When I saw that Ragnarok was nominated for just about everything at the Game Awards I sorta rolled my eyes and thought "pfsh, of course it is". Now that I've completed it myself... Yeah, of course it is.

This game isn't perfect by any stretch, the combat gets a bit repetitive, there are too many optional bosses/trials/collectible whatnots, and while I've seen a lot of people praise it for being a duology instead of dragging out to a trilogy (which I agree with 100%), it still ironically drags its own runtime out with side content just a bit more than it needs to in my opinion. There's already so much game, I don't need you to ask me to travel all 9 realms looking for flowers/lizards/stags/whatever else at multiple stages throughout the game as an excuse to go back to areas I've spent 5 hours in already. I appreciate that I can access new areas within the realms now and that's great, but there's no need for an entire tab of "1 of 15" and "4 of 10" ...etc when the game is rich with fantastic content and incentive to explore without it.

That aside, the characters and the story are superb, absolutely top marks. People call this a movie game as a negative a lot, which I really don't understand because it's not a movie game in that it's lacking in game and instead just shows you the story.. It's a movie game because it feels like you're playing a movie, the direction, the tension, the whole thing is a journey that you're being taken on, yes, but that you're still in control of just as much as any other game. If the credits role and I feel like I've just finished watching The Lord of the Rings or some shit, how is that a bad thing??? I beat monsters to a pulp for 40 hours and felt fulfilled at the end, like what happened, mattered - damn what a terrible game ( -_・)?

God of War Ragnarok improves upon everything that it's predecessor does, and yeah it shares some of the same flaws but for what it's worth, I think it's blatantly unreasonable to expect them to have made a better sequel than this. Bravo, Santa Monica Studio.

God of War Ragnarök is an improvement in every way possible, it's the sequel we deserved and after over 40 hours I finally finished this Masterpiece. The set pieces are mindblowing, I think half of my storage capacity is now occupied by screenshots of this game. I also absolutely adore the soundtrack, I can't praise it enough, I got goosebumps every time I heared it. The narrative is amazing and the fact that the whole game is a one-shot elevates the whole experience, the cutscenes are exceptional.
I wasn't a big fan of Atreus in the first game because of his god complex. But they really did a 180 with him, I enjoyed his arc and gameplay a lot. The chemestry between Atreus and Kratos is great but also between him and Angrboda. I like her a lot and she's my favorite new character. I never cried so many times in a video game and thb. I Iost count. When a simple hug between two characters can make me tear up then there is no other way than to call this one of the best games of the last few years.

Top 5 games of 2022

Sony's first party games ranked

feels like the writers are actively working against the game. Every time I had fun with the game, I felt like it was despite the story and characters, not because of them. I’m sick of fucking condescending quirky dialogue filling AAA games now, it’s like watching the flanderization of an entire medium in real time. Just let me have fun with your god killing game! You can still be really fucking serious ™️ and sad ™️ in your story but at least fucking try to make your themes come together in a coherent way. The entire final act of this game hits with no impact at all, it all feels incredibly hollow. At least the combat is fun.

If I'm gonna hear someone say one more time that it's just "more of the same" I'm gonna detonate myself and everyone in a 5km radius. I fucking despise this very new trend of calling sequels that don't look massively different "the same". GoW already had an enormous amount of innovation with 2018, it doesn't need more for a while. Also GoW 2 and any OG GoW game to follow, excluding 3, play nearly identically to 1 but nobody bats an eye, it's only bad apparently when new games do it



Anyways, gonna link the full review here(if I ever make one) after I play the game for a while:https://www.backloggd.com/u/Shrouls/review/618952/

God of War Ragnarök is the sequel to one of the best PS4 games. As a sequel should be, Ragnarök takes the features of the previous game and makes everything better.

It’s important to start this review by saying that it’s necessary to know the story of the last game. If you have never played the 2018 game, they will tell you what happened right at the beginning of Ragnarök, but you will probably miss the connection between the characters. It’s not necessary to play the other games of the franchise, but if you did, you will understand more about Kratos at this moment of his life.

The gameplay is almost the same as the previous game. Some powers were added, but nothing special. Don’t get me wrong... I can say the battle system is nearly perfect.

