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I think the story for all intents and purposes was pretty good. Well, not the story really. The story is rather boring. The plot is anyway.
Nothing really happens, which is fine because this is a personal story. It's character driven and more about Kratos dealing with how to connect with his son. That stuff is great. It's well written and well I'm not going to say subtle because it often hits you over the head with how hard it is for the man to connect with his son, I will say it's interwoven well with their dialogue and interactions. But I wouldn't say subtle, because this distance is pretty much all their dialogue is about. You get some dialogue on the boat that plays on the humor of Kratos' straight and narrow attitude, but most of the important dialogue is constantly hitting you over the head with the themes of the narrative, which means you get the point of it from hour one. Meaning it gets a little annoying. It's well written for a game, but I'm not in love with it. Still there are some amazing moments between the characters.
But the actual plot is of little interests to me and kind of at odds with the framing of the story. GoW is not a minimalist journey, it is an epic journey through the world and the characters are extremely important and effecting the world. So you have kind of a boring villain with uninteresting motivations and the rest of the game is kind of vaguely hearing about him and the greater background of the world while the two main characters have their growth. But nothing really happens beyond that. Someone said this is a prologue to a bigger story and yeah that's what it feels like. A really long prologue to a better story. I felt bored as Kratos and son traveled in between realms. I was invested in their characters, but you also let me know there's this exciting story going on in the background and then the game doesn't really care to let me in on it. I'm going to these amazing places, but the story is staying small scale. Even though you are letting me know there's amazing things actually going on. Since honestly the father and son themes of the story can only stretch so far and for so long, I kind of got bored as hour 20 went on.
There's really no tension or intersting turns beyond Kratos which I guess is the point of the personal focus. But then there's certain contrived things such as Atures' godhood and his lame sickness. Kratos didn't know he was a good all the time and he had no sickness. Certainly you could have made him reveal to him this is in a less forced way.
Most of the intersting story revelations of plot importance happen in the begining and ending of the game with little in between.
And this is just a personal opinion, but Kratos here is a cheat. They cheated. They didn't do any leg work. They made a new character, but gave him a familiar past we can reference. I fail to see how the same pos Kratos could turn into someone fearful of his own anger, trying to keep in control, and scared of passing it on. You don't really show me how got to this point. You just said the character is like this for reasons. You skipped a step and while Kratos here is a good character, I can't help but remember the pos Kratos that was in the other games. The one that killed innocents to solve a puzzle. That is not the same Kratos that would spare a defeated son of Thor who attacked him. So since I couldn't completely forget, there was some disconnect. Especially since the game wants me to remember that character and references the past. it just doesn't resolve it.
But as far as gameplay. The axe was great and the game felt very tactical.
But in the end I didn't feel like there was plenty of moves. The move set felt limited. While the combat kept me moving and involved and always thinking about how to attack enemies. In the end I never felt like I had a huge tool set to go about it. Throw axe for nightmares or to stun enmies for a shield run then combo with axe if needed. People compared this to RE4, but there I constantly switched weapons and changed how I was playing. Not so much here and it's not like the combos had a lot of variety.
The enemies sure didn't. Halfway through I felt like you've seen the enemies. Nightmares, grunt, tougher grunt, lots of trolls, and then some tough things like valkyires and knights. But few of them require a unique approach and in the end the game seems to lack imagination in it's combat scenario. Throwing the same set ups and kind of wearing thin.
Then the game introduces the blades of chaos and falls apart. I guess the blades offer a different utility and toolset then the axe, but then in the end it just feels like you're mashing R1, like the old games. Crowd control, being this games thing and the blades offering mindless crowd control. The boat section in Hel was mindnumingly boring as I felt like all I had to do was mash R1 and move a bit as that seemed to destroy enemies and keep that at a distance. That section went on too long.
Which is actually how I would describe this game. It goes unto long with constant go get this other mucmuffin which is never good. Since there's not enough enemy variety and combat seems to wear then this becomes highlighted. How many times does the game need to throw another troll? It seems the combat and scenario lost their imagination halfway through the game.
And the side quests sure did. While the drawfs had decent side quests, the ghosts offered side quests that could be in any game. The stories for them were whatever. While Kratos and son has some good dialogue with them, in the end they felt pretty mediocre.