First things first, feel free to down vote this to oblivion and back. I am aware this game is blindly worshiped partly because kratos is in it and partly because some big youtubers have played it, which means reviews on sites like this are inflated heavily by children blindly worshiping something just because a millionaire youtuber said they enjoyed it.
But I digress.
1: Boring.
The god of war games have always been repetitive, I am not saying this game is the first to suffer this issue, but it is the worst offender for it. I am not 100% sure of any specific reason, but the flow of the game makes it feel like such a chore to get through. Maybe it is the incessant whining from the companions telling you to use x attack or y weapon through the entire game, even when you are in end game territory. Maybe it is the fact that kratos and atreus say the same thing roughly 15 million times being so heavy-handed with the theme that it makes you less invested in it because it gets tired, I am not sure, but something about the flow of the exploration, the never ending natter and the combat gets very old very fast.
2: Story:
The story is all over the place, this box surely won't be enough to go into detail in the lore of all of it so I will pick a few of the biggest examples.
Jörmungandr- A being destined to play a big role in ragnarok, a being with a deep lore connection to loki, a being who has helped loki and kratos, a being who loki potentially "birthed" in this game, a being who kratos comments on as being "different" during his fight with thor. Nothing happens, there are all these elements set in place for something grand to happen with this cool character but nope, he gets a 5-second looping animation snapping at thor, he is in a cutscene for less than 1 second and then is simply removed. So none of his past interactions, his connection to loki, the time travel implication, the "difference" that even kratos noticed, none of it mattered at all, he may as well not have been in the game, it would have made zero difference.
Thor - Thor was set up as a flawed guy who wanted to do better, but struggled to do so. Every interaction he had with other characters was pushing him to be the man he wants, to stop being odin's blind attack dog, in some small ways he started to open up to atreus and just like Jörmungandr he is wiped from the slate in the most anti-climactic way possible. Every scene is establishing his character to be a flawed hero who will try to redeem himself, but instead he is taken down faster than kratos takes down a wretch, so his entire character was pointless
Odin's end:
This was absolutely pathetic. Kratos and atreus have slaughtered their way across every known realm established, they have killed every manner of being of all ages in all kinds of gruesome ways. They have no problem snapping necks, bifurcating, throat slitting, immolating, bone breaking when it comes to random beings but they beat odin, the single most evil being that atreus has ever encountered and one of the most evil that kratos has ever encountered. A being who has single-handedly committed more atrocities that can be counted, a being who is responsible for war, genocide, for killing countless men, women and children, who is solely responsible for destroying entire realms, a being who mere hours before had killed brok and what happens? Kratos, atreus and freya between them become cowards. All the killing they have done, all the fighting they have done and suddenly they become so pompous, so pious, so arrogant and so painfully stupid that they decide not to kill Odin, despite him being more deserving of death than literally every single other creature they have killed in the past 2 games, that is the most flaccid ending possible, it completely undermines the entire game which atreus spent rushing headlong towards ragnarok, it undermines the entire premise of the protagonists and it renders them not only weak but also so stupid that comatose people have more brain activity.
Ragnarok:
Another element 100% wasted. This one can be summed up quickly. Kratos and atreus go to find surtr because they believe he is the only way past the wall in asgard> Surtr very quickly and for no apparent reason changes his mind from rejection to joining them> Less than 60 seconds later he has been transformed into his "ragnarok" self> He is summoned with the horn> He does absolutely nothing>Kratos decides he doesnt want ragnaroks help and sends Freyr to distract him. So what was the point? Why introduce a living weapon,dedicate a section of the game to his transformation into a weapon if they were just going to have the main character say " actually I know I turned you into a giant mindless monster with a singular purpose but now for no reason I have decided I don't want you fill that purpose, but thanks for letting me stab you in the heart kek". It.is.dumb
Heimdall:
This version of Heimdall was good, a departure from the marvel version that most people are familiar with and he served his purpose as insufferable very well. From the moment he was introduced, we were given plenty of reason not to like him. His showdown with Kratos comes out of nowhere and it carries no weight whatsoever. He shows up with no build up to it, kratos lands a hit on him which no one else was thought capable of and it barely matters. Instead of ripping his head off or impaling him or doing anything even remotely thematic or kratos-like, he simply chokes him and thats it. Nobody even cares, the untouchable, future seeing Heimdall gets killed and everyone just shrugs and says " oh well", it should have been huge deal but there are plants in the game that get more attention than the death of heimdall.
Kratos:
Who is he supposed to be in this game? He prattles on about not wanting war but then at the drop of a hat marches to the exact war he has been btching about the whole game.
He drones on about violence not being the answer, yet he has no issue using violence against every living being he sees and only yaps about it when against being most in need of killing.
He talks about shortcuts and power always coming with a price, but he picks up the horn, rushes to find surtr and charges right into asgard in the span of about 5 minutes, no thought or planning at all went into it.
He moans about "vengeance" not being justice which is complete and utter crap. Revenge and justice are one and the same far more than naive, weak people delude themselves into thinking and if any character in any form of media should understand that it should be Kratos. They were not marching into asgard for the lols, they were going to put an end to a guy who had been manipulating them and spying on them the entire game, a guy who had trapped Freya for countless years, a guy who had wiped out entire species, a guy who was hellbent on "knowledge" and killed everyone, including his own family to get it, a guy who would bring about the destruction of all realms and all those lives in all those realms could be saved by taking out 1 being who truly deserved to die, how is that not justice? Ragnarok didnt happen because odin said a mean word that kratos didn't like, it happened because he had wronged so many beings over so much time, in so many realms that holding him accountable for his actions was enough to unite all other life in existence to a singular purpose.
So the story elements themselves are a contrived, hypocritical, self righteous mess but the execution is also to blame for it falls so flat. The entire game is building up to ragnarok, this event so colossal it affects not just 1 but all realms in existence and when it finally comes it is over, including the 2 back to back final boss fghts, in less than 10 minutes. You spend a few minutes running through a deserted area fighting nothing but einherjar, no army of valkryies or asgardians or dieties on odins side show up and make your way to the most lacklustre boss fight in GoW's franchise history. A fight with an average wave of einherjar is more involved and gets more room to breath than fighting both thor and odin and a fight with "gravel belly" has more event and hype to it.
I have heard the rumours about the next games having Kratos going to egypt, but honestly after this game I hope there are no more. Egyptian mythology is very cool and there are a million directions it could be taken, but if we are to see it through the scope of a watered down, whining kratos who has no problem slaughtering entire towns yet refuses to kill the beings who actually deserve to die then no thanks, at this rate kratos will have so little bite left to him that by comparison the teletubbies will look hardcore, i don't care if he wants to distance himself from the "god of war" moniker, but at the same time he shouldn't go so far off the other end that he becomes the god of hypocrisy and stupidity. He of all people should be able to differentiate between petty revenge, justice and doing what is necessary for the greater good. Original trilogy kratos would stompy this version and it isnt because he is more "mature", it's because he has lost his conviction, he commits to nothing, even his approach to atreus and the will they/wont they fight a war dynamic is weak.
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