The visuals are nothing special. If you are playing on the PlayStation 5, you'll see that it could have better effects. They chose to release a PS4 version, and it makes the PS5 users pay a price.

To finish here, I say it’s a must-play game if you have a PlayStation console. It’s not perfect, but it’s a great game from an important franchise. I had fun, but nothing more than that. The fact that they decided to improve the previous game and release a PS4 version makes me feel that this game could be even better.

Seeing a lot of people complaining about it being a "movie game" because of its big focus on narrative and cutscenes and so? This isnt anything new. 2018 was just like that stop playing these kinds of games then if you don't like them 😭

Anyways. The combat still isn't perfect but it is a good step up and all the additions still make for a really fun time. The world and environments are stunning. Nearly all of the side content is cool as shit. The story is absolutely phenomenal. It's pretty close to perfect

We all wear masks... metaphorically speaking, Mr. Kratos.

Don't know why I got it in my head that God of War (2018) was the first in a trilogy. Everything's a trilogy nowadays, and every Sony first party title is a narrative action game. I know everyone is sick of it, the people crave Ape Escape, I crave Ape Escape, but having now finished the God of War Duology, I really wouldn't mind another one of these.

I won't dive in too deep on the story, but Ragnarok provides satisfying payoff to basically every plot hook introduced in the previous game and brings everyone's character arcs full circle for a conclusion that feels very earned. I think. Look, I was screwed up on medication and wracked by insomnia before a invasive medical procedure when I played most of God of War, I don't remember much of it. Baldur was there, Mimir's head was smacking off the side of Kratos' ass, Freya was real mad about her failson trying to kill her... I got the broad strokes!

Thor and Odin (played by Richard Schiff, who is mashing every scene between his molars) are perfect contrasts to Kratos and Atreus, both in terms of personal growth and their station in the story. Atreus wants to learn more about himself and the giants but seeks to defy their prophecy to protect the ones he loves, whereas Odin is consumed by a self-centered desire for knowledge and has blinded himself to the cost. Kratos realizes he's been running from who he was, but confronts his past and grows, while Thor feels powerless in the face of his own nature and habitually succumbs to his own anger and self-loathing. The rest of the supporting cast is given plenty of reason to kick old man Odin's door down and beat his ass, too.

Surt's also here, he's gonna cast Agidyne or some shit.

Combat picks up more quickly than the last game, you don't have to wait until halfway through to get the Blades of Chaos, and you eventually get a new weapon that makes use of the draupnir ring in some creative ways. Gameplay is divided between Kratos and Atreus, and I tend to worry anytime one of these games puts me in control of a side character that their gameplay just won't feel as good. Initially, Atreus is tedium manifest, but he really grew on me, and by the end of the game I think I actually prefer his combat over Kratos'.

New weapons and abilities are metered out in a way that keeps the game feeling fresh, but chapters struggle a bit more with pacing and often overstay their welcome. Every chapter has at least one room too many of a particular gimmick, puzzle, or combat encounter, resulting in about 20-30 minutes of your playtime feeling padded out. This is more a problem in the first half of the game, but even some late game chapters still drag on a bit. There are also a lot of side missions, and I eventually had to accept that I wasn't going to do everything, because then I'd only tire of Ragnarok and end up liking it less. I wouldn't even say this is a quantity over quality issue as all of it is still good, there's also just too much of it, and some of your time across Ragnarok's realms could've been better divided.

I wonder if we'll ever get to see Atreus at that age where he's stealing beer out of the garage refrigerator and taking the Blades of Chaos behind Kratos' back and accidentally causing an obscene amount of property damage. Even if we don't, I'm fairly confident in saying Ragnarok is the best game in the series. I've never played any of the other games besides the 2018 one but like, c'mon. It's got Surt!

Addendum: I almost gave this a 4/5 because of its pacing issues, but then started thinking about how Heimdall is basically just Weyoun from Deep Space 9 and that's deserving of a half star at the very least. Now if you'll excuse me, Mimir and I are gonna head to the holosuite in Svartalfheim and pretend to be old WWII British fighter pilots.

