What are you currently playing?
- Thread starter Nick Calandra
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Me and my AADD. Holy moly Quantum Break is about 7 years old. I got stuck about 1/2 way through. Tried it out on my new rig and after X# of years, got through where I was stuck and finally got to kidnap/rescue Dr. Amaral as seen in the game trailer (sorta)! Great game that deserves more of my attention.
Honestly, never got on particularly well with that one. The naval battles were a bit different and entertained me for a bit, but even my natural urges to rewrite history and make sure the British Empire took it's rightful place as unquestioned rulers of the world couldn't keep me playing long.
It's probably the least liked of all the TW games that didn't massively shit the bed. Lots of complaints about very limited special units and lack of variety in units... which is one of the things I like most about it.
I'm not all that keen on the naval combat but as I mostly play as Prussia it's really not that big of a deal.
At the moment i am playing another campaign in Crusader Kings III:
A Year ago i played my eugenics/faith/statecraft campaign and created a united Aesir Faith and led a House of brutal giant nordic supermen to take over first all nordic states, Island, England, Ireland, Poland, Germany, France, Italy, Spain and Portugal and ended a full campaign with that.
Now, since i don't want to be accused of white supremacy i am now leading a brutal holy conquest of a eternal African Empire. (I always start as a count or equivalent, this time a Kru clan and am seeding/converting my constructed faith (Same rights for everyone, Imperator is Faith-Leader. Rewards brutal Conquest and survival of the fittest) with the goal to destroy Islam and Christianity. (Have only 350 years left and still have not all of Africa in my iron grasp though. - But started to invade Iberia/Spain) Kneel before your Moral superiors, hehe. Also. Man my Dynasty is so... NUMEROUS ("Numerous and Belligerent" - Morbo) - Maybe i should try a polygamic faith once... that would be insane.
Man, that game would be so good with well-priced extensions and a some more events and such. It's a bit problematic if i know all the answers, checks, etc. And they repeat all the time. But planning out bloodlines, inheritations, and such is still fun. Even if the game is an unbalanced mess.
A Year ago i played my eugenics/faith/statecraft campaign and created a united Aesir Faith and led a House of brutal giant nordic supermen to take over first all nordic states, Island, England, Ireland, Poland, Germany, France, Italy, Spain and Portugal and ended a full campaign with that.
Now, since i don't want to be accused of white supremacy i am now leading a brutal holy conquest of a eternal African Empire. (I always start as a count or equivalent, this time a Kru clan and am seeding/converting my constructed faith (Same rights for everyone, Imperator is Faith-Leader. Rewards brutal Conquest and survival of the fittest) with the goal to destroy Islam and Christianity. (Have only 350 years left and still have not all of Africa in my iron grasp though. - But started to invade Iberia/Spain) Kneel before your Moral superiors, hehe. Also. Man my Dynasty is so... NUMEROUS ("Numerous and Belligerent" - Morbo) - Maybe i should try a polygamic faith once... that would be insane.
Man, that game would be so good with well-priced extensions and a some more events and such. It's a bit problematic if i know all the answers, checks, etc. And they repeat all the time. But planning out bloodlines, inheritations, and such is still fun. Even if the game is an unbalanced mess.
The new DLC are just so expensive, they try to justify it by including everything that use to be seperate DLC in CK2, but TBH I really don't care about new model or clothing, I just want more gameplay and I'm not willing to pay almost half what the game was at full price for one-two new mechanics.
Oh, that's good. The caves were the worst part of Pikmin 2, and also the largest part.
Playing God of War Ragnarok again, I got to the part where you're partnered up with Freya, and I was hit by how much I fucking hate this character.
First off, I don't think it's a very good performance. The actress herself is decent with a good voice, but her acting just doesn't fit the character. Feels like she's doing a stage performance where every word needs to be loud and enunciated for the audience members in the back to hear.
But what's worse is just how this character is written, how her redemption is written. It's just hard for me to grant this character any empathy when her biggest crime goes completely unadressed. That being her knowing how to break Baldur's curse, but actively withholding that knowledge to leave her son in a prison of eternal agony. The game seems to conveniently forget this. We even get a line from her about how she decided to leave Odin when he asked her to put the same spell she put on Baldur on him, and how when she saw what it did to her son it showed her how depraved Odin must be to ask her for this. Really!? B*tch, you knew how to break this spell, and you didn't, you just fucking didn't!
