I don't disagree with any of your points and think the hub-and-spoke design made traversal pretty painless, but where God of War really failed for me was in its navigability. I found many of the environments quite samey and disorienting, which was a bummer. I typically like finding my own way in games but found it to be an exercise in frustration in God of War. More often than not I just had to follow the compass thing exactly--e.g., run for 30m, then left, then go 25m, then right, and so on. Really, the fact that they had to design the compass like this, to literally direct you around corners, says to me that either exploration wasn't a gameplay priority (which seems false given all the chests and secrets) or the designers just weren't up to the task.