Serving as a direct sequel, God of War Ragnarök carries over much of the same appeal as its predecessor, only now it’s grander in scope as it widens the Norse mythos and builds toward a climatic finish for the saga. Rather than the relatively personal story of Kratos and Atreus journeying to spread Faye’s ashes, Ragnarök sets focus on prophecy and fate as Kratos and Atreus try to understand their role in combating the Aesir gods and Ragnarök, widening the cast of characters and opening up all the Realms with plenty more to uncover.
What stands out the most about Ragnarök is how lavishly presented it is. Cutscene direction is still exceptional with the “one shot camera” never breaking away from the start, and the way it follows the chaotic action and battles through the game was pretty spectacular. In general it looks amazing, from the textures on the character models to the gorgeous environments of the Realms, there was rarely a point where I wasn’t impressed by it visually.
Ragnarök mostly plays similarly to 2018, though they improved on small things that I appreciated. There’s a bit more momentum to combat and they also touched on enemy variety which is improved from what I remember of 2018, though I still have mixed feelings on that which I’ll get to. The Axe is still a really creative weapon and a joy to use, and also starting off with the Blades adds more to your arsenal from the jump which was good. And the shields you can use give more options for building Kratos’s stats, though I just stuck with the default for parries which was always fun to do.
One big improvement though is how side content is handled. While the main quests are pretty linear, they usually result in a side quest or multiple to follow afterwards. These are always well worth doing since they branch away to more open areas in the realms that are entirely optional, and there’s plenty to explore in them.
I mentioned that the main quests are linear, very much so. GoW has a loop of fighting waves of enemies in small zones separated by crawl spaces or climbing rocks, I’d guess a design limitation to still accommodate PS4. While this was fine in 2018, it’s more noticeable here that it isn’t doing much to take advantage of the new hardware, and that also extends to loading. For instance there’s still mystic gates that make you walk around the same area every time you travel between realms, which yes does serve as a way to deliver more dialogue, but didn’t seem necessary either.
And about combat, it’s fun and they did improve on variety where they could, but it still wasn’t quite enough given the game is pretty dense. After the first few hours you’ll still be fighting mostly the same enemies the entire game, and it just got fatiguing as it reached closer to the end. Bosses were well done but also somewhat of a letdown, starting off with an amazing first one but none that really match it in spectacle past that in my opinion (a same complaint I had with 2018).
Another gripe is how chaotic combat can be with how constrained the camera and level design felt. It kinda seemed like there’s too much going on at times, especially when there’s multiple enemies at once and they also throw projectiles at you. The camera’s so close you can hardly focus other than a small arrow indicator and enemy callouts, and I can’t remember if this was also the case with 2018 but it seemed more annoying to me here. But I also played on a higher difficulty so this may not be as bothersome on lower ones.
About the story itself, I think it’s good but I also felt it was a bit overstuffed? It spends a lot of time with build up, perhaps too much and some portions of the game can really stretch on pretty long. Yet despite the slow pace for most of the game, it kinda goes to a breakneck sprint to wrap things up in its final hours which I found kinda disappointing. Most of the side characters are fine, but I also wasn’t particularly attached to them either which may have made latter portions of the game fall a bit flat for me. Still, Santa Monica does a great job exploring their take on the mythology and I was mostly satisfied with how they handled wrapping up this duology.
What stands out the most about Ragnarök is how lavishly presented it is. Cutscene direction is still exceptional with the “one shot camera” never breaking away from the start, and the way it follows the chaotic action and battles through the game was pretty spectacular. In general it looks amazing, from the textures on the character models to the gorgeous environments of the Realms, there was rarely a point where I wasn’t impressed by it visually.
Ragnarök mostly plays similarly to 2018, though they improved on small things that I appreciated. There’s a bit more momentum to combat and they also touched on enemy variety which is improved from what I remember of 2018, though I still have mixed feelings on that which I’ll get to. The Axe is still a really creative weapon and a joy to use, and also starting off with the Blades adds more to your arsenal from the jump which was good. And the shields you can use give more options for building Kratos’s stats, though I just stuck with the default for parries which was always fun to do.
One big improvement though is how side content is handled. While the main quests are pretty linear, they usually result in a side quest or multiple to follow afterwards. These are always well worth doing since they branch away to more open areas in the realms that are entirely optional, and there’s plenty to explore in them.
I mentioned that the main quests are linear, very much so. GoW has a loop of fighting waves of enemies in small zones separated by crawl spaces or climbing rocks, I’d guess a design limitation to still accommodate PS4. While this was fine in 2018, it’s more noticeable here that it isn’t doing much to take advantage of the new hardware, and that also extends to loading. For instance there’s still mystic gates that make you walk around the same area every time you travel between realms, which yes does serve as a way to deliver more dialogue, but didn’t seem necessary either.
And about combat, it’s fun and they did improve on variety where they could, but it still wasn’t quite enough given the game is pretty dense. After the first few hours you’ll still be fighting mostly the same enemies the entire game, and it just got fatiguing as it reached closer to the end. Bosses were well done but also somewhat of a letdown, starting off with an amazing first one but none that really match it in spectacle past that in my opinion (a same complaint I had with 2018).
Another gripe is how chaotic combat can be with how constrained the camera and level design felt. It kinda seemed like there’s too much going on at times, especially when there’s multiple enemies at once and they also throw projectiles at you. The camera’s so close you can hardly focus other than a small arrow indicator and enemy callouts, and I can’t remember if this was also the case with 2018 but it seemed more annoying to me here. But I also played on a higher difficulty so this may not be as bothersome on lower ones.
About the story itself, I think it’s good but I also felt it was a bit overstuffed? It spends a lot of time with build up, perhaps too much and some portions of the game can really stretch on pretty long. Yet despite the slow pace for most of the game, it kinda goes to a breakneck sprint to wrap things up in its final hours which I found kinda disappointing. Most of the side characters are fine, but I also wasn’t particularly attached to them either which may have made latter portions of the game fall a bit flat for me. Still, Santa Monica does a great job exploring their take on the mythology and I was mostly satisfied with how they handled wrapping up this duology.