I like God of War 2018 a lot, I'd go far enough to say I love it and it is a great game, but it is not without its flaws. The narrative is well written, compelling, emotional and has some great twists with some of the absolute best moments in the whole series. Kratos gets amazing character development and the whole dynamic between him and Atreus is heartwarming and feels very organic and realistic especially thanks to the incredible voice acting performances of Christopher Judge and Sunny Suljic.
The core combat is lots of fun and quite challenging at times since there is a bit of a Souls feel to it. Despite only having one weapon for half the game the Leviathan Axe can do so much that there's still a lot of variety to the combat and you do eventually get a 2nd weapon halfway through, but at the same time the combat does feel much simpler and watered down compared to old God of War titles, not being able to jump alone drastically reduces combo variety. There's some incredible boss fights, but also far too many reskinned troll mini bosses.
Back when I first played this game 4 years ago I remember saying I enjoyed the open world and RPG elements and I don't know if this is because I played 5 super linear action games back to back or if it is because I have grown even more increasingly disgusted with the checklist gaming open-world design of every modern day AAA game (maybe a little of both), but exploring the world and doing remedial tasks just to find gear you're going to replace in a couple hours or resources for upgrades feels like such a slog and it breaks up the pacing of the story as well.
I can't help but think that God of War 2018 would be a much better and more cohesive game if it was a linear story driven experience akin to the old God of War games or Uncharted and didn't have the shoehorned open-world and RPG elements thrown in just because that's what is popular and what sells games nowadays. However a lot of people will complain if a $60 game isn't long enough so developers add a bunch of pointless filler side content as padding to say 'See our game is 50 hours!' and honestly it is just exhausting and detracts from the experience as far as I'm concerned.
I will still say God of War is one of the best AAA titles to come out in years and still mostly delivers on the hype it generated with a beautiful story, enjoyable combat and breathtaking visuals, but there's still a few pitfalls of modern gaming design tropes that the game would've been better off without and I'm sure that stuff won't even bother a lot of people who play the game, but I guess I'm just too much of a boomer who misses old school game design nowadays.
The core combat is lots of fun and quite challenging at times since there is a bit of a Souls feel to it. Despite only having one weapon for half the game the Leviathan Axe can do so much that there's still a lot of variety to the combat and you do eventually get a 2nd weapon halfway through, but at the same time the combat does feel much simpler and watered down compared to old God of War titles, not being able to jump alone drastically reduces combo variety. There's some incredible boss fights, but also far too many reskinned troll mini bosses.
Back when I first played this game 4 years ago I remember saying I enjoyed the open world and RPG elements and I don't know if this is because I played 5 super linear action games back to back or if it is because I have grown even more increasingly disgusted with the checklist gaming open-world design of every modern day AAA game (maybe a little of both), but exploring the world and doing remedial tasks just to find gear you're going to replace in a couple hours or resources for upgrades feels like such a slog and it breaks up the pacing of the story as well.
I can't help but think that God of War 2018 would be a much better and more cohesive game if it was a linear story driven experience akin to the old God of War games or Uncharted and didn't have the shoehorned open-world and RPG elements thrown in just because that's what is popular and what sells games nowadays. However a lot of people will complain if a $60 game isn't long enough so developers add a bunch of pointless filler side content as padding to say 'See our game is 50 hours!' and honestly it is just exhausting and detracts from the experience as far as I'm concerned.
I will still say God of War is one of the best AAA titles to come out in years and still mostly delivers on the hype it generated with a beautiful story, enjoyable combat and breathtaking visuals, but there's still a few pitfalls of modern gaming design tropes that the game would've been better off without and I'm sure that stuff won't even bother a lot of people who play the game, but I guess I'm just too much of a boomer who misses old school game design nowadays.