Seems this years god of war ragnarok is Spider-Man 2. Chatty NPCs that you have to listen to all the time alongside gameplay that is excellent, the improvements are great such as the web lines which you can shoot almost anywhere. Like many open world games, SPM2 does overdo it with the amount of side missions and activities however paced it with the story, won’t open up some of them until you make enough campaign progress - which is the point after all. However will you make as much straightforward progress without leveling up with rewards you get from these side missions? Likely not. It’s a great game in short bursts.

But overall, take your time - maybe pick it up when you’ve got like 30 minutes. Why? Because that’s how it’s built. It’s not trying to be entertaining enough to sit there for 3-4 hours straight playing this.

This game does have a lot going for it, the survival mechanics that exist in this game which i think was a nice touch, the need to fix things that break, etc. help separate it from most other open sandbox games out there (and scenery is lovely blah blah).

What I can’t stand is that you get radio calls (that you can ignore by pressing a button) of usually a politically charged nature that you can never stop from happening. This is a small thing, but even when the protagonist complains about the calls when they come in, it feels like you should have been able to turn off the radio completely. The lack of such a simple feature makes me feel like there was intent here.

Otherwise, a pretty nice looking and feeling game if you can look beyond the rough spots plot-wise as well.