this game is pretty good but has some major flaws that prevent me from truly loving it

the more i reflect on it the gameplay here isn't really strong outside of axe combat. there are enough options there in your skill tree, especially with stance-switching and axe-throwing upgrades, that don't simply make axe combat "press R1". same with puzzles requiring the axe; while they're never necessarily hard, puzzles involving the axe were always pretty fun and interesting and at least make you think
this can't be said for the rest of the gameplay. combat takes a massive downturn after receiving the blades of chaos since this really does devolve combat to "press R1" in order to mass attack waves of enemies, and as a result i never felt incentivized to aim it and attack a particular enemy (aside from the nightmares and actually fuck those guys). atreus is fine in battle and i like how much his arrows and bow capabilities can be improved but holy shit do the puzzles with him suck. i say "puzzles" very lightly as they mostly consist of "atreus shoots the shiny thing", however controlling where he shoots actually feels like pulling teeth. if atreus is in a different location than where you need him to be, good luck walking around until he goes by the thing he needs to shoot, and good luck aiming where he shoots so it actually hits what you want it to.
bosses also suck in this game aside from magni & modi and the first baldur fight; i've played the first 2 ragnarok bosses (the bear and thor) and THOSE are fun and give me high hopes for the rest of that game but honestly fighting ancient after giant as the only real boss-type challenges aside from both baldur fights and magni & modi makes the impact of a boss meter showing up and fighting what's supposed to be this big enemy feel much less important, a feeling that isn't helped by many of these bosses either not being too interesting or just outright annoying
i also feel like this game wasn't meant for hard mode; there would often be swarms of enemies that would give 200xp and would be grating to actually beat because if they had less health i know i would be mowing through them on normal difficulty. i don't feel like they adjusted for these moments between difficulties well at all and as a result some of the aforementioned bosses would be relatively easy and would give 4000xp but i would die 10 times to a swarm of draugr or some dark elves that would give barely any.

i feel like i tolerated all of that though because of how strong this story is. kratos and atreus' journey and especially their flawed, unique father/son relationship has been talked about countless times but it really is the glue that holds this all together. i felt like i was just getting through non-axe related gameplay just to get to the next part of the story but god was it worth it. different realms, environments, and side content flesh out this game so well and i'm gonna have to go back and do everything i haven't yet at some point because as much as those aforementioned complaints are present this game truly creates a world that is expansive, beautiful, and that you care about what's happening to our characters (especially mimir thats my boy right there)