This is exactly how a sequel should be, superior to its predecessor. Santa Monica listened the critics around gameplay variety, side missions and Realm exploration, because every one of those things got better.

There are so many different enemies and Bosses now, side missions are mostly extremely good, and more Realms are now explorable (unfurtunately, not all of them are made the same). The story is a step up, extremely good (with only one bad section, basically 8 to 10 hours into the game) and emotional at times, character development is top notch and the OST amplifies the greatness that is this game. And in this game, Kratos ACTUALLY starts talking more about the past games events, something that was really missing from GOW 2018.

Some things didn't change for the better though, the map is as useless as ever, the menus have changed, but somehow are still confusing to use and Muspelheim Gauntlet didn't get better as well.

Now, the only things that got worse was the game's armors, that SOMEHOW look even worse than the ones from GOW 2018, and the boat conversations appear to happen MUCH less frequently (IDK if this is a bug or not, because conversations often took a long time to actually start and some of them didn't event continue if I got out of the boat in the middle of it and then came back).