OK, going into this game absolutely everything was extremely vibeworthy. I'm a sucker for space games and a sucker for games that provide a sense of discovery and going through and peeling over every planet and finding out the weird little details of this world felt amazing.

But about 8 hours in, everything felt like it clicked for me, I knew how I was going to go about beating the game, which trees to shake down to get the secrets needed to complete everything. What followed was perhaps the most dull 3 hour stretch I've played in a while, so much of the late game is just composed of waiting for things to happen that you know are going to happen, the time loop mechanic that gave everything a sense of urgency just becomes a big 'ol time gate to block actually progressing the events of the game.

So while I'm not exactly head-over-heels for this like everyone else I will say that that first bit of the game is some truly mind-blowing exploration so give it a shot, then maybe check the wiki (very carefully, there's still some revelations in that last bit you don't wanna get spoiled) if you get inevitably stuck poking at leads.

I LOVED the story here, even if the dialogue is stiff it still manages to be compelling and the gameplay really works with the character of kratos to the point that I was consistently invested.

But, that investment was more in spite of this games mechanics. The combat at it's core is great but the enemy and encounter design is laughably bad sometimes. I will admit that I played on hard so these issues may be less severe on normal but the ridiculous amount of enemy health combined with their quick ability to counter you and the intentional shortage of crowd control makes a lot of this game funnel you into using the same OP combo while skirting around enemy groups. The rare fights that do give the player the chance to parry (seriously, why bother with a parry when 80% of encounters have enemies that can attack before you land a counter attack) and use their combos felt amazing, but were so few and far between that my overall thoughts on the fights are colored by a general frustration on par with kratos himself.

This game is still saved by some great world and puzzle design, even if I dislike the game's combat, the way they paced fights in-between platforming segments and puzzles is great and the puzzles, while erring on the easy side, felt sufficiently intuitive and creative. It's great to NOT have to google anything to beat a game for once.

Overall, a decent romp, probably worth it to play on normal though.

Overwhelmingly mediocre experience, while the combat is significantly improved from late game baldurs gate (except a final boss that is almost unkillable on core rules difficulty thanks to some unmentioned damage resistances to weapons that just weren't available as campaign loot) thanks to a generally more well-equipped party with more spells to handle edge cases, almost everything else is a huge downgrade from base Baldur's Gate. You spend 80% of this campaign trudging through nothing but forests and caves fighting fairly predictable groups of enemies with an absolutely railroaded uncompelling plot that leaves the player with a severe lack of agency and a severe frustration at how dumb every npc is. Frustration also roughly sums up the level design, I counted 8 times total where the main challenge of a fight was avoiding my party getting stuck on each other walking through each other since the devs put in 2 person wide corridors before the fight room. Even for a dungeon-crawling combat fanatic like me I can't recommend this just because everything else is so weak.