And then it gets even worse when later as Atreus you come across her big turtle house, with the turtle frozen near death in the perpetual blizzard. This was her first friend after being kicked out of her home, who gave her shelter. But due to her want to kill Kratos she just left it to freeze to death, eventhough this fucking turtle is like half a mile up river from where Kratos lives. And you couldn't take one hour out of you day to check up on this poor guy? It's never even brought up afterward - no Atreus once being reunited again with the gang telling her 'Hey, your turtle friend was near dead in the snow.' or her remarking on her shame for having neglected him. Nope, nothing. And then she even has the fucking gall to chide Kratos on his wolves having matted fur?! Wow, wow, WOW! Fuck you Freya!
And to think by the end Kratos is indefinitely partnered with Freya... Ugh. Why couldn't it have been Thrud, she's cool. Actually a DLC with Kratos and Thrud wielding Mjolnir going around kicking ass, sign me up.
But anyway, yeah, that's it - Freya sucks.
First off, I don't think it's a very good performance. The actress herself is decent with a good voice, but her acting just doesn't fit the character. Feels like she's doing a stage performance where every word needs to be loud and enunciated for the audience members in the back to hear.
But what's worse is just how this character is written, how her redemption is written. It's just hard for me to grant this character any empathy when her biggest crime goes completely unadressed. That being her knowing how to break Baldur's curse, but actively withholding that knowledge to leave her son in a prison of eternal agony. The game seems to conveniently forget this. We even get a line from her about how she decided to leave Odin when he asked her to put the same spell she put on Baldur on him, and how when she saw what it did to her son it showed her how depraved Odin must be to ask her for this. Really!? B*tch, you knew how to break this spell, and you didn't, you just fucking didn't!
And then it gets even worse when later as Atreus you come across her big turtle house, with the turtle frozen near death in the perpetual blizzard. This was her first friend after being kicked out of her home, who gave her shelter. But due to her want to kill Kratos she just left it to freeze to death, eventhough this fucking turtle is like half a mile up river from where Kratos lives. And you couldn't take one hour out of you day to check up on this poor guy? It's never even brought up afterward - no Atreus once being reunited again with the gang telling her 'Hey, your turtle friend was near dead in the snow.' or her remarking on her shame for having neglected him. Nope, nothing. And then she even has the fucking gall to chide Kratos on his wolves having matted fur?! Wow, wow, WOW! Fuck you Freya!
And to think by the end Kratos is indefinitely partnered with Freya... Ugh. Why couldn't it have been Thrud, she's cool. Actually a DLC with Kratos and Thrud wielding Mjolnir going around kicking ass, sign me up.
But anyway, yeah, that's it - Freya sucks.
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I mean, doesn't Krato's crimes not really go that addressed. He indirectly killed hundreds of thousands if not millions on his quest for revenge against... essentially himself. That isn't even talking about those innocents he directly kills either for health, to complete a puzzle or for yuks.
Playing Baldurs Gate, finally out of the first area... maybe, I could go overland but decided to go underdark and Im not sure Im at the point of no return yet, just finished helping some mushroom people, it was neat.
Also since Quake 2 got a re-release, had to start on that since the re-release of the original quake was awesome, and so far this one does not disappoint. Everything looks chunky but noticeably better, enemies got new behaviors, guns got muzzle flashes, music properly loops (but I forget if that was mainly a quake 1 issue or not) Nightmare difficulty is properly kinda hard now where it used to be just kinda... hard, I guess, but not that hard.
Wait until you get to the Norns....
They verbally kick the shit out of Freya! It's wonderful! Even Kratos and Memir get in on the act after the encounter with the three ladies.
Knowing that I can handle FPS gameplay in a VR environment, I got the game Into the Radius. It's widely described as "STALKER in VR", but while the gameplay is pretty similar- braving a hostile wasteland, picking your way through deadly anomalies to find artifacts, managing weapon degradation- the Radius is far more stark and barren than the Zone, populated only by shadow creatures with whom combat rewards nothing but the opportunity to not be killed.
It's kicking my ass and I feel like I'm home again.
It's kicking my ass and I feel like I'm home again.
Just been playing lots of Battlebit Remastered. They just added an anti-grenade trophy system into the game, which I think is the dumbest shit ever but apparently games like CoD and R6 have been doing it for ages. I don't play most of the mainline multiplayer shooters so I've been out of the loop. Overall I don't think it's a very popular item though cause you have to give up much more useful stuff for it. But I consider its addition an affront to my playstyle - play the class with resupply boxes and hog all the grenades for myself and be a one man mortar system.
