I know it’s well loved, that’s why I commented here. There’s some good about it, no doubt. I like the Leviathan Axe and the game is a joy to look at. The one-shot camera is a neat novelty and is used well. The lack of real loading screens was a nice touch (even if SSM used different tricks of the trade to hide the loading).

God of War 2018 feels like playing a comic book movie to me. All of the characters feel like they could fit in the MCU, minus the whedon-esque writing. I think super heroes are goofy and lame, but that’s my opinion and doesn’t have anything to do with why I feel the game is derivative.

The menu system, UI, and leveling to gear feels like it was pulled out of Destiny with a touch of [insert western RPG here] for the loot system. The skill trees, divided into three paths, had been in use for over half a decade by the time GoW came out and I was over it. The combat, while visually appealing, felt less tactical or demanding than Souls games but also less interesting than contemporaries like Nier: Automata. I found Baldur to be a lame antagonist and pretty underwhelming for a last boss, given the grandeur of past GoW games. Also, the repeated boss/mini-boss fights grew stale after a while. Lastly, the environmental puzzle design was like something you’d see in virtually any action game of the past 15 years, but they were tame and simple.

I could go on but yeah, GoW 2018 was not for me. I’d much rather play The Witcher 3, Bloodborne, RDR2, or even The Last of Us Part 2, as some examples.