Also, while I understand that the game's story focused on Atreus growing up, the loss of the dynamic between the protective, fatherly Kratos and the young, childlike Atreus makes the game feel like it has less going for it.

John Carmack once said that the story in a game is expected to be there, but it's not that important. God of War: Ragnarok turns the tables on this quote and takes things in the complete opposite direction. In this game, the gameplay is expected to be there, but it's not that important. 

Even though the game had so much dialogue and so much story, it really didn't. There were periods of time where 30 minutes would go by without any gameplay, and all that happened in the meantime were a few lines of dialogue between characters while they either stared meaningfully meaninglessly off into the distance or something. That's not much of a story - that's just staring at the screen waiting for the next line.

Overall, the game wasn't as good as the first game. However, it did deliver on the promise of Ragnarok. There was indeed a great battle at the end. And yes, there was a fight with Thor. But the boss battles in this game never felt as epic as the boss battles in the previous series.

I'll write up one more post on this game regarding how it treated the source Norse mythology. On the mythology aspect, it faired much better than in the story/gameplay aspect; the game took many creative liberties with the mythology, but that's to be expected when trying to adapt it to a new medium. As I said earlier, though, it didn't really capture the adventure of the Norse mythology. It just did a good job of checking off the list of gods and mythological objects to include.