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No, all the boss fights pretty much follow the same format, with a basic combat part, a break in the fighting, and an interactive part which is what they've replaced QTEs with, and then more fighting. The cycle may continue depending on the boss fight and the story they're trying to tell. The only two things the final boss fight changes up is they don't prompt you on what buttons to press during the interactive part because it already taught you what to do in a previous encounter and expects you to remember it. The second is an underused mechanic in the spoiler tag but its straight forward and you'll easily understand it. There is actually a single boss fight that is just straight combat. I think this is to introduce you to the condition mechanic because its not an important character and they reuse this enemy type later for optional bosses and tough encounters. There is burning, frozen, poison, and blindness. Burning, Poison, and Frozen just do damage over time. If frozen slows you down, I couldn't tell or wasn't paying attention. Blindness is more annoying as this is what that particular boss does. When you get blinded, your field of vision becomes limited. Minor blindness puts you in a grey haze where you can only see a few feet around you, while major blindness has you walking around in pitch black with a spot light over you basically.. you can't see anything outside of that circumference. The annoying part of this is that if you get hit by the these certain attacks again the meter completely resets and you stay blind until you can avoid getting hit by it for a pretty generous amount of time. Conditions have visual affects as burning has you covered in molten rock looking skin, Poison gives you a fart cloud , and frozen is just frost over your body... but there is also a symbol with a border timer over your health bar similar to GW2 to indicate how much duration is left on the condition. You'll later find armor enchantments that you can socket that can have resistance to these conditions, each can stack up to various amounts. I've never had to use them, I bet they're more useful for challenging or "Give me God of War" mode. I played on normal and it was a enjoyable experience with enough challenge for me.

I just beat this game and holy shit, it was amazing from start to finish. There was never really a dull moment. Its amazing how they were able to create a map where every path had a purpose, everything had reason. You never went anywhere and there was nothing but a dead end or just pointless trinket for a collection. At worst there was a skeleton with a bag of currency, but that was a lot less common than finding a chest plus a collection item. The dialogue kept things interesting while you walked or boated to wherever you needed to go. There was only one stretch in the game where Atreus is disgruntled and just kept saying "whatever" over and over again. It was pretty annoying but the overall silence between the two worked well for the tension being conveyed to the player at the time, as you've been conditioned to constant chatter the entire game. Even the back tracking, what little there was, was done very well as they generally made use of short cuts to the area that you could open up with new abilities and tools. Hell, even taking a long trek off path normally ended with a chain to climb down or a rope to zipline to get back to where you needed fast rather than having to walk all the way back through empty pathways. The main boss fights were actually really easy, I never died on any of them or even came close to it. They presented a more cinematic experience as each of them had stages interrupted with various crazy ass unplayable sequences... it was almost like a short break because a lot of these fights are a good 10-15 minute affairs. Interestingly enough the side quests and optional bosses are much more challenging at the cost of really good drops and extra lore. Even some of the common encounters were more of a challenge TBH. I sorta prefer this model. I rather not constantly die from a boss and have to relive the sequence of events and dialogue multiple times. It does break immersion. Some of the tougher enemies will definitely have you cringing when you see them. The game does a good job of introducing you to their mechanics, and then later throw more powerful ones at you, or giving you two at a time either of the same type or two different ones that present their own challenge. I pretty much saved up my spartan rage of these moments. I would take one down with it and then deal with the other. I'm cheap like that. especially the Ogres since you can ride them and make them unwillingly attack when you break their stun meter. Health in this game is much different form previous GoW games, you have to manually stomp on them to regain HP. There are no chests or breakables that float you orbs in a time of need. Stomping on a crystal during a fight is a calculated risk as it does take a half of second. I've had it completely negated by getting hit while stomping on one during a fight. There are two armors you can get for Atreus that will have him throw you a crystal when low on HP. Spartan rage also heals you with every hit you land. There are also armor socketables that will give you health upon a kill, but its not a lot, and rarely worth wasting a slot on. The story itself was just damn good. There were so many "oh shit" crazy ass moments... most of the journey is filled with set backs and getting around those. Every time you're near your goal, something happens that makes you have to go do another task. Normally this would be annoying, but its well done, and extends the story to give the finale much more meaning. The relationship between Kratos and Atreus evolves throughout the game and is reflected thought the dialogue in how they respond to each other. This was done masterfully in more ways than one. There is no way to tell what and when a player will do side quests in relation to what you've done in the story including getting Mimir's head. Mimir adds even more dynamic to this as he will have comments on things too. For instance I missed a few lore discoveries at the starting area of the game. I later went back to unlock a door I couldn't and picked it up along the way. Mimir had something to add to it that I wouldn't have gotten if I had asked Atreus to read it the first go around. The extra mile was really put into this game, and it shows every step of the way. EA can suck a fat one for saying single player games are dead. This was worth the 5 years put into it. Now for an aspect of gameplay I love/hated. I'll put it in a spoiler tag, because you can't do it until after a certain point in the game... chances are youtube or looking at the achievements will spoil it though. Its not a story spoiler but I still feel it's best to get there and experience it without knowing its coming.