10 Open-World Games That Punish You For 100%
2. God Of War Ragnarök
God of War Ragnarök is an astonishing achievement and one of the finest AAA games of the last few years, hands down, but that doesn't mean it's perfect.
Despite how expertly engineered and designed the game undeniably is, it nevertheless suffers from one of its predecessor's most-cited issues: a lack of balance between side quests and mainline content.
In Ragnarök, if you dare to tackle the side quests as they become available rather than saving them for later on, you're liable to end up with a comically OP Kratos - a sheer wrecking ball of a protagonist who will pulverise his way to easy victory.
Given that the majority of the game's side quests are well worth playing as they add a lot of flavour and backstory to the cast of characters, you can't really blame players for wanting to mop up every last one they can find.
The result, though, is that the tension of the main campaign will end up unavoidably diluted.
And so, players are forced to make an agonising choice between ingesting the story-based side quests as they pop up - as they were clearly designed to be - or saving them for later and pushing forward for a more challenging main story.
Given that the side quests are smartly woven into the point of the game at which they become available, neither choice is ideal at all, and effectively creates a problem for players who wish to industriously experience everything in an organic way.