God of War: Ragnarök is a very good game. It is just unfair to it that it had to follow up God of War (2018).

Ragnarök is a good game. I will say that a lot in this review because I'll probably spend more time critiquing it than I will praising it. But that's not because I have a problem with the game or I think that it was poor. The critiques are mainly rooted in what feels like missed potential after its predecessor was one of the greatest games of all time. And what unfair expectation to have of a video game. It's unfair to any game to expect it to be so good as to be mentioned alongside the names of the greatest pieces of the medium. It is unfair, but it's also the bar set by God of War (2018). God of War: Ragnarök falls short in nearly all aspects compared to God of War (2018) and while that still makes it a perfectly good video game, it does cause it to fall shy of Game of the Year status compared to Elden Ring or even Vampire Survivors.

God of War: Ragnarök's strongest asset is its narrative. Which is still quite good, it's just not as good as God of War (2018)'s. Ragnarök feels very much like opening a book in its middle chapter. This is fair given that it's a direct sequel starting nearly immediately after the end of the first game. But it is slow to start, it is slow to find its momentum. The game takes quite awhile tho get you invested, right around the time you have your fight with Freya does the game get up and go. This is about 8 hours into the story and potentially double that time if you've been sidequesting. From then on the game moves fast and remains interesting. But it sure takes its sweet time making that happen.

There are some odd narrative decisions here and there. I wasn't quite fond of Freya being this highly emotional and irrational woman who regularly needed Kratos' calm and collected decision making. The writing wasn't as engaging and Freya wasn't nearly as likable or relatable as she'd been in the first game. I didn't care much for Freyr or the time we spent with him, which was quite minimal. I think the speech Freyr made prior to the invasion of Asgard felt unearned because I hardly knew the guy. I had few opinions of him and even less afterwards. The suicide dive by Birgir to defend the boat was a similarly odd moment, while welcomed as a narrative shift, I'm scarcely sure Birgir had even a line of dialogue prior. There was no weight behind it.

I enjoyed the flashbacks with Faye but I wish we saw more of Kratos' love for her. Rarely was it very touching or emotionally charged on Kratos end. In fact, it seems quite difficult to understand what it is about Kratos Faye ever loved. His relationship with Atreus is strong and understandable and emotional but there's little between him and Faye to hold onto. Even in their tenderer moments on camera.

The game's strongest writing moments are those in Asgard. Thor, Thrúd, Sif and Odin are phenomenally well written. Odin and Thor in particular are very well written and engaging characters, with strong arcs and storylines. Heimdall is an outstanding villain and the relationship between Thrúd and Sif is highly relatable and heartfelt. Odin is funny, manipulative, hateable, cunning. The Tyr twist left my mouth agape. Murdering Thor was a shocking event. Odin is one of the best villains I've experienced in all of videogaming.

The game also deserves real praise for how well written Atreus is. The game captures the angst and frustration and hotheadedness and ambition of a teenager. Atreus is annoying but the annoyance is from him being a teenager, not from him being poorly written or conducive to some idiot plot. His growth throughout the two games is palpable and I wanna see more. I want to see his budding relationships with Thrúd Thorsdottir and Angrboða. I want to see if he becomes a man that embodies the best of his mother and his father. I want to see the results of the 'it takes a village' approach to his childhood. It is hard to write children in popular media. God of War: Ragnarök does an admirable job with the story of Atreus/Loki.

Outside of the narrative, God of War: Ragnarök is pretty but average. The graphics are astonishingly good, the game is gorgeous. But the combat, quest design, sidequests, maps and more leave plenty to be desired. The combat is pretty surprisingly difficult prior to actually getting some upgrades. At the start of the game, even simpler encounters offers lots of challenge but it's mostly by way of big health bars. And before you get any upgrades, the Leviathan Axe is far, far better than the Blades of Chaos.

Once you do get some upgrades, the combat gets a lot easier for awhile outside of the major boss fights. Most fights can be won with your preferred weapon and combo method even if its subpar for the opponents you're facing. Combat is fast and comes in waves. Kratos feels slow and heavy but it's an appropriate feel for the style of play by Kratos. You're not playing your personally designed fighter, you're playing as this chiseled seven foot four hundred pound hulking brute. And it's nice. It feels an awful lot like Doom (2016) and Doom Eternal, but significantly slowed down.

