There are design choices I find suspicious in the game, but that might be related to the way I played it.
- You unlock 865654 fighting moves, but I used a couple at most (the shield bash to break the enemy defense, throwing projectiles back at enemies once in a while and.... throwing rocks when in rage because it's funny!). The Valkyrie Queen died all the same to my mighty R1 basic combos.
- You get 768675564654 enchants. 95% of those are worthless. Some have contextual use (resists), but most you just use for the level.
- There are 6756758765 chests in the game and 99% of them contain garbage. It was difficult to get excited the first time I found 1 World Serpent Scale and 3 Solid Svarthalfeim Steel, so imagine the 30th time...
- There is a bunch of runes and talismans... I think I used about 10 runes total and maybe 4 talismans.
I understand the idea of having a rich equipment system that allows a lot of customization to accommodate different play styles, but the implementation in GoW was both tedious (up to 22 equipment slots in an action game!) and not satisfying, because you constantly get stuff you don't care about and stats feel totally useless. The one important value is the level because it has an actual impact on the gameplay. For my money, the whole thing could have been culled to the point every time you find something you are actually excited about it.
Again, this problem might be emphasized by my play style. I played in normal and I always progressed the main quest last, after all the side stuff was done.
I very much enjoyed the game as a whole though.