Anyway the game's just fun. It ain't perfect and there's all sorts of silly issues, but it brings me back to the day back in high school where on the last day of the trimester... the whole year gathered up and went to a cyber cafe and we all played Battlefield. The good old days, that teenage glee where you don't care about sweating and prefer to enjoy the silliness. Just playing a game cause it's fun, not cause of FOMO. And well, that squishy sound that plays when you get a kill is very good at making brain releasing happy chemical.
Anyway the game's just fun. It ain't perfect and there's all sorts of silly issues, but it brings me back to the day back in high school where on the last day of the trimester... the whole year gathered up and went to a cyber cafe and we all played Battlefield. The good old days, that teenage glee where you don't care about sweating and prefer to enjoy the silliness. Just playing a game cause it's fun, not cause of FOMO. And well, that squishy sound that plays when you get a kill is very good at making brain releasing happy chemical.
Pokemon Scarlet:
The (in this case literal) red headed stepchild of the Pokemon releases after the (apparently) awesome Legends Arceus. Now off the bat does this game have problems that it arguably should not? Fuck yeah it does. NPCs and environment details move very stiffly in the distance, only smoothing out upon getting close. One story character who wears a pair of absurd boots that would make Square Enix jealous literally has to goose step because they fucked up her walking animation. The new 'overworld' battling for trainers and wild Pokemon gives me flashbacks to some of the shitty early 3D games where you can see through the level geometry if you angle the camera right. There's also a very serious delay in navigating certain menus. Non-technical issues include the truly awful fucking school uniforms you're saddled with and the unintentional creepy ass side effect that it creates when mature age (read: adult) students at Pokemon Hogwarts are forced to wear them: I keep waiting for the Paldean Inquisition to appear and arrest them. Coupled with just a bizarre selection of shit you can wear, its one of the worst character creators in games. Also, word to artists who made the uniforms for Pokemon Scarlet:
This shit here? Its not scarlet. Its barely even plain red.
See this? That's fucking Scarlet. Literally so since to drive the point home, this is Captain Scarlet of Spectrum.
Moving on. The map is not very intuitive to use. Not a deal breaker - I've certainly seen worse - but it can be an irritation.
Now the big elephant in the room: the open world. This is not a concept I'm against so much, but going full on Breath of the Wild was something they really needed to both sit down and think about AND get some external help. Pokemon since day dot has been a fairly linear game with linear progression so totally discharging that was not a decision to be made lightly. One handicap is that the game retains the - stupid and should be discarded - system from Sword and Shield that limits the levels of the Pokemon you can catch by the badges you have. So one the one hand you can explore to your heart's content but the game disallows you to try for a miracle capture if you run across something really cool. Not cool guys.
Another problem this causes, and further design exacerbates, is it makes finding trainer battles difficult. Leaving aside loading pop in, the trainers in Scarlet will not engage you unless you talk to them. In all previous games while it was possible to dodge trainers certainly, if you needed exp you could at least go back down a path to find them. Here you gotta go hunting.
Now the game is not without things I really like. Having three different 'story' paths: Pokemon League, the Titans, and Team Star is really cool: the Titans one is especially nice because its got very universal and relatable and personal stakes. And although it takes a few times, once you get the hang of the game's new battle gimmick - Terastallizing - it can open up lots of interesting possibilities for team composition; one notable example is the third gym leader Iono - electric - has her trump Pokemon as a Mismageous, nominally a ghost type, when it Terastallizes, it becomes electric.
I also like the ostensible rival, Nemona, who has both a very charming character design but I also find her enthusiasm to be your friend highly endearing. Arven (who's story is tied largely to the Titan Pokemon) has a great story with brilliant emotional beats - not as good as Lillie and Gladion in Sun/Moon - but its also smaller in scope.
There's also some neat QoL changes like now I don't need to farm up a heart scale to remember old moves, I can just do it from the Pokemon's summary screen. Although admittedly in Sw/Sh you could just talk to an NPC at any Pokemon Centre but this is handy cos you can do it in the field.
EDIT: I forgot, Koraidon. I love that doofy fucking creature. I just kind of wish he was one of the starters rather than a legendary.
