It's not fine. I know you're not interested in having a real debate about the game, but I'm posting this again anyway.
God of War
Started the save file in December 2018, reached the credits in February 2022.
2/5
Hate what this game represents.
Force a camera perspective PURELY because it's the trend. The designers can claim it was for cinematic purposes all they want, but they used the same kind of language in God of War III interviews when talking about the camera angles, which were highly cinematic without being obtrusive or so limiting. There's nothing really impressive about telling a CG story with a single shot. It makes for boring photography. The camera is always so close to the character and can never pull out much to emphasize the scale of the level or setpiece. Having such a limited field of view that doesn't capture the full player character means no jumping, which means fewer ways to evade, which means more simplistic, monotonous combat, not to mention more basic level design. Stop using the interconnected world design to claim the level design is good. Most individual areas have very little going on. The camera also limits the kinds of action setpieces you can have. They're still there, but you have far less control over them than you used to, usually just button prompts on screen as the character you can't control plays out the cutscene. Jesus, the field of view is so bad, I can't emphasize it enough. That you need triangular warning prompts to know what's happening around you really says it all, doesn't it? The dodge button is on the face of the controller, and you're dodging so much that you can't really keep your thumb on the camera stick, so you mostly just push it into the most convenient position you can and then wait as the more pressing danger leaves the screen again. Rapidly back and forth from the Cross button to the stick. Massive downgrade.
The combat becomes more boring and limiting after you get the other weapons, because then it turns into a color match game where the fire weapon is needed for the ice enemies and the other weapon is needed for the fire enemies. There should have been one or two more weapons, because there really isn't enough going on in the combat to carry the game for as long as it goes. Same giant troll type enemies over and over, with the same execution animations again and again. I might be mistaken, but I think there's only three types of bosses: the aforementioned giants, the villain Baldur and the Valkyries. The few others are more like interactive cutscenes.
Why have a companion if you must press Square to make him shoot? I rarely used the arrows in combat, because I found it so unnatural to prompt a basic action that he should have been performing on his own that I simply forgot I had him.
The old God of War games placed the save points and the health and magic chests intelligently. There were always chests before a boss or difficult part and no auto-checkpoints throughout the difficult part. In the reboot, you always restart from the latest auto-checkpoint with full health, so it doesn't really matter. It feels cheap. You are incentivized to kill yourself for full health from the latest mini-checkpoint. First thing they might do when they face off against the second level of a boss is just kill themselves or pause and load from the checkpoint. It destroys any potential for a real... gameplay loop and makes sections of the game feel so insular rather than progressive.
The game has some trash puzzles, mostly involving the axe throw and sometimes the kid's arrows. At one point, I gave up on the right strategy because my aim with the arrows wasn't precise enough and then found out when I played again the next day that what I had tried initially was correct. Which is another reason God of War was better before the action buttons were moved to the shoulders and it became about controlling the camera. God of War was conceived when aiming was still seen as secondary in most games, rightfully so. How many of those early 3D action and horror games had auto-aim or fixed camera angles? Damn analog sticks.
The villain, Baldur, seems more like white trash than a character from Norse mythology. The dialogue all too often sounds real world rather than mythical, fitting so poorly in a place so fantastic. Turning God of War of all things into a walk and talk was a terrible idea because of the type of story that it is. You can't treat Clash of the Titans like serious drama and have the characters making these kinds of quips and having this idle everyday talk. It will just come off as pretentious. Which is what this reboot is. Super pretentious. They have gods talking without any kind of grandeur or godliness, acting like regular folk made immortal. Impossible to take seriously.
I know people were tired of the old Kratos. Instead of turning him into something he just isn't and could never be, they should have replaced him. Written a new protagonist with his or her own weapons and mechanics. They should have kept the fixed cinematic camera angles and used cutscenes (that actually cut away) sparingly, but come up with a new combat system. They should have also kept the gore, brutality and titties instead of pretending their game has to be taken seriously by art snobs. They shouldn't have built their game with the kinds of production values and photorealistic graphics whose costs so severely limit the actual game part of it, particularly the enemy variety.
