It's an interesting mix of elements of the old games combined with new stuff. It feels fresh and familiar at the same time. Whoever created the ax throwing and return dynamic is a genius. That mechanic alone is a ton of fun.
I'm trying to remember from the older games if the whole game (outside of cutscenes) were done in one continuous, unbreaking shot with no loading screens or anything. I remember God of War 2 in particular feeling like one big interlocked level, and God of War 3 literally had you traversing through heaven and earth without having it cut. Regardless, the choice to do that an incorporate "cut scenes" as part of it was an awesome idea. The game clearly has a more cinematic feel to it compared to the arcade-like feel of the old ones. The old ones would go cinematic in the boss fights, but this game feels like that style more or less all the time.
Having only fought one legit boss so far though, I do have a question for others that have played through at least part of the game. If you're on the 2nd lowest (default) difficulty, does the game put the fight on rails to some degree? Obviously there are a ton of different stages to the fight, and as the fight wore on I got better at it and started to inflict damage easier while taking less myself. On the first section, however, I probably got him down to half health whereas I was nearly dead. Then, out of seemingly nowhere, it entered a cinematic cue and I entered the next "stage" of the fight. Is that something that is done on the lower difficulties? I don't know for sure, but I kind of got the feeling that I couldn't die. I still haven't died in game yet either, although I have no doubt that you obviously can die. Just referring to that one boss fight sequence in particular.