Now with this, I have been considering that perhaps full 3D is not a direction for Pokemon should go in. Or at least, the Sword/Shield and beyond version where Pokemon are visible in the overworld. In fact, if someone from GameFreak held a gun to my head I would suggest thus: do with Pokemon and the HD era, what Castlevania: Symphony of the Night did with CDs and the 3D era. Keep the sprites, tart them up to 4K and use all that lovely space to make the biggest, most badass Pokemon game ever. Seriously if you took all the space required to make Paldea but scaled everything back to the Pokemon Black/White era look, you could probably fit three fucking regions on that Switch cart.
The (in this case literal) red headed stepchild of the Pokemon releases after the (apparently) awesome Legends Arceus. Now off the bat does this game have problems that it arguably should not? Fuck yeah it does. NPCs and environment details move very stiffly in the distance, only smoothing out upon getting close. One story character who wears a pair of absurd boots that would make Square Enix jealous literally has to goose step because they fucked up her walking animation. The new 'overworld' battling for trainers and wild Pokemon gives me flashbacks to some of the shitty early 3D games where you can see through the level geometry if you angle the camera right. There's also a very serious delay in navigating certain menus. Non-technical issues include the truly awful fucking school uniforms you're saddled with and the unintentional creepy ass side effect that it creates when mature age (read: adult) students at Pokemon Hogwarts are forced to wear them: I keep waiting for the Paldean Inquisition to appear and arrest them. Coupled with just a bizarre selection of shit you can wear, its one of the worst character creators in games. Also, word to artists who made the uniforms for Pokemon Scarlet:
This shit here? Its not scarlet. Its barely even plain red.
See this? That's fucking Scarlet. Literally so since to drive the point home, this is Captain Scarlet of Spectrum.
Moving on. The map is not very intuitive to use. Not a deal breaker - I've certainly seen worse - but it can be an irritation.
Now the big elephant in the room: the open world. This is not a concept I'm against so much, but going full on Breath of the Wild was something they really needed to both sit down and think about AND get some external help. Pokemon since day dot has been a fairly linear game with linear progression so totally discharging that was not a decision to be made lightly. One handicap is that the game retains the - stupid and should be discarded - system from Sword and Shield that limits the levels of the Pokemon you can catch by the badges you have. So one the one hand you can explore to your heart's content but the game disallows you to try for a miracle capture if you run across something really cool. Not cool guys.
Another problem this causes, and further design exacerbates, is it makes finding trainer battles difficult. Leaving aside loading pop in, the trainers in Scarlet will not engage you unless you talk to them. In all previous games while it was possible to dodge trainers certainly, if you needed exp you could at least go back down a path to find them. Here you gotta go hunting.
Now the game is not without things I really like. Having three different 'story' paths: Pokemon League, the Titans, and Team Star is really cool: the Titans one is especially nice because its got very universal and relatable and personal stakes. And although it takes a few times, once you get the hang of the game's new battle gimmick - Terastallizing - it can open up lots of interesting possibilities for team composition; one notable example is the third gym leader Iono - electric - has her trump Pokemon as a Mismageous, nominally a ghost type, when it Terastallizes, it becomes electric.
I also like the ostensible rival, Nemona, who has both a very charming character design but I also find her enthusiasm to be your friend highly endearing. Arven (who's story is tied largely to the Titan Pokemon) has a great story with brilliant emotional beats - not as good as Lillie and Gladion in Sun/Moon - but its also smaller in scope.
There's also some neat QoL changes like now I don't need to farm up a heart scale to remember old moves, I can just do it from the Pokemon's summary screen. Although admittedly in Sw/Sh you could just talk to an NPC at any Pokemon Centre but this is handy cos you can do it in the field.
EDIT: I forgot, Koraidon. I love that doofy fucking creature. I just kind of wish he was one of the starters rather than a legendary.
Now with this, I have been considering that perhaps full 3D is not a direction for Pokemon should go in. Or at least, the Sword/Shield and beyond version where Pokemon are visible in the overworld. In fact, if someone from GameFreak held a gun to my head I would suggest thus: do with Pokemon and the HD era, what Castlevania: Symphony of the Night did with CDs and the 3D era. Keep the sprites, tart them up to 4K and use all that lovely space to make the biggest, most badass Pokemon game ever. Seriously if you took all the space required to make Paldea but scaled everything back to the Pokemon Black/White era look, you could probably fit three fucking regions on that Switch cart.
