God of War: Ragnarok is a fantastic game that improves upon God of War (2018) in many ways, yet it still ultimately fails to live up to the gold standard set by its polished predecessor.
If someone tried to tell you that Movie X was better than Movie Y because “Movie X is longer and therefore better”, you’d probably laugh. I think most folks can agree that length is not a metric for quality, and yet game devs continue to operate under the assumption that “more = better”. God of War Ragnarok is no exception to that flawed logic. When faced with the question of “How do we improve upon God of War (2018)?” it seems the devs just said “I don’t know. More” More story, more characters, more collectibles, more equipment, more abilities. It’s literally just more. While God of War felt like a tight clean game from beginning to end, Ragnarok struggles with pacing issues and desperately needs an editor to trim the bloat.
None of that is to say I do not like this game. I really enjoyed my time with it and there is a lot it does better than the first game. While God of War has a pretty small cast of characters (and only one woman), Ragnarok blows the doors open and introduces a much larger crew that I enjoyed getting to know and spend more time with. The story of GoW2018 was small and personal, while Ragnarok’s story is grand. Yet despite the scale of Ragnarok’s story, it still manages to keep a lot of intimate elements. In fact, I’d argue that the small moments carry more weight than the large bombastic ones. The moment-to-moment writing and dialogue carries the weight of the story here while a lot of the gigantic cinematic story beats often didn’t feel earned and mostly just felt like they existed for either shock value or excitement.
The gameplay is as good as ever. I was worried at first because it basically felt like I was playing the same game I played in 2018. But once I had spent more time with it and unlocked more combat options, the game had more than a few surprises that kept the gameplay feeling fresh. My biggest complaint with the combat is the massive swings in difficulty. You’ll have some insane cinematic god versus god boss battle where you end it feeling like a king. And then the next scene you’ll get stun-locked by a giant chicken that kills you in a few hits. Whenever I start to feel like The God of War, the game firmly reminds me that I am playing a Video Game and kills the mood. Eventually I bumped the difficulty down one tick which helped with side content, but then it made the story battles too easy. I get it, it’s a video game, but a god should not be easier to kill than some random side enemies.
When not in combat or enjoying story beats, your time is mainly spent solving puzzles (while Mimir and Atreus talk your head off about how to solve the puzzles you’re already solving) or collecting a mind-numbing amount of collectibles. Every time a new collectible was introduced over the course of the game (and it happens a lot), I audibly groaned. This game has 418 collectibles scattered across the realms. While some of those collectibles are fun to do or add to your character (upgrades, gear, etc.), a majority of the collectibles just exist to give you things to collect. There are ravens, poems, artifacts, lore, and many other collectibles that serve no purpose beyond checking a box. You just stare at some text on a wall, pick up some crystals, grab a scroll, and then listen to Mimir yell some piece of stock dialogue at you “Nice work, brother! I’m sure this crystal will come in handy” or “Good thing you learned the runes, brother!” Annoyingly, you can’t even get most of the collectibles out of the gate; it slowly introduces you to them as you play the story, unlocking the very last one after you roll credits. I generally like to complete areas in games as I go through them to avoid back-tracking but the game is quite literally built around the need to backtrack. That said, because it was designed with that in mind, the backtracking (mostly) feels deliberate which is quite nice. As you revisit areas after the story, you’ll get little bits of epilogue story, dialogue, etc. from the characters that makes the backtracking feel worthwhile (even if the fast-travel is still absolute trash).
While playing God of War: Ragnarok, I genuinely had a fun time - I loved the combat and I was interested to see where the story went. But as soon as I turned the game off, it left my brain. The pacing issues and the constant reminders that you’re playing a capital V “Video Game” get in the way of the game being truly special. Despite some of the issues I had getting through it, I had a really good time with the post-game and I ultimately finished the game with positive feelings and good memories of my time with it.