God of War Ragnarök is in a similar situation as God of War II, as both were preceded by genre-shaking titans that cast long shadows. Following up greatness of that caliber is a tall task and Santa Monica Studio has had to do it twice with the same franchise. Whereas God of War II was an outstanding yet traditional sequel, Ragnarök is so much more, as it builds upon the 2018 entry, exceeds it in unexpected ways, and is a masterpiece that beautifully wraps up this godly saga.

Read the full review here:
https://www.comingsoon.net/games/reviews/1245667-god-of-war-ragnarok-review-ps5-worth-buying

Working titles for my review included:

1) "God of Snore" - Reason not used: Taken
2) "God of More" - Reason not used: Could imply the more was positive/good
3) "Teen Angst Simulator" - Reason not used: Everyone was angsty, not just Atreus.

Used Title: "A Series of Unfortunate MacGuffin's"

I bought this game almost entierly out of curiousity, one of my more controversial gaming opinions and reviews is that of the renewed God of War (2018,) which I played because I wanted to get a gauge on the game that defeated Red Dead Redemption 2 come year's end at the Game Awards. In my experience I found GoW to be a mostly bland, monotonous, and unadventerous experience. I didn't get the same buzz or energy others did from the axe-wielding combat, I didn't enjoy the consistent babbling from Mimir and crew, and I certainly did not have a positive takeaway on the MacGuffin nature of the plot. I'd hoped, in playing Ragnarok, that the extremely high acclaim given to the game by critics when review embargo ceased meant that Sony had remdied the issues I had with the previous title. Now, I know that The Game Award should and have zero bearing on my enjoyment of a game, but it's clear that the two frontrunners for the big daddy of them all "Game of the Year Award" will be Elden Ring and God of War Ragnarok. Curiosity killled the cat, and maybe it killed me too. What I found almost immediately in Ragnarok was that I'd be getting the exact same takeaways and experiences that I had in the 2018 game.

Starting it off with combat, which is admittably a little less... boring as it was in 2018 but comes with its own grievances. Gone is going 75% of the game with the same weapon, as you start the game with Kratos' famous Blades of Chaos and pick up a third weapon down the line (redacted for spoilers.) This is nice because it gives you a little variation in terms of visual flavor for the majority of the game but this fell completely flat for me as the enemies, from start to finish are pretty much all just "bullet" sponges for lack of a better term. There's a certian flare to the combo weaving of different weapons and taking advantages of status effects, but at the end of the day you'll have to pump so much time and effort into enemies to kill them, that I abandoned trying to make it look snazzy. Basic enemies aren't too bad but once you get into the special/mini-boss fights it gets real samey, real quick. Monotonous combat was a compaint I had in the 2018 release that really took up a lot of my opinion on the game, and unfortunately it's back in Ragnarok. Not only does Kratos' arsenal not feel very different overall, not enough for me rather, but again the enemy variation and recycled encounters greatly holds this game back just as it did in the predecessor. I recently played Bayonetta 3 which had the enemy arsenal/variety to make this work, but in God of War every gameplay sequence in a realm can be boiled down into such: Shimmy through a tight loading screen corridor -> solved light puzzle that requires throwing axe and using some kind of time magic -> fight same three to five enemies that are dropped into area -> shimmy loading screen -> repeat. These enemies change per location but the cyclical nature of fighting them, their spongey health bars, and responding to their same mechanics got reallllly old real quick.