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I freaking hate combat in Wonderful 101. It's just a big chaotic mess and I hate it more the further I get into the game. Most enemy attacks are unblockable making the block button almost completely useless, and the ones that can be blocked are used so infrequently and so quickly that most of the time I don't even realize it's time to block. I also hate how your guys all go flying and need to be collected every time you take damage or attack when the enemy is doing something that breaks your weapon. It's so tedious. I'm on operation 7/9 and some of the fights are taking upwards of 7 minutes to finish. There's probably some specific move that makes the fights faster but I have no interest in methodically testing every attack against every enemy (there's a lot) to figure out what works best. It's awful and I hate it and I wish I was done playing it.
Conversely, I've also been replaying Pheonix Wright: Ace Attorney which is great and I love as a break from W101. I can play Ace Attorney for hours and still not feel like putting it down, but I'm sick of W101 before I'm even finished one mission. AA is not the best detective game, and sometimes it's easy to get a bit ahead of the logic and present evidence you know you need to present just a little early, but mostly it's just a fun story. The localization is really weird in that they pretend the game is set in America when it very clearly isn't. For one, most people look Japanese. For two, there's some really Japanese stuff in the game, like you go to this one guys shack which is floored with tatami mats and has a kotatsu in the middle. Kind of wish they had gone with a more direct translation of the game. The court system is just totally bizarre as well. When I'm finished I might play the next games in the trilogy since all I've every played is the very first one.
Conversely, I've also been replaying Pheonix Wright: Ace Attorney which is great and I love as a break from W101. I can play Ace Attorney for hours and still not feel like putting it down, but I'm sick of W101 before I'm even finished one mission. AA is not the best detective game, and sometimes it's easy to get a bit ahead of the logic and present evidence you know you need to present just a little early, but mostly it's just a fun story. The localization is really weird in that they pretend the game is set in America when it very clearly isn't. For one, most people look Japanese. For two, there's some really Japanese stuff in the game, like you go to this one guys shack which is floored with tatami mats and has a kotatsu in the middle. Kind of wish they had gone with a more direct translation of the game. The court system is just totally bizarre as well. When I'm finished I might play the next games in the trilogy since all I've every played is the very first one.
Dead Space Remake - NG+ Hard. I am going to try to get all of the marker pieces and do all side quests this time. No full promises, but I know have to get the full schematics for some of the weapons I favor.
Freya was annoying and for me half was her performance and the other scripting, but yeah what was in the game was less of an issue for me as what wasn't. I was really hoping we’d find out more about the aftermath of the Greek era, or at least something to flesh out the mythological connections for the couple centuries in between then and now. Instead we get dad of boy 2: rebellious teenager edition and a couple dream flashbacks of him with Faye, which is a blip on the time scale.
Also the boss fights. While more varied in Rag, they were still pretty tame by classic GoW standards. The dragon fight from 2018 was still the high point and that’s kinda sad as who knows when the next time we’ll see another one of these games will be.
I haven't played the game but I remember having a lot of strong feelings for the trailer. I work as a 3D artist and was kinda triggered for various reasons.
I somewhat sympathize with the devs cause they have to somehow shit a game out every year to coincide with all the multimedia and merchandising that goes on. But I think they really do need to take a gap year or more to prepare for a new generation of hardware. Clearly they were just completely winging it all this time. Can't imagine what will happen when there's a hypothetical Switch 2 with the graphical capabilities of the PS4/XBOne generation.
It is Pokemon at the end of the day and I think if they get one game down pat, then asset/shader reuse will go a long way in making the next game less of a poo process considering their crazy short development cycles.
Scarlet/Violet's art direction just confuses me. There's a mix of buildings that look like they were ripped straight out of the handheld games and plopped down, and then there's some attempt at realistic looking stuff with reflections and shaders. One window has that cartoon light reflection painted on it, another has an environment map reflecting on it. One brick wall looks like it was generated from a real life photo texture with normal mapping, another just has plain flat hand drawn bricks. Like, what is going on? It feels like they hired all manners of outsource companies and slapped shit together with no QC/QA/Direction.
The brick thing.
3DS ass looking building.
I feel like they can't decide what their art direction is sometimes. There's these high res fabric thing going on with the character's clothes if you see it up close, but is barely visible for most part. Parts of the terrain look cartoony as fuck but yet you got these realistic-ish-styled terrain mapping. It's like they are trying to go for high fidelity, but they don't know what they are doing nor is the Switch really capable enough for it so it's just weird.
Sword and Shield at least looked coherent and I feel like they should've built on top of that...
