These were my impressions as well. I forced myself to finish the first palace(?) but it just felt so tedious. And when after like 15 hours they introduce yet another facet of gameplay and throw another tutorial at you it really does interrupt and sense of immersion for me. Only being able to do like 3 or 4 things a day felt kind of silly as well. I wanted to explore some of the characters more but having to go to sleep and sit through some random stuff in between anything actually interesting was just exhausting.

God of War also wasn’t my cup of tea but I loved HZD. Although it took a while. The first 5-10 hours were a bit rough because the game is quite cagey about giving you the tools to actually have fun with the gameplay. After that the game just got better and better for me. Which is kind of rare for games of that size for me usually. Most of the time I’'m just burnt out at the end and happy for it to be over.

God of War looked impressive but I just could not bring myself to care about any of it. To me the whole father-son dynamic and entire story just tried way too hard and felt somewhat flat as a result.

Mass Effect has banger tracks pretty much throughout the entire trilogy. I also quite often go back to the Bastion soundtrack. The tracks are great on their own already but how they used the songs within the game was brilliant.

I also want to mention the Gothic soundtrack because I get nostalgic every time I hear it. The main theme just transports me back into that world instantly. Even though it’s been like 10 years since I last played these games.