SnakeFighter64
If I may ask out of curiosity. What is it about the Norse Saga God of War games you don't like about them?
Keep in mind I haven't played Ragnarok yet.
It's the combat really. Having all of the cool moves being relegated to the runes meaning you can't just have access to all of your moves all at once like the classic games. Learning the move combos is just more interesting to me because it makes me really feel skilled when I actually pull all these moves off in succession. Plus the over the shoulder camera just makes fighting large groups of enemies a chore if you're using any weapon other than the Blades of Chaos, and guess what weapon you don't even get until halfway through. You can't even jump, every time you jump in the game is automatic. Which just makes for boring level and world design imo.
Plus there are just less toys to play with compared to the older games. In God of War 2 and 3 you get 3-4 different weapons to play with, all who play radically differently, as well as the additional supplemental magic spells and items you get in some of them. Kratos used to be able to just do so much and it made each enemy encounter feel completely different from one another entirely based around which weapons you decided to use and how good you were with them. Meanwhile in the PS4 title you have two weapons (three if you're being charitable and count bare-handed fighting) and while I haven't played Ragnarok yet I do know they upped the weapon count by a whopping one. That's not even touching on modern hack and slashes like DMC5 or the Bayonetta games, heck even the Dark Souls games it so clearly wants to be, in terms of the variety of weapons the protagonists can get.
And honestly it's kind of hurtful whenever people say that the gameplay
needed to change, either to better support the story they wanted to tell, better suit "modern gaming tastes", or for the series to just "grow up" (looking at you Jirard). Because it honestly didn't. You can tell a deep and meaningful story in any kind of game. Heck you could still do the game in one long continuous shot, just have it zoom out more during fights. They didn't have to sacrifice what made the Greek era so fun to play in order to support what they wanted to do in the Norse era. and acting like they did just bothers me.
Speaking as someone who already related to Kratos and his story arc in the greek era, who has her own problems with self-destructive bursts of anger and not really thinking things through when their emotions are high, I actually really like the direction of the story. Showing that Kratos could change and heal but there's always a piece of that monster within him. Showing how he can still use his spartan rage for good. And from the thing's I've heard about Ragnarok's story it feels even more touching and I actually want to see where the story would go from here and where Kratos will end up in the future (and how he happens to end up killing other pantheons in the process). But all that good story can only help a game that I just don't think is fun to play so much.
When I say I want classic God of War back I don't mean I want Kratos to go back to shouting all his lines, doing sex minigames, and murdering innocents for extra health. I just mean I want the games to be the fun hack and slash games they helped pioneer in the PS2 era. Right now all I feel is abandoned. And alone because I hear almost nobody else who feels the same way about the gameplay of the Norse era.
