Combat, I mean what can you say, the flow of the combat, the abilities and styles was fantastic. The enemy variety was solid, but nothing spectacular. Enough to create some combat variety at least in a way that you had to somewhat change up your approach, though later this was less and less important. Especially with the right Runic abilities (Tempest and Blessing of Frost) made things quite trivial. The combat flowed very well, especially early on in the title with just axe/shield to melee and back. The game excels in this regard.
To that end, I think it was a mistake to bring back the blades of chaos, especially in regards to making us use them. It was great in terms of the story, the impact of that scene was excellent. It would have been cool to have them back for a boss fight or a small segment. But I think it negatively impacts the flow of combat past that point. As it's highly incentivized to use abilities, over combo flow. Switching to blades of chaos to use abilities or for wide sweeping attacks, then back to leviathan axe made the most sense to do, and output the most hurt/damage. Especially with block/dodge breaking attributes. I think the combat was at its best, when they prioritized the dynamic between the free flow of axe to fist combat. Later I found myself almost never actually engaging in combat with my fists during axe downtime and very rarely even throwing my axe/follow up attacks outside very particular enemies, as it was completely unnecessary and lowered my output.
The very natural rythm of introducing side paths, and side quests. Almost nothing was completely off the beaten path, in a way that you'd have to get lucky stumbling across it, or easy to miss. It was a much more curated experience, and I liked that it was only semi-open world. I never felt particularly lost or aimless throughout, everything I was doing was leading to something. Atreus or Mimir pointing things out/mentioning them and even tying lore and emotional resonance into those components was awesome. I've fallen off a lot of open world experience recently, and this held my attention like a game hasn't in a while due to the excellent flow of the content.
The world, it was an incredible place. Breath taking art and vistas. I mean wow, for instance Thamur's corpse, the introduction and exploring there was a highlight. When the game opens up a bit too, or at least the implication of it opening up after you open the Bifrost, and travel the Alfheim etc. Is amazing. This leads me to the weakest component of the game by far. The emptiness, and meaningful interaction with the world. It very much reminds me of a horror title, giving you the runaround as to why you never see, talk or interact with anyone but monsters and occasionally Brock and Sindri. It was very much a throwback in that regard to the PS2 era limitations/design for me, I get the comparisons to RE4 in this regard. It left the world feeling very devoid of vibrancy and life.
This is, I think very poignantly pointed out by one of the low points in the game and sets the tone for the rest of the title, Alfheim. It's our first experience traveling through the Bifrost, we're visiting a new land, a mirror realm and the game feels like it's opening up. What's this? There's an ongoing war between Dark and Light Elves. Whats the story here? Who will we side with, who will we help. We proceed slowly across, maybe stopping to explore on the side. We watch light elves being massacred by dark elves, listening to Atreus question why this is happening. We kill many Dark Elves, proceeding onward with our task, killing ever more Dark Elves as we move to the inner sanctum for the light of Alfheim. We have a minor cinematic experience, Atreus pulls us out. We leave with the light, letting the Light Elves back in and killing the Dark Elf leader. This experience ends up feeling pretty empty/shallow in the end, a real tease of deeper interaction. Other than the fact we got lost in our mind, and our son killed a ton of Dark Elves with the Leviathan, what a badass, and he's now angry at us because we left him. Ok sure, setting up the interaction/tense situation between Dad and son, I can appreciate that. However literally, the only people in the entire game we encounter other than gods, godesses, Mimir, Brock and Sindri we can't get involved with them beyond combat, we don't know their situation. There's no NPC's to talk to, no sides to take, no depth to their conflict. No quests to undertake. It's an absolute tease for more life in this beautiful but barren land. It's very oddly juxtaposed in the story, and comparative to later experiences sticks out like a sore thumb. Almost as if there had been more planned there, more attention to civilizations and their situations in the future too. But kind of got scrapped and emptied out as time went on. Certainly a low early point.
This continues on, and becomes a representation of what you'll get to explore in the further realms. Small, barren and largely unimportant locations that don't do much to service the story/experience further except have some minor activities and treasures. Hellheim has set piece moments, which are cool and help progress the story. But I can't help but to feel almost all of these locations did little to serve the overall game. What's more, that initial large feeling we get, that wow moment when we see all the locations we can travel to. Is just a tease. Which was pretty disappointing, as we learn later, that we can really only visit a few of these places. With two of them being treasures/Challenge realms.
Which leads me to another sticking point, treasures, challenges, gear and progression. While the game does a great job with the standard games path, leading you through the story with plenty of great, emotional and tense moments. All the while adding in side quests in a decent looping way as you go. It doesn't do a great job with gear progression, and revisiting paths for what you've unlocked at all to keep that steady stream of improvements. Too often did I already have gear far more powerful than what I was finding and things I feel I should have had a while back. Retreading areas which you could now access thanks to new abilties and items, very rarely felt rewarding in a meaningful way. Almost every bramble location, especially in Midgard I found had enchantments, pommels/blades or otherwise that were low level, blue items etc. I think certain items should have been locked to specific encounters/events like the Valkyries for instance. But largely otherwise I think the chests should have been slowly rolled out based on your current level/progress and abilities, versus specific locational chests that were far too often redundant or useless one I found them. Especially since after you find the Chisel, it feels only natural to want to start hunting down Valkyries which you've already found, which give you quite powerful gear.
To this end Muspelheim and Nilfheim played into this awkward gear pacing as well, and the more barren world. If you're like me, you reached Musphelheim fairly early, and did at least a few challenges, got some gear. Then left and largely forgot about it until way later, where that gear was completely irrelevant and the content just easy as can be. Post that here were tons of level 4-5 purple and orange runes on side quests which made a lot of the random "return later when you have X item chests" nearly worthless. After you hit Nilfheim later in the game, you quickly launch from a lower level. I think I was 5, up to 7 or even 8. I mean I think I completed all of Ivaldi's workshop in maybe a few hours just because of the need to grind the anchors boxes, and knowing past that point I was quickly closing in on the end of the game, I felt like I needed to do it then. So yea, in my opinion the pacing of upgrades at least, was not great, and probably would have been better addressed in a different way.
I also think any gear set in the game, should have had the ability to go up to max level. So that a set you really like, and the effects, you could carry with you all the way to level 8, provided you had the materials. Which maybe could have been restricted simply by certain resources only being found at certain corresponding areas tied to the games progression/farm-able to a degree like a souls title. It was disappointing to end the game, and really only be able to choose from a few sets, likely which were Ivaldi's or the Valkyries. Having those pieces have the best set bonuses would have been fine/incentive enough to get them. It probably wasn't necessary to cap various sets to lower levels.
Additionally, the time spent and rewards of Muspelheim and Nilfheim just didn't feel quite right, they were supposed to be largely rewarding and challenging. But for the most part outside Niflheim they simply weren't worth doing and interrupted the pace of the game if you did (Which is why I completely forgot about Muspelheim until I was far too overpowered for it.) I'm not sure those were the experiences in those locations that should have been focused on, side quests dealing with the story of what happened there, maybe some interactions with other peoples or gods, or just nixing them entirely for a longer story/focus, even just more side quests. I think would have been a far better use-age of the time, and been a more rewarding and better flowing experience overall. I get what they wanted to do with the two places, something like Bloodborne Chalice dungeons. But I felt they largely under-delivered and frankly didn't mesh well with the title for me.
I think that is especially underscored by the fact that the games pacing does wax and wane in odd ways at times, especially like I said with Alfheim and then late in the game when things very much slow down. The time and resources of those two trial locations, would have probably been better used to smooth out the main story pacing and add things where necessary.
