After 5 years of the game's release on PS4 and a year of the game on PC, if finally played a finished 2018's god of war starting this game I have not played or interacted with any of the god of war series side from watching a friend in high school press o on women to get health. This game was a fun ride it had secrets and fun exploring the game takes place however far in the future with Kratos and his son Atreus trying to figure out how to be a father is definitely at the for front of this games narrative. the game is semi open world almost the whole game takes place in a large lake called lake of the nine being the nine realms that exist in Nord mythology which you can only access 5 with 2 being part of a side quest which is not a negative the realms in this game is a large map on its own, with each area having new places to discover and armor/weapon Materials just waiting to be found

when spoken about an open world, it's very slim on the word as I said the world has a large open area to explore, but the pathways are very linear, which is in my opinion good for big info narrative dumps and enemy encounters When speaking about enemy encounters, we have to talk about the combat. The same asks you to rely on 4 things. One is combos  it asks the player through gameplay to combo each enemy and juggle in the air the second is dodging just like dark souls we have a dodge button pressing a twice in quick succession. In my experience, I had trouble really nailing down when to dodge and what way to dodge I'm unsure if there was I frames or not, and I did not encounter that of my knowledge in my play through the third, which is build crafting. Kratos has six stats which you have to consider when upgrading armor, and they are strength-which determines how hard you hit runic - which tells how strong your elemental damage is defense - which as you would guess how many hits you can take vitality-raising this stat gives you more hp luck-which helps with the random chance of how much money or resources you pick up in the game world and finally cool down - which yes, lowers your cool down for your charged abilities and the fourth and final stat is blocking and countering; each enemy has the ability to be countered when pressing LB when using an Xbox controller at just the right time you will block and counter the foe which you can push him into the wall or do a heavy AOE on the ground when coupling these four it creates god of war combat when I played I would get frustrated when I would not dodge at the right moment the game wanted me to or counter when the game wanted me I played and beat the game on hard which I would not recommend for anyone picking up this game for the first time it added a lot of unnecessary headache because enemies in this game on harder difficulties just have more health and hit harder which made me develop some unhealthy game habits of standing in a corner and hitting them with Atreus's arrows or throwing my ax at them which I'm guessing the game should not have been played

in conclusion I believe this is a very fun experience it kept me interested for over 30 hours straight from big secrets to large battle cinematics to the one camera shot for the whole game if you like semi open world RPG build crafting as well as light puzzles to a thrilling set of characters this game is definitely the game for you.