Absolute Banger

A good game with good gameplay but rather boring narrative.

First of all, I have to mention presence of forced TAA. Makes the graphics blurry.

Secondly, freezes for like a full minute or two on start up every time, because it tries to access inaccessible network shares for some incomprehensible reason. I consider this game malware for that.

The combat system is fairly fun and responsive. But not without it's issues naturally. I liked the axe throwing mechanic, it's cool and allows to do cool combos.

* The Boy™ (puzzle) mechanics are poor. Sometimes he will straight up shoot through walls, sometimes he will just shoot walls instead of what you need him to shoot, and there's no way to make him go to a specific spot. This also affects combat.
* Some of the worst optional boss fights with stupid undodgeable attacks. Attack telegraphs are also very inconsistent, sometimes the telegraphs appear very early before damage, sometimes 0.1s before, making them useless and unavoidable.
* What doesn't help are the controls. Button combos to use abilities are dumb, making you use abilities you don't intend because it all uses the same buttons as normal attacks. Died to this BS a few times.
* The leveling/item system is weird. I am so over games having artificial damage reduction when you are underleveled. In this game is even more silly because there are like 9 levels total, and the stats you have mean almost nothing compared to the effect the arbitrary level has to damage output and survivability. This whole thing really discourages exploration, because you are "meant to come here later again" type BS. Same with "puzzle" mechanics, where you cannot explore an area to competition without first beating most of the game.
* The game makes use of a "no cuts" camera movement. This is cool on paper, but in practice I found it just makes the camera feel floaty and shaky in cutscenes. The low FOV that cannot be changed also does not help this claustrophobic feeling.
* Some UI issues - map scrolling is extremely slow with mouse, to the point of being unusable.
* UI animations for rare items take away your control, and the STUPID ANIMATIONS take forever to pass. If a boss drops multiple rare items, get ready to sit there for 40 seconds looking at the same unskippable long animation for each item.
* A lot of things in this game generally take longer than necessary, such as fast travel, boat travel, etc. Kratos is surprisingly nimble for his size, but a lot of other things are excessively slowed down by slow animations.
* The story is basically one large, slow delivery quest, with a few "Oh noes we gotta do this first" type detours along the way. It makes sense I guess, but not particularly exciting. There are a few good character moments here and there.

I finally finished God of War and honestly, I loved it. The atmosphere is so strong and beautiful, and it really pulls you into this world. Every place I visited was full of detail and atmosphere.
The story is amazing, and the characters feel alive. I really, really liked Mimir — his stories and speeches made the journey even more interesting. He’s funny, smart, and I enjoyed listening to him every time.

The only part that was really hard for me were the Valkyries. They were tough to beat, and I struggled a lot, but defeating them felt so rewarding.
Overall, this game is one of the best I’ve played. The story, the atmosphere, the characters like Kratos, Atreus, Mimir, and Baldur — everything came together perfectly.