I have never touched any of the previous three God of Wars (i know... sorry) but I prefer to play a challenging experience, so i'm playing on the 2nd to hardest mode.

It took me a while just to kill the dremors, or whatever they call them. I had a tough time w that first giant boss, and then had some hard times beating the tattoo'd blue guy. But it seems like, once you find out their attacks, just dodge/block, juke away, attack, repeat 32x until they die.

I am basically just mashing R1 and R2 until my forearm hurts, not sure if I should have a rhyme or reason to it. haven't been throwing the axe much at all.