That doesn't make any sense.
Its a really good game. I've never said otherwise. I'm just highlighting 'overrated'.
But when people talk about it like a generational game or something, I really just can't agree with that.
The gameplay is straight up average at best. The combat system forces you to deal with things like the camera and rigid animations working against you more than enemies themselves. Those same enemies are recycled far more than they should've been for a game with the resources of the studio too. That sort of approach to combat, over the shoulder, is inherently limited and unless you take a Mass Effect approach to it and go out of of your way to enhance player mobility, then you'll have players forced into a flowchart type of play instead of dynamic combat.
Little things like the equipment/rpg mechanics do nothing other than add artificial length to the game. Very few things offered through it dynamically alter how you approach any fight or situation. At least not in such a sense that it warrants the system's introduction when it was never needed in the past to achieve the same (and in many cases better) results.
The game is in many ways carried by the previous titles and Norse mythology. Which isn't 'bad' by any means - however, its important to not that many new or ambitious titles don't have the luxury of falling back on a decade of character building and one of the most interesting/frequently referenced pantheons out there. The story and narrative impact from events in it just aren't that good. At the same time, the game fails to highlight best of either when it pulls from these things. People who grew up with the boss fights and dramatic sequences highlighting these fabled gods simply got let down. You end up fighting a guy who is not only wholly uninteresting on paper but as repetitive and misused as the Didact from Halo.
Traversing the environment, while some setpieces are great, just doesn't leave you feeling like you're being offered the same level of exploration as other titles. I'm *not* stating anything about a lack of open world design. I'm more or less emphasizing that GoW loves to show you great vistas of something you'll never reach or pointing at things with the hint that the next title will take you there.
I don't know know how people can look at God of War and say it does anything better than something like a Bloodborne.
Its not terrible by any means, but its still kinda jarring to me how it dodged complaints about things that other games get knocked on
immediately. In some ways, its like Fallen Order - where the atmosphere makes up for a lot of the technical/design shortcomings. Other titles get immediately checked for hyperbole as well. Breath of the Wild takes shots for simple mistakes such as weapon degradation when people bring up its amazing approach to allowing the player freedom of approach. The Witcher fans are constantly reminded how jank the gameplay is and how the sidequests really aren't that special. RDR2 plays in slow motion. So on and so forth.
God of War basically escaped any meaningful criticism because of marketing. With more time away from it, the clearer it'll be when people compare it against other games from this generation.
Its an overrated game
and yeah, you can be good and overrated at the same time.
