While God of War benefits greatly from its level design eschewing segmented levels for a largely connected space, a camera that overwhelming frames the action clearly and some well designed puzzles for this type of game im afraid the actual combat isn't up to the task of being the bulk of play. Frankly there were no enemies I enjoyed fighting and there's plenty of mechanical decisions that prevented me from getting into any kind of flow. You are routinely forced to bait out multiple attacks in order to block/parry since there is no way to cancel out of a finisher. Dodging will tend to leave you far away from the fight with a long recovery which makes it largely pointless outside of enemy attacks that can't be blocked.
Enemies range from inofensive mobs that can be fun to inflict aoe/crowd control moves on, to frustrating excersizes in repeating a basic strategy against a bloated health bar with some boring QTEs thrown in for good measure. Most also have moves that can't be interrupted unlike your own finishers so there's a good chance that you will get hit if you do one. It's this strange mix of being a relatively fast action game with some oddly committed attacks, a combination that i'm sure can work but here it doesn't and maybe that's due to the possibility space being so small.
All this would be bad enough if the game didn't also present some segments where the gameplay possibilities are stripped back like rope and climbing segments, this wouldn't be so bad but they last too long and don't offer much engagement since once you learn the basics there's no curve balls to keep you on your toes.
Again there are some positives but the core action just isn't at the level it needs to be.