If it has good side quests on top, sure.

Witcher 3 set the benchmark for me. Although, GOW isn't a RPG.

25-35 hours according to Barlog. Which you can take with a grain of salt, because devs always expect it to take longer than it actually does.

Is it just me or this happens with every PS4 exclusive.

Like all of a sudden the standards of what a game should be gets dialed up to 11, The most minute, obscure or in some cases oulandish details gets scrutinized.

Maybe its just in my head though.

I don’t think it’s any exclusive factor, it’s just a long running franchise and some people might be worried about changes. Probably just in your head, people seem to just be comparing it to old God of War games.

I think the 35hrs sounds long because its more slowly paced,almost looks snail paced and it will have more set dialogue pieces of stopping and following the kid around. Much like Last Of Us and stuff like that. Padded  time put onto it

Nah Horizon Zero Dawn, as far as I know, had great amounts of hype going for it just for its graphics and setting alone. GOW's slow and tedious combat is something that is worth scrutinising and being concerned over. 

Other trailers (besides the reveal) have clearly shown various AoE attacks, whether it was your flying axe cleaving an arc in front of the player like a boomerang or a blast of (ice?) magic. Then there's other crowd controllers like throws, pins, stuns, and Atreus like you mentioned. It's probably also a safe bet that you'll acquire other weapons during the game, at least one of which should be more specialized to taking on crowds. 

Call me a hater, but between what gameplay we've seen at E3s and the gifs here (didn't get to see the video before it was taken down, sadly), I'm...more than a little concerned. It just looks sluggish and not well tuned to what God of War was. I've seen a lot of comparisons to Souls-esque combat, but I'm not sure that does the game any favors; Souls combat is certainly capable, I don't think it would ever be enough to carry a game.

Two weeks ago I was able to play the first 2 full hours of the new God of War on PS4. My full spoiler-free impressions will be up on YouTube on Monday. Get ready :) pic.twitter.com/Vxo3YTZTZ0

— Robin (@RobinGaming) March 17, 2018

Not even in the same genre as past GOW titles. Nevertheless, I’m picking it up. I love the RPG elements but really wish they’d have not diverged from the series formula.