When I played this game when it first came out, I wasn't really a big fan of it, and I found it hard to get to gripes with the new style of gameplay that this game established but after playing through the whole series and especially after playing Ascension, I get why Santa Monica changed the gameplay of the series so drastically and why they changed the story and tone so noticeably too. The series was in a dire need of a change.
After playing the game this time around, I enjoyed it a lot more than I did originally did. It's a solid reinvention of the series and a decent enough soft reboot even though I am coming to dislike the idea of them strongly. The story and writing is solid and engaging, I did like the first GoW's story but the plots of the sequels only amped up the silliness and despite them having interesting ideas and the character of Kratos being the most naunced and interesting thing about them, they ultimately collapsed in on themselves, however this game's story basically uses those games as a backdrop for Kratos' character in this game and after playing those games, the PSP games and seeing Kratos in this one, it is easy to see why Kratos is the way he is. His interactions with his son Atreus are pretty well done and they geniunely feel like a family where Atreus and Kratos get into constant arguments, Kratos holding in anger, Atreus constantly looking down on Kratos for his cold distance and how Faye was the very thing that kept the family together. Freya and Baldur are decent enough foils to Kratos and Atreus where they do a good at constasting how the latter could've ended up. A scene later in the game does a great job at tying Kratos' journey in the older games with this game. While I don't agree with the narrative that some made that Kratos became a "good" character with this game, I do enjoy the story here. My only big gripes is that that it is never shown how Kratos was able to control his anger from GoW3 to 2018 and the character of Faye despite being a very important character is someone the player never actually sees their isn't much flashbacks showing the relationship between her, Kratos, and Atreus which gives me less of an understanding why Atreus and Kratos value her so much, her character is not shown enough to give me a better perspective. Still, a solid tale overall.
Gameplay wise, it's also pretty good if different. The feel of combat feels much more weighty and impactful and killing enemies have has a good "oofmph" to it, and this is a big improvement over the older games. I didn't like that light and heavy attacks where mapped to R1 and R2 when I originally played but when I played it again, I switched it to sqaure and triange and it was much better for me. I didn't really mind the lack of a jump button as other people did, there were some moments I did with some of the area of effect attacks where I thought I can jump over them like in previous games but I got used to used the shield. I feel like platforming with over the shoulder perspective wouldn't really work all that well and there isn't really many over the shoulder platformers to begin with and the only one I can think of is Batman Arkham but the platforming in that is already automated in that as it is in this game. The camera is mostly fine but I can occasionally find it hard to judge the right distance when to avoid attacks, the knights when they lunge at you with swords is a good example of this, and enemies hitting me from beind from time to time, but I did eventually get used to this. The enemies that reduce your vision when getting hit can go screw themselves however since the overshoulder camera's vision being obscured doesn't make it reliable enough to dodge enemy attacks. However what I didn't like was that healing stones and rage stones had to be activated with a button press rather than them being magnetized to come to you like in previous games. Most games ever that do this tend to healing pickups float over to you but in this game, you must run over to them which can be rather frustrating since you have to avoid attacks just to replenish health and you have to watch for enemies and they could land a hit while you press circle to activate the healing or rage stone. My idea for this is just have rage and healing stones be magnetic while loot is not. The RPG elements are okay even though I am not a big fan of them a lot of games, it's nothing too intrusive but like many games with these systems most of it just becomes a boring game of checking for high stats and upgrading loot with high stats than it is about pure skill. It's not the worst example of it in a game. I also like the level design in this game, while didn't care for the "open world" aspect of the game, I did like how this one kept the previous games' interconnected world by going back to previous locations with new abilities like with the mountain or Tyre's Temple.
Overall, GoW 2018 is a solid reinvention of the series.
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