My apathy toward the story is unfortunately hitting me way harder on my second playthrough as soon as I got to the Freya section of the game. In part because, being honest, I really don't like Freya. I found her to have the weakest performance in '18, but in Ragnarok it's even worse. Something about the actor's overt articulation of every word in a sentence, like she's in a boardroom meeting or something, seriously irks me. What doesn't help is her dialoge still needing to provide (heavy) guidance for the player, and apparently requiring light-hearted banter, eventhough she's spent the last three or so years fueled with murderous rage toward Kratos. Her whole redemption section already feels incredibly rushed as it is - giving her cheeky quips reduces the sincerity of her fury, and her overcoming it, even more.
I also find the free-roam sections to be very lifeless and disconnected from anything character or plot related (eventhough gameplay wise these were probably my favourite parts of the game). This was a bit of an issue in '18, but because there it was situated in the Lake of Nine it meant at almost any moment you either had a view of the Word Serpent, the mountain peak where you meet Mimir, or the cave entrance to Freya, geographically linking the side content to the main quest. In Ragnarok this isn't the case, you're just in a random jungle river, a random tropical lake, a random desert with convenient purple leopards tied to a sled, or a random giant optional level that just gets squeezed in at the tail end.