There are some differences between this game and the base game that make this one worse, they removed IFrames from all runic attacks, bosses get a random shield for 5+ seconds when you're hitting them too hard for too long, Spartan rage against bosses does little to no damage. This game went a very "Dark Souls" route, and honestly it was not the right play, in the first game you could sustain 5-6 hits from a boss without dying, and they were still strong and took awhile to beat (2nd to hardest difficulty), in this game you can only take 2-3 hits before your character falls over, I understand it's a game but they made Kratos feel like paper vs some of the enemies here. I 100%'d it because honestly, this is my favorite game series by far, the story makes you happy, sad, angry, it has all the elements of a fantastic movie but it's in a game. I can't say that i praise Ragnarok for its combat like I did in the first one, and the story still has some things that i'm not a huge fan of as well (Raganarok felt very rushed, you spend more time in Ironwood than you do in the cinematic "end game"). However, it was still amazing and i'm sad its over. Hoping for another series in Egypt, Japan, or similiar. Maybe even a spin-off.