about in the name of some conspiracy nobody cares about. however, that conspiracy let me jump around like a monkey, so i’d say it was worth it