It's clear so much effort went into this but the result failed for me on most every front. Combat continued to focus on breadth not depth, and the system for leveling up your combat items was odd, making it hard to justify using anything but the default blades until way too late in the game.

The story tries to humanize Kratos more but doesn't convince, and you can feel the painful way they're trying to slot a story into a part of the timeline that's ill-suited for any particularly dramatic character arc.

Adding to the lack of the sort of fiery single-minded mission the other games had is horrible pacing, with long-in-the-tooth puzzle+combat slogs that just had me exhausted by the time I was even halfway through the game.

One good thing! The boss battles are pretty jaw-dropping (though overly reliant on quicktime events). Phenomenal for a console that's about as powerful as a Nintendo Switch - and hard to think of many games two console generations later that can match them for polished spectacle.