So. What's everyone's opinion on this game?

haha yeah, I saw your spoiler in a video today. Looked like an absolute joke to be honest.

I constantly see people praising the gameplay and depth, yet no one is saying ANYTHING. As far as I know, I'm the only one who has pointed out the various enemy states, juggles, launchers etc, yet no one is talking about that kind of stuff.

This game has always been really controversial among action fans, but I personally really appreciate it and I think it deserves the critical acclaim. It's not my GOTY 2018, that would be Yakuza 6, but still.

I think that the combat system is overall really good considered that there is less emphasis on it than older GoW games. It's not revolutionary or complex, but it works well and you can do some fun stuff with it, as you can see on YT. Among recent western AAA titles such as The Witcher 3, Horizon Zero Dawn or AC Origins, GoW has EASILY the best combat of the bunch imo. I liked the level design too, and I'm glad it's not another empty open world game with tons of fetch quests. The setting is interesting as well, I hope that it will be explored more with the second entry.

There are, however, things I don't like and that prevent this game from being more than "just" a really solid game:
- they could have done more with the bosses, there are only like 5 real bossfights in an action game that lasts more than 20 hours
- the post-game stuff is not interesting enough imo, the valkyries are not particularly fun to fight and the discount chalice dungeons are just dull (even more than the original CDs from BB, which were already the worst part of the game)
- the hardest difficulty mode is basically "hit things a million times while they one-shot you" and doesn't add anything new
- the boat segments get boring really fast

Overall I don't think that this is a masterpiece or the game of the generation, far from it, but it's an awesome way to reboot a series and a very solid foundation for future games. As of now, the best game in the GoW series is definitely 3, in my opinion.

My take on the game is fairly documented (one of the bigger articles on the site), I will say that I do like a lot of its ideas like the Axe and how the throw works, but it just got bogged down by a lot of lacking features for me. Especially coming from the previous games.

I personally still prefer GoW1 the most, but that is a heavy personal bias. I consider GoWII to be the best while GoWIII has the best combat of the bunch (the battering ram...pure perfection).

It is interesting to see someone that really enjoyed it, good to hear! What was your take on its RPG systems?

The RPG stuff was... ok, I guess. It's strange, you can clearly tell that Santa Monica was a bit insecure with that, which is understandable since they've never done it before. During the mandatory sequences you can pretty much just ignore the RPG systems, and even on harder settings it's more important getting good with the combat (and this is a good thing). However, after the end-game you're overwhelmed with all of this Diablo-style loot that you need to optimize and grind in order to beat the post-game challenges which represent a MASSIVE difficulty spike.

There is this weird balance that however works fine, mostly. For the next entry they'll have to choose to either focus more on the RPG stuff or maybe handle it like Sekiro, with power-ups after bosses. Both of these options are fine to me: the first one can lead to a more varied and customizable gameplay, which can be interesting, and the second can lead to a more skill-based and old-school game. Ideally they would take the best of both worlds, but it's not an easy thing to do and even Platinum failed on NieR Automata (as much as I love that game, the RPG stuff is broken as hell).

The RPG stuff (no doubt Jason's influence) is what ruined all the hard work of Derek (neat Action combat mechanics like tripping foes, pinning them to walls, freezing/shattering, etc. *workarounds for higher setting stat increases*). Move too far away from their level for OHKO, unblockable, super tanks all over (hyper armor included so don't count on easily just using RO to get around the problem).

This was that clown McDonald as gameplay lead where before it was his fault as combat lead in GoW:A (for all the problems that one had on that front). Derek was from GoW1, GoWII and the earliest bits of GoWIII (fundamentals) alongside Eric (with the original Barlog closely tied to them *Nu-Barlog drifted as too many do...aging out into something inferior as with Jaffe*).

Late to the party but this was my first GoW game (still only played GoW 1 ps2 on normal other then this), so I thought I might give my two-cents.

My uncle rented this out of nowhere on release, came over and handed it to me to play and pissed off only coming back when he needed to return it(he's a weird guy and he does this fairly often).

I haven't played it since, so my memory's a little fuzzy. But I remember liking it a decent amount at first but feeling like it didn't go anywhere; both story and gameplay-wise. The combat was really repetitive and dulled the senses after awhile.
I don't pretend to be an expert in the combat in this game, but I'm generally of the opinion that a game's design should at least nudge the player in the right direction in terms of getting the most out of the games mechanics. This is something I felt this game failed at. Most games do this by difficulty bumps, new enemy types that force you to experiment or learn new tactics, new moves or abilities, challenging bosses who work as a gatekeeper to higher levels of play etc etc.
If this game had more interesting gameplay other then spam parry and dodge, then I was never forced to learn it. While this could partially be blamed on me; I don't think this responsibility can be entirely placed on the player.
I remember this game constantly throwing the same tired and already unimpressive enemies at me over and over again. Rarely breaking tedium with anything challenging. This led to just wanting to be done with the game and speeding through it in the most lazy way possible, rarely taking time to experiment. The bloated length of the game didn't help this.

Story-wise, I don't remember much. I remember the kid turning into an asshole, then swiftly changing his mind and listening to my button inputs again. Other then that, it seemed like it was just throwing "emotional set-pieces" for some easy feels into the mix without much payoff.
I'm being very vague, so these criticisms don't mean much. But the fact I remember so little might be the most damning thing I can say about it.

When the credits were done rolling, I ejected the disc and uninstalled it more swiftly then any game I can remember. I found out later that I quit too soon and missed this whole Thor teaser thing at the ending. I was just so done with it I didn't care. I didn't even hate it, I JUST DIDN'T CARE!

I feel bad being so "meh" about the game, 'cause some of the art and scenery was very impressive as well as the performances of the actors. But this game just didn't leave an impression.

So anyway, there's my vague and pointless two-cents on the game.