In its attempt to tie up a yarn of loose threads, God of War Ragnarok ends up lacking focus and the strong thematic reverberance of the first game.
God of War (2018) was a story that dealt with intimate themes. Every character that Kratos and Atreus crossed paths with always felt like a temporary presence primarily meant only to give a fresh perspective and evolve the father-son dialectic.
God of War Ragnarok, instead, has an ensemble cast of new and returning characters in what I believe is a natural evolution from the first game's more narrow scope. Of every character’s story we expect to see an ending. It makes sense as Ragnarok is the climax and endpoint of Norse mythology, in which every conflict, for the better or for the worse, finds its solution. Considering the ambition of the writing team working on this -- the same people who wrote in the iconic Chaos Blades only halfway through the first game -- it must have been definitely harder to attempt to produce something as cohesive as their previous effort with so many stories to weave into a single one. Narratively, the end result turned out to be worse than the sum of its parts. Parts that never fail to hit the mark, nonetheless, and sometimes are really great.
Moreover, the majority of the acting performances were consistently phenomenal -- I really loved Odin and Thor's. That is to say that there is much to be enjoyed from this game's story, but I can't deny that there is a sour taste of disappointed expectations in my initial words.
Gameplay-wise this brief review would be a different beast. A lot of praise is there to be made, especially on how it managed to add much-required depth and variety to combat, arenas and exploration, all the while greatly reducing some hindrances -- mainly climbing for vertical movement -- that hampered the flow of the game.
God of War (2018) was a story that dealt with intimate themes. Every character that Kratos and Atreus crossed paths with always felt like a temporary presence primarily meant only to give a fresh perspective and evolve the father-son dialectic.
God of War Ragnarok, instead, has an ensemble cast of new and returning characters in what I believe is a natural evolution from the first game's more narrow scope. Of every character’s story we expect to see an ending. It makes sense as Ragnarok is the climax and endpoint of Norse mythology, in which every conflict, for the better or for the worse, finds its solution. Considering the ambition of the writing team working on this -- the same people who wrote in the iconic Chaos Blades only halfway through the first game -- it must have been definitely harder to attempt to produce something as cohesive as their previous effort with so many stories to weave into a single one. Narratively, the end result turned out to be worse than the sum of its parts. Parts that never fail to hit the mark, nonetheless, and sometimes are really great.
Moreover, the majority of the acting performances were consistently phenomenal -- I really loved Odin and Thor's. That is to say that there is much to be enjoyed from this game's story, but I can't deny that there is a sour taste of disappointed expectations in my initial words.
Gameplay-wise this brief review would be a different beast. A lot of praise is there to be made, especially on how it managed to add much-required depth and variety to combat, arenas and exploration, all the while greatly reducing some hindrances -- mainly climbing for vertical movement -- that hampered the flow of the game.