You switch between Atreus and Kratos in Ragnarok for level sequences and unfortunately the combat doesn't feel very fresh in either when you change between. Atreus' gameplay loop is even more restricted than Kratos in the first game and his equivalent of Spartan Rage, while stronger, is just a swap-in move which doesn't even do the Nero-Dante dynamic that every character action game should do in making playable protagonists FEEL fundamentally different so controlling them comes off as fresh. My ultimate qualm with the combat, which is also backlines my qualm with the game itself, is that it doesn't feel fresh enough. The combat feels the same, the Hollywood-board-room-type dialogue feels the exact same, the light unecessary puzzle solving feels the same, the missions/levels feel the exact same. What's new with God of War that's supposed to push this series from Great to Fantastic? I don't know, I can't answer that question because I surely didn't find it. The narrative that is meant to wrap up Kratos' Nordic saga felt bland and broken at times, leaving me to constantly wonder the where's and why's of my actions. I get there is an over-arching narrative at play leading to Ragnarok itself, given the actions of the previous title, but I think the game could have done a much better job sequencing its filler-story content. Missions just felt like they were happening to give characters exposition, rather than move the narrative forward and do so. Final Fantasy X does a great job at this, giving each character their own arc while actually advancing the stakes and story at hand. Wakka, Kimahri, Auron, Tidus, and Yuna all have their character examined and challenged while keeping the focus on stopping Sin. Ragnarok had me wondering why I was taking Freya, Atreus, Sindi, Brok all on their own respective adventures that didn't really add to the sequencing of the game in a manner that made sense. With each of these characters you'll find either Kratos or Atreus running the same combat-puzzle-loading screen gambit in an attempt to achieve something or retrieve an item that is to help them in their final huzzah. Doing this over and over and over just felt... bland. God of War Ragnarok for much of its runtime didn't feel like an epic adventure across one of the cooler pantheons to exist within dated mythos, but like a buddy cop comedy where the entire exposition was to retrieve MacGufffin's.

This game honestly just reminded me of the MCU, specifically speaking the Avengers film franchise. Avengers is a media phenomenon that took the world by storm, utilizing a carefully crafted pattern to set up a plethora of Marvel heroes/villains to have them culminate in an epic cinematic experience sure to take the world by storm, and it did. Marvel/Disney spent the time and monetary effort setting up this big "Huzzah" that had never been seen before in the world of film. Almost everyone I knew that was a casual movie watcher, thus excluding those who I would call "Movie hipsters" like myself, were jumping at the seams to speak on the magnitude of the avengers and its fiscal achievements. People were completely enamored in what was a fairly basic story. How do you react when so many around you are speaking in praise of something that you view so mediocre? Surely the right thing to do is not speak ill on something in the world of media that others hold high, because a film series like the Avengers is entierly subjective when it comes to taste, but it's reasonable to have the discourse with those that investigate your dissent with the series further. Thus is my issue with God of War 2018 and Ragnarok. Almost everyone I know that has played the game(s) has loved them, critics have been raving over Ragnarok as soon as reviews were allowed to come out. I've had to step back from most discourse because I don't want to be "that guy" but this is a review space and this is my review, so I feel alright stating how I feel. God of War is that Avengers to me, it's something that can only be made possible by having a lot of money to make and afford the resources needed to make it "work." They both are spectatcles, never shying away from thrusting intense CG and big moments at the consumer. They both utilize top tier composition, sound design, and voice acting to create a complete experience, free of any hitch. God of War was a completely polished game, I had only one minor bug, and it ran phenomenally on my computer... but can that alone with a mediocre story and samey combat make the game "good" for me? The answer I found, to be no it cannot.

There are some things God of War Ragnarok does well, but in the theme of things being the "same" to me as 2018, they were the same things that the game before it did. Christopher Judge is a great Kratos, matter of fact the entire cast does an amazing job acting out and making their characters mostly believable (shoutout SungWon Cho,) but it's almost... too AAA. The game itself is beautiful, I played performance mode on my PS5 and it truly was a crisp experience, taking full advantage of the graphical prowess of the console and my 4k monitor. The game was eye candy, but to that point I felt myself let down with these amazing vistas because of the soulless gameplay loop I knew I was about to embark upon. Animation was great, again I had that "wow I remember gaming twenty years ago moment" whenever they panned to Kratos' face and you could see his emotion vividly. I also love how they took full advantage of the Norse pantheon, including smaller characters like the Norns, Sigurn, Angrboða, and many more to the bigwigs like Freya, Fenrir, Tyr, and Surtr. I loved seeing/hearing a character speak and opening up their wikipedia page to remind myself about their lore. I used to love doing that in my youth, and God of War Ragnarok was a great reminder of doing that.

