God of War is a spectacular game. Right off the bat, the story and characters are very engaging, and the world feels beautiful to experience. The action, while taking a while to reach its peak, is pretty fun for most of the game, except during a stretch in the middle of the game right up until you get access to a new weapon. The story also got a little boring for me toward the middle of the game, which could be attributed to some drawn-out "platforming" sections and one or two tedious puzzles, both of which not advancing the story much. On the other hand, the game is full of dazzling cinematic sequences and unique boss/enemy encounters, namely the fights with Baldur, the big dragon fight on the mountain, the boss fight in the underworld, and pretty much any story-heavy cutscenes. However, sometimes these sequences and encounters reached such great levels of excitement and hype that returning back to the more basic portions of the game, sometimes immediately after, felt jarring and sluggish in its poor pacing. Another part of the game that I think could have been better was the side quests. I know that the side quests are optional for a reason, but it didn't feel like the game gave enough of an incentive to complete them, especially since their gameplay felt like such a drastic decrease in quality from the main levels in both length and difficulty scaling, ahh but I digress. This game is super solid and fun and I'm excited to play Ragnarok very soon.