On the surface, its an absolutely incredible game. As I kept playing though, a lot of flaws started to show up, and made it a not-incredible-but-still-pretty-good game.
Let me start with the positives first, and usually I'd start talking about the gameplay, but this game does something super unique that very few games ever do: a sense of scale. Often times when I'm playing a game, I'd start to notice that my character is bigger than a pretty large rock, or maybe the fence posts are too big. In this game, everything feels huge and you feel tiny. From climbing up the mountain to looking up and seeing the World Serpent looming over you, but being beneath the high-up clouds. This game also achieves a sense of scale by limiting your movement, whereas a lot of games you can climb up the mountain with ease.
As for the gameplay, there's so much weight in your attacks. Slicing your axe vertically up into an enemy and juggling them with a variety of attacks is super satisfying to do with tons of creativity. Unfortunately it doesn't hold the same weight towards the end of the game, as it becomes optimal to have a bread and butter combo while having immunity to knockback while also mashing square for Atreus arrows (for context, I played the "Give me a Challenge" difficulty with no revive stones)
A lot of people complain about the enemy variety in this game, and while I agree with it from a design perspective, the strategy to beating most enemies varies. For example, an enemy may fly away after being launched, so you need to either do grounded attacks only or after they fly away, using the blades of chaos to pull them back to the ground to continue your combo. Another example I love is that an enemy typically buries underground and is annoying. That is until you launch them in the air, in which case you need to focus on aerial combos rather than grounded combos, or use paralysis arrows to keep them still.
Story was also good, but to be honest it didn't really grab me to where I was super invested.
Now where I give praise to the enemy variety, the same cannot be said about the boss variety. Most of them are different types of ogres, trolls and golems, which were good for the first fight, but not the second, third, fourth, fifth, and so on. And yes, I've done all the Valkyries. They all have the same moveset with one or two new moves, which meant they were pretty easy and predictable. Valkyrie Queen was a decent boss fight, but instead of having one or two new moves, she just had all the moves from the different Valkyries, which kept me on my toes for a bit. Other than that, the other non-clone boss fights were decent, with Baldur being the best ones.
I do wish this game had more weapon variety. My playtime was probably 85% Leviathan Axe, 10% Blades of Chaos, and 5% fists. It doesn't help that the Blades of Chaos come way too late in the game.
Though I didn't talk about the exploration, I liked it. It was a bit generic, but fun. What I'm most disappointed about is the different realms. Midgard is fun and obviously the main area, but the other realms were so boring, with the exception of Muspelheim! That realm was really fun and some of the best fights in the game, counteracted by Niflheim which is one of of the absolute worst and laziest areas I've been into in a video game.
My last negative point is hard to explain, but I'll try: I love RPGs. I love action games. I love action RPGs. This game is an action game slapped with RPG mechanics for the sake of adding difficulty and lazy progression. Instead of making more interesting hard enemies, they simply slapped some boosted stats and unblockable attacks. Instead of progression being skill based, it is by a rarity/loot system that makes you stronger. All of these I don't mind, but typically in Action RPGs, you have build variety to change you playstyle. In God of War, there is no variety in builds. The only way you can make your character play somewhat differently is doing the Valkyries and getting their enchantments and armors, and by that point, the game is close to being over. My point is, no one is saying God of War is a good RPG game, nor a good action RPG, because the RPG mechanics are implemented lazily. This game could be one of the best action games if they focused less of stats and more on making more enemy and boss designs.
Overall, I thought God of War was a pretty excellent game (so much so I 100%'d the thing) bogged down by quite a few critical issues, but the thing this game does well does it REALLY well, and sometimes innovating.
Let me start with the positives first, and usually I'd start talking about the gameplay, but this game does something super unique that very few games ever do: a sense of scale. Often times when I'm playing a game, I'd start to notice that my character is bigger than a pretty large rock, or maybe the fence posts are too big. In this game, everything feels huge and you feel tiny. From climbing up the mountain to looking up and seeing the World Serpent looming over you, but being beneath the high-up clouds. This game also achieves a sense of scale by limiting your movement, whereas a lot of games you can climb up the mountain with ease.
As for the gameplay, there's so much weight in your attacks. Slicing your axe vertically up into an enemy and juggling them with a variety of attacks is super satisfying to do with tons of creativity. Unfortunately it doesn't hold the same weight towards the end of the game, as it becomes optimal to have a bread and butter combo while having immunity to knockback while also mashing square for Atreus arrows (for context, I played the "Give me a Challenge" difficulty with no revive stones)
A lot of people complain about the enemy variety in this game, and while I agree with it from a design perspective, the strategy to beating most enemies varies. For example, an enemy may fly away after being launched, so you need to either do grounded attacks only or after they fly away, using the blades of chaos to pull them back to the ground to continue your combo. Another example I love is that an enemy typically buries underground and is annoying. That is until you launch them in the air, in which case you need to focus on aerial combos rather than grounded combos, or use paralysis arrows to keep them still.
Story was also good, but to be honest it didn't really grab me to where I was super invested.
Now where I give praise to the enemy variety, the same cannot be said about the boss variety. Most of them are different types of ogres, trolls and golems, which were good for the first fight, but not the second, third, fourth, fifth, and so on. And yes, I've done all the Valkyries. They all have the same moveset with one or two new moves, which meant they were pretty easy and predictable. Valkyrie Queen was a decent boss fight, but instead of having one or two new moves, she just had all the moves from the different Valkyries, which kept me on my toes for a bit. Other than that, the other non-clone boss fights were decent, with Baldur being the best ones.
I do wish this game had more weapon variety. My playtime was probably 85% Leviathan Axe, 10% Blades of Chaos, and 5% fists. It doesn't help that the Blades of Chaos come way too late in the game.
Though I didn't talk about the exploration, I liked it. It was a bit generic, but fun. What I'm most disappointed about is the different realms. Midgard is fun and obviously the main area, but the other realms were so boring, with the exception of Muspelheim! That realm was really fun and some of the best fights in the game, counteracted by Niflheim which is one of of the absolute worst and laziest areas I've been into in a video game.
My last negative point is hard to explain, but I'll try: I love RPGs. I love action games. I love action RPGs. This game is an action game slapped with RPG mechanics for the sake of adding difficulty and lazy progression. Instead of making more interesting hard enemies, they simply slapped some boosted stats and unblockable attacks. Instead of progression being skill based, it is by a rarity/loot system that makes you stronger. All of these I don't mind, but typically in Action RPGs, you have build variety to change you playstyle. In God of War, there is no variety in builds. The only way you can make your character play somewhat differently is doing the Valkyries and getting their enchantments and armors, and by that point, the game is close to being over. My point is, no one is saying God of War is a good RPG game, nor a good action RPG, because the RPG mechanics are implemented lazily. This game could be one of the best action games if they focused less of stats and more on making more enemy and boss designs.
Overall, I thought God of War was a pretty excellent game (so much so I 100%'d the thing) bogged down by quite a few critical issues, but the thing this game does well does it REALLY well, and sometimes innovating.