God Of War (2018)

• There's like a million things to upgrade, so make sure you dig through your menus on a regular basis. In addition to your weapon upgrade tree, you can upgrade your runic attacks, Atreus's summons, etc.

• In addition to being able to damage stuff by throwing your axe, you can also hit stuff with it on its return flight. This will become a necessary technique later so you might as well practice it early.

• The game doesn't make this very clear, but R1 and R2 throw the axe in different ways. R1 throws it normally, which is good for tripping up enemies (Aim for their legs). R2 adds frost damage to the axe before it's thrown, which is good for freezing enemies but as far as I can tell won't trip them up.

• You unlock fast travel relatively late in the game so don't bust your ass backtracking for optional stuff early on.

• The sprinting r1 attack and the r1 r1 r1 r2 combo are probably the first two upgrades you should shoot for.

• The one that lets you break enemies' guard by double-tapping L1 is basically essential because it's a hard counter to certain enemy types.

• Atreus becomes kind of a murder machine if you invest in his bow upgrades and skills, so don't skimp on that.

• As far as gear upgrades go, I think you should not bother spending your materials upgrading your early low level gear. As you progress through the game, the dwarf shops will sell you new tiers of basic gear in exchange for hacksilver that outlevels your upgraded old stuff, so you might as well save your mats until you find a nice purple/yellow piece that you want to sink some upgrades into.

• Your axe upgrades are plot-gated; you'll pick up frozen flames from main quest bosses, and you should spend them on axe upgrades as soon as you're able, they're no good for anything else.

• You should absolutely sell all the gear you aren't currently using at the dwarf shop. Even if you do somehow later change your mind and decide you want it after all (you probably won't) you can buy it back at the exact same price. There's no reason to hoard it.

• If the game tracks something in the list of collectibles, then you can go back for it.

• Don't worry too much about XP, it's sparse at first but the game throws it at you later.

• Your level is really meaningful in combat, so make sure you're keeping gear up to date.

• A telegraphed attack by an enemy that is red is unblockable and will hurt a lot. One that is yellow is blockable but will stagger you. There are perfect blocks in this game, but you can't do that against red attacks. Get out of the way instead.