Lesser issues I had with the game include one, the assumption that you as the player did all the sidequesting and optional content from the previous game. It was a little confusing when Kratos/Atreus were referencing things they did like "Hey remember when we did this" or explaining to another character of their actions and I'm sitting there completely confused because no... I never did that and I had no clue what they were talking about. Secondly, the camera was just downright poor in most combat and even in cutscenes. There was quite a lot of forced panning that takes away player agency from experiencing what they want in a game. Maybe this is part of appealing to the most common consumer, but it was more offputting to me because I am overall not a fan of being told how to interpret or take away scenes from a narrative experience. I would be trying to walk through a scene or turn to see the entire environment at large to only be met by a slow moving camera and a locked screen.

Ragnarok largely missed the mark for me, really feeling like a DLC/Expansion of the 2018 game without enough variety/change to rectify the previous mistakes for me. There were new vistas and characters, but it felt like the fundamental same experience for me, and I'm glad I didn't wait four years between these two releases. Odds are, fans of the 2018 game will absolutely love Ragnarok, and dissenters will not. I cannot recommend God of War Ragnarok, especially for $70, unless you're set on the experience and getting the most out of its sidequesting and characters.

I got the platinum trophy




What a fucking incredible game

God of War Ragnarök is a true successor to God of War (2018), it essentially is that game but with more. More enemies, environments, characters, game mechanics, and side content. Making the whole package a very enjoyable experience and really fun to play, so much so I couldn't help but go for 100% completion as I wanted to continue to kill things with my axe.

The story is also very good, as it continues to be character driven and explores the many different relationships between the cast. I think the only issue I have with Ragnarök is it can have trouble tying all of these smaller stories into the main, over-arching narrative without pacing issues and weird moments that don't make too much sense but need to happen for things to move along. Not a deal-breaker but stops it from being a perfect 10/10.

All-in-all I had a great time and can't wait to see what Santa Monica Studios does next.

This is a very difficult game for me to rate or even render any kind of final judgment on because I find the tension between its ambitions and the realities of its production in today's gaming landscape hard to reconcile. At its best, it fully transcends the limitations and deficiencies of video game storytelling and is very well-written, well-acted, and at times quite powerful. But it is also a game that is - for lack of a better term - 'triple-A'ed' within an inch of its life, and the experience is deeply and unavoidably compromised as a result.

For starters, it is officially a member of the UNCHARTED 4 Club for games that could and should be literally half as long as they are. Thirty hours for main story only on an action game is absolutely unthinkable. There is nothing that it accomplishes in that amount of time that it could not comfortably do in fifteen. Every mission is at least a third too long. There are whole SECTIONS of the game and GROUPS of characters that could just be hacked off (probably starting with Atreus' narrative-momentum-annihilating adventures with his little FORSPOKEN-ass neurodivergent girlfriend) and do nothing but improve the experience as a result of it. And it's not just the story length - every aspect of the game - areas, sidequests, systems, loot, menus, DIALOGUE - all bloated beyond belief for seemingly no other reason than that the publisher probably mandated what their HowLongToBeat times had to read as.

And this is again where it's hard to come down on one side or the other with the game. Because all the bloat, all the unnecessary collectibles and constant character patter and whatever else are still quite well done, and with the same care and skill as the meat of the game. They did their best! It shows in every corner, truly! But in the end so much of it feels unnecessary.

Less easy to stomach is the very modern feeling you get from minute one of playing - that this is a game that is TERRIFIED of people losing interest in it. The handholding, the tooltips, the pointless loot every X amount of steps (some in the absolute silliest of places, plotwise), the companion characters reminding you verbally of status effects EVERY SINGLE TIME YOU CONTRACT ONE - possibly more severe than any other game I've played. There are times when my little guys were giving me puzzle hints before I even knew there was a puzzle, ffs. And that specifically is something that is measurably worse here than even GOW '18, where it was already a minor irritant. Were the devs promised additional days of vacation based on playerbase trophy unlock percentages or something?

So yeah, in short, it's really held back by being a major Sony game made in the 2020s, and it frustrates me. So goddamn Game Awards-core. But you look at so much of it, you look at the masterful final run where it all comes together, and then the ending (which, let me just say, as the recent father of a son ....... it hits! It hits.) and it's tough for me to believe that these truly talented people with real storytelling (and game design! the combat is still great) chops wouldn't want to make a tighter experience that actually respected its audience's intelligence as players, just a smidge.

I really hope this particular industry wave breaks and rolls back at some point. It's gotta, right?