i personally think it's unfair to compare AW to a normal action game and judge it for its lack of gameplay, because you end up missing both the specific context at the time it was released, and also the specific and very deliberate intentions of its creators
this game was created to be a cinematic super stylish epic of God tier fight after fight, with clear inspirations from the god of war cutscenes but taken to its natural extremes
it's arguably closer to a 3D CGI shounen anime, and a damn fine one at that, kind of a genre on its own because of the added interactivity from the gaming medium
i'm not saying the game was a masterpiece, there are and were plenty of legitimate complaints about it, like the ending being separate paid dlc, but people shouldn't just dismiss it as "qte moviegaem lol", because they end up missing out on what was arguably one of the coolest experiences at the time, kind of a time capsule really.
it was back when stuff like ttgl was in vogue, so having shit like punching the ground really hard and half a continent cracks, and then a fucking planet sized titan tries to squash things with a finger, it was fucking peak.