"Brainless"? You don't know what you're talking about. The original God of Wars were highly technical, tactical & skill based with combos & different enemy types requiring different approaches. Even finding phoenix feathers & other hidden areas required some real exploration. God of War 2018 meanwhile was a literal "spam square to make Atreus rain down arrows on enemies until win" along with objectives marked on the freaking map.
Objectively speaking the latest game required less brains to complete than the originals.