+ Added variety to God of War’s already fantastic combat
+ Great intimate moments between characters
+ Fantastic cast of characters (both new and old)
+ Solid post-game with new quests and backtracking with new dialogue
+ Excellent soundtrack
- Pacing issues and often feels bloated. Desperately needs an editor
- Balance issues with wild difficulty swings
- Way too many collectibles
- Fast travel still sucks
- NPC chatter while solving puzzles or finding collectibles is obnoxious
- Bad/dated menus and UI
If someone tried to tell you that Movie X was better than Movie Y because “Movie X is longer and therefore better”, you’d probably laugh. I think most folks can agree that length is not a metric for quality, and yet game devs continue to operate under the assumption that “more = better”. God of War Ragnarok is no exception to that flawed logic. When faced with the question of “How do we improve upon God of War (2018)?” it seems the devs just said “I don’t know. More” More story, more characters, more collectibles, more equipment, more abilities. It’s literally just more. While God of War felt like a tight clean game from beginning to end, Ragnarok struggles with pacing issues and desperately needs an editor to trim the bloat.
None of that is to say I do not like this game. I really enjoyed my time with it and there is a lot it does better than the first game. While God of War has a pretty small cast of characters (and only one woman), Ragnarok blows the doors open and introduces a much larger crew that I enjoyed getting to know and spend more time with. The story of GoW2018 was small and personal, while Ragnarok’s story is grand. Yet despite the scale of Ragnarok’s story, it still manages to keep a lot of intimate elements. In fact, I’d argue that the small moments carry more weight than the large bombastic ones. The moment-to-moment writing and dialogue carries the weight of the story here while a lot of the gigantic cinematic story beats often didn’t feel earned and mostly just felt like they existed for either shock value or excitement.
The gameplay is as good as ever. I was worried at first because it basically felt like I was playing the same game I played in 2018. But once I had spent more time with it and unlocked more combat options, the game had more than a few surprises that kept the gameplay feeling fresh. My biggest complaint with the combat is the massive swings in difficulty. You’ll have some insane cinematic god versus god boss battle where you end it feeling like a king. And then the next scene you’ll get stun-locked by a giant chicken that kills you in a few hits. Whenever I start to feel like The God of War, the game firmly reminds me that I am playing a Video Game and kills the mood. Eventually I bumped the difficulty down one tick which helped with side content, but then it made the story battles too easy. I get it, it’s a video game, but a god should not be easier to kill than some random side enemies.
When not in combat or enjoying story beats, your time is mainly spent solving puzzles (while Mimir and Atreus talk your head off about how to solve the puzzles you’re already solving) or collecting a mind-numbing amount of collectibles. Every time a new collectible was introduced over the course of the game (and it happens a lot), I audibly groaned. This game has 418 collectibles scattered across the realms. While some of those collectibles are fun to do or add to your character (upgrades, gear, etc.), a majority of the collectibles just exist to give you things to collect. There are ravens, poems, artifacts, lore, and many other collectibles that serve no purpose beyond checking a box. You just stare at some text on a wall, pick up some crystals, grab a scroll, and then listen to Mimir yell some piece of stock dialogue at you “Nice work, brother! I’m sure this crystal will come in handy” or “Good thing you learned the runes, brother!” Annoyingly, you can’t even get most of the collectibles out of the gate; it slowly introduces you to them as you play the story, unlocking the very last one after you roll credits. I generally like to complete areas in games as I go through them to avoid back-tracking but the game is quite literally built around the need to backtrack. That said, because it was designed with that in mind, the backtracking (mostly) feels deliberate which is quite nice. As you revisit areas after the story, you’ll get little bits of epilogue story, dialogue, etc. from the characters that makes the backtracking feel worthwhile (even if the fast-travel is still absolute trash).
While playing God of War: Ragnarok, I genuinely had a fun time - I loved the combat and I was interested to see where the story went. But as soon as I turned the game off, it left my brain. The pacing issues and the constant reminders that you’re playing a capital V “Video Game” get in the way of the game being truly special. Despite some of the issues I had getting through it, I had a really good time with the post-game and I ultimately finished the game with positive feelings and good memories of my time with it.
+ Added variety to God of War’s already fantastic combat
+ Great intimate moments between characters
+ Fantastic cast of characters (both new and old)
+ Solid post-game with new quests and backtracking with new dialogue
+ Excellent soundtrack
- Pacing issues and often feels bloated. Desperately needs an editor
- Balance issues with wild difficulty swings
- Way too many collectibles
- Fast travel still sucks
- NPC chatter while solving puzzles or finding collectibles is obnoxious
- Bad/dated menus and UI