A truly godly experience, with barely any marks to show for the war of the game
~ Intro ~
God of War Ragnarök is the sequel to 2018's God of War. It is a 3rd person action game, made by Santa Monica. It was released on November 9th 2022 for PS4 and PS5. As I have become a God of War fan, I decided to pick this game up very soon after I played the first in this duology. This allowed me to have the previous game fresh in my memory and compare them more easily. After spending a lot of time with the game I have now solidified my opinion on it.
~ Positives ~
The positives of this game are much like the first. Though there are also a few more things that this game does the other didn't. As well as this, it builds on the strengths of the previous game.
To start with the narrative is really well written. As the story went on, I constantly found myself wanting to find out what would happen next. There were several times were I just sat back and thought about what just happened in the game. I didn't feel like there was ever really a dull moment during the game's main story. This made it so that the pacing was very solid throughout. The game ended on a wonderful note too that was a nice send off to the journey, while also preparing you for what could come next. Even aside form the main story, there was tons of lore to read and environmental story telling for you to see.
There were more characters this time round and while sometimes a lot of characters can lead to some very shallow ones, that wasn't the case for this game at all. Though, I will say the main characters do shine a little brighter than the rest but that is just because of how well written they are. Even for the side characters there was some great character moments and developments in there. As a whole, I found myself getting a bit more emotionally invested in the characters this time. The main villains were good too, with them getting a good chunk of screen time and you seeing them from different perspectives at times.
The gameplay, while very similar in structure to the first feels as good as ever. This game has even bigger areas to explore with a nice amount of stuff to do in them. The level design of these areas is still the greatness as seen in the first game. The addition of another weapon and different arrows allowed for new and interesting puzzles.
The combat has seen some great additions, Kratos is much more customisable now. You can equip different types of shields and different types of rage modes that do varying things for you. It helped keep the combat even more interesting than before with these options. The new weapon quickly became my favourite to use in the game too, it is a load of fun.
I wanted to make a separate point about this due to it being a major flaw with the first game but boss fights are much better now. Pretty much every main story boss fight is with a unique opponent, with variations appearing mostly in side quests. The boss fights were all very engaging too, providing a good challenge.
~ Negatives ~
The negatives I will talk about are all quite minor negatives. There were no major flaws I personally felt this game had unlike the first. So, these are more nit picky.
One thing I will talk about here is that the game is quite hand holdy. Many times you find characters give you hints or even outright tell you the solution to a puzzle. This would be fine if I had been at the puzzle for a while but sometimes the hint can come very fast before I had even really had time to assess the situation.
Another thing I will mention is that I did encounter a few glitches. There were ones that didn't really affect anything too much but also ones that did. An example of one of the more impactful glitches I witnessed was that a dragon I was fighting in a sidequest got stuck in a wall and even with no health wouldn't die causing me to reload.
Lastly, the map was also something that was a slight issue. The map is the same way as it was in the first game and while it is fine, I do wish it had a bit more detail to it. As it stands it can be a little hard to navigate as the map doesn't provide much information for the player.
~ Conclusion ~
God of War Ragnarök is an amazing game and one I am glad to have experienced. While it may have a few minor issues still present the positives are so large in comparison they barely matter. I would recommend playing the first game before this one though, as while it has a recap you can watch, playing is much more involved than watching. After finishing this game I am really intrigued to know were they will take this series next. Wherever that may be, I will be there day one this time.
Hours played: 57 (Finished main story at 33)
Rating: 4.5/5
That's it for this blog, stay connected!
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