One thing that makes it feel so Doom-esque is the weapon switching and the QTE slayer animations. When you're whipping around chomping through mobs you'll find you need to regularly switch weapons and use runic attacks. When fighting bosses like Odin, Gná and Hrolf, switching weapons like this is a must. While I never found the spear very fun to use overall, it has a welcomed place siphoning elemental attunements during boss fights. Using all three in concert takes all of your brainpower and gaming skill. The toughest boss fights in God of War: Ragnarök are right alongside the toughest boss fights in Elden Ring. They will challenge your skill, will and patience.

Exploration is....not fun. Most of the game is spent walking through pretty hallways with alternative routes being minimal. At its most infuriating, map elements are entirely opaque and force you back through very long hallways if you choose to incorrectly look for a secret. Here's an example. In Vanaheim there's an area called the Abandoned Village but it's infinitely down a set of very long hallway with a few annoying puzzles and mechanics to traverse. The game tells you there are 'Undiscovered' secrets in the area when looking at the map. What it doesn't tell you is that you can't complete them all until the end of the game. You don't know this without looking it up online. And there's a way where if later in the game you go all the way to the end, you very nearly can't get back. There is a way back but it's well hidden and the entire process takes forever. I spent probably three hours on one trip to Vanaheim suffering this cycle.

And it's not only Vanaheim. There is a similar instance possible in Alfheim. Exploration feels hollow and much of the game is hard to experience without some sort of guide. What can be experienced without a guide amounts to walking through pretty hallways. It's nowhere near the craft of a Dark Souls dungeon or the open world freedom of an Elden Ring or Breath of the Wild. It's this relatively unpleasing middleground.

Not just that, but the puzzles are often uninteresting or janky. Nornir Chests aren't more interesting because there's 4 ways to solve them. And the sigil arrow markers were very glitchy and frustrating in may scenarios when trying to light disparate torches. Slow moving cranes, long climbs up or down and around cliffs, wacky sigil arrows or very spread out Nornir Chest puzzles. It all amounted to something that felt a lot more tedious than engaging.

But God of War: Ragnarök is better than the sum of its parts. The narrative is still strong even if it isn't as good as its predecessor. The graphics are gorgeous and that shouldn't be undersold in a time where Pokémon Scarlet/Violet just had an opening weekend that doubled Ragnarök's. The combat takes some time to warm up but at its best, stands alongside some of gaming's best combat systems. And I am all over the series. I am just as excited to play the inevitable sequel. I'm invested in Loki's search for the missing Giants and his budding relationship with Angrboða. While the ending wasn't as emotional as the first game's, I want to see Kratos live his life as a worshipped God of good. I want to see how Kratos takes to godhood and rebuilding the Nine Realms with Freya and Mimir.

God of War (2018) was a perfect game. God of War: Ragnarök was not. But that's okay, and it should be okay. It's still a damn good game. And I'm looking forward to more.

God of War: Ragnarok represents everything wrong with big budget, single player game releases. That being said, giving it anything less than the rating I’ve given feels disingenuous to me. This is by design. Ragnarok is a very competent title by every measurable metric- It’s graphics and overall visual presentation are top notch, the gameplay is fun and engaging, and there’s a story here that I imagine many will want to see through to its conclusion. But with a budget of around $200,000,000, how could it not have all of those things? Ragnarok is a game that feels more like a product than an artistic endeavor- a game that feels like it was created and endlessly focus-tested in a lab somewhere to be as digestible to the largest demographic of consumers as possible with it’s unrelenting safeness and sterility. Ragnarok could never fail because it is completely adverse to any sort of risk. And to that end, it has been abundantly successful, winning multiple awards and the praise of fans and critics worldwide. But it was in this pursuit of appealing to everyone that something important was lost. Ragnarok comes off as an all too lateral move from a series that had just boldly reinvented itself only a few years prior.

Ok, Ragnarok is a fantastic game.. yes we know, but my goodness it is a long journey. GOWR took me about a year to beat just the main campaign and extremely long story. Sure life gets in the way of video game time, but every time I went back to dedicate an hour or two to this game it felt like I was never making any progress. That doesn't make it a bad game, but just my first thought when I think of GOWR. I think this title had gigantic (some might say godly) shoes to fill by following up the previous game. It mostly lives up, but I think falls a little short by shoving so much into the game itself. There's way too much to do!
"Intent does not matter, only consequences."