I honestly would be fine if a mainline Pokemon game had lower key 3D graphics. Take Pokemon Masters for example. It is a gacha mobile game but the graphics I feel are quite nice. Though the more I look at it now and the more I'm suspecting the game of reusing pre-rendered or illustrated backgrounds so I'm not sure how practical it is to follow its style for a full 3D open world. Though I'm pretty sure the main lobby is at least modeled out even if the outdoor story backgrounds and battle backgrounds aren't. Sometimes stylized art is harder to mass produce even if it looks simpler. "Realistic"-styled stuff is easier to procedurally generate and also outsource to - and maybe that's the cause of the rather eclectic art direction of Scarlet/Violet.
I personally would love to play a GBA specc-ed Pokemon game, but with every region and 64 gyms or however the fuck many there are these days.
Its just, there is so MUCH stuff in Violent and Scarlet. Like there's enough to have made two gens worth of games almost. Like the Academy itself could have been the fucking game if they'd expanded it, but its just....there.I haven't played the game but I remember having a lot of strong feelings for the trailer. I work as a 3D artist and was kinda triggered for various reasons.
I somewhat sympathize with the devs cause they have to somehow shit a game out every year to coincide with all the multimedia and merchandising that goes on. But I think they really do need to take a gap year or more to prepare for a new generation of hardware. Clearly they were just completely winging it all this time. Can't imagine what will happen when there's a hypothetical Switch 2 with the graphical capabilities of the PS4/XBOne generation.
It is Pokemon at the end of the day and I think if they get one game down pat, then asset/shader reuse will go a long way in making the next game less of a poo process considering their crazy short development cycles.
Scarlet/Violet's art direction just confuses me. There's a mix of buildings that look like they were ripped straight out of the handheld games and plopped down, and then there's some attempt at realistic looking stuff with reflections and shaders. One window has that cartoon light reflection painted on it, another has an environment map reflecting on it. One brick wall looks like it was generated from a real life photo texture with normal mapping, another just has plain flat hand drawn bricks. Like, what is going on? It feels like they hired all manners of outsource companies and slapped shit together with no QC/QA/Direction.
The brick thing.
3DS ass looking building.
I feel like they can't decide what their art direction is sometimes. There's these high res fabric thing going on with the character's clothes if you see it up close, but is barely visible for most part. Parts of the terrain look cartoony as fuck but yet you got these realistic-ish-styled terrain mapping. It's like they are trying to go for high fidelity, but they don't know what they are doing nor is the Switch really capable enough for it so it's just weird.
Sword and Shield at least looked coherent and I feel like they should've built on top of that...
I honestly would be fine if a mainline Pokemon game had lower key 3D graphics. Take Pokemon Masters for example. It is a gacha mobile game but the graphics I feel are quite nice. Though the more I look at it now and the more I'm suspecting the game of reusing pre-rendered or illustrated backgrounds so I'm not sure how practical it is to follow its style for a full 3D open world. Though I'm pretty sure the main lobby is at least modeled out even if the outdoor story backgrounds and battle backgrounds aren't. Sometimes stylized art is harder to mass produce even if it looks simpler. "Realistic"-styled stuff is easier to procedurally generate and also outsource to - and maybe that's the cause of the rather eclectic art direction of Scarlet/Violet.
I personally would love to play a GBA specc-ed Pokemon game, but with every region and 64 gyms or however the fuck many there are these days.
Yeah, but Kratos benefits from the softening of time. GoW '18 coming out 8 years after GoW3 helped dull the actions of that game. And while his crimes don't get addressed as much as they should, from Kratos' behaviour in GoW '18 you very much get the impression that he knows how much he fucked up, and that he's trying to just stay out of anyone's business now. Also, both '18 and Ragnarok aren't shy about dunking on Kratos for his past.
They tried to cram too much story in one game, because they wanted to end this arc with Ragnarok. As soon as I heard that before release I expected a lot of unfullfilled potential. I also figured something from Kratos' past would make a return, specifically the murder of his own family and how this would cause the wedge between him and Atreus. I mean, his dad killed his own sister. While it does get brought up it is only mentioned in passing and then forgotten, which sucks. Atreus still doesn't even know this big ass skeleton in the closet.
I can't say I agree too much, at least in regards to the dragon fight. I never quite liked that one, felt too much like just you on a platform with a giant monster on the edge of the stage that you only get to hit occasionally. The Garm fight in Ragnarok felt like a better version of that, actually feeling like it was in the same room with you despite being the size of a building. I will say I enjoyed the Baldur intro fight more than Thor's, but the fight against Heimdal was fantastic.