Thoughts on: God of War Ragnarök

Three and a half years ago God of War (originally a PS4 exclusive from 2018) was released on PC and despite its flaws I loved it. It was a significant departure from the original trilogy of games (and the rest of the Greek era of the franchise) with the biggest difference being in how story focused the title became. And how surprisingly well it was all handled. Going from “cool dude stabs gods” to serious drama was handled exceptionally well, all while the combat was “good enough” and exploration of the world and puzzle solving was genuinely exciting. That original game had a sequel tease built into its own epilogue scene, so unsurprisingly said sequel was made – God of War Ragnarök was originally released on PS4 and PS5 in 2022. And last year it was ported to PCs and after postponing the playthrough for a while, I’ve finally decided to play it. And it’s… I guess it’s okay.

The basics of Ragnarök aren’t too different from what the previous entry was doing. Story-focused plot – check. Slower dodge and parry focused combat – check. Exploration and puzzle solving across several realms inspired by Norse mythology – check. So most of the differences in the game come from how it handles all of its aspects and how it evolves them (if at all).

The story is still quite well told, for example, and it is a natural continuation of the plot. Developers decided not to repeat any of the character development beats or story threads from the previous game and just expand and continue it. Which works really well in terms of father and son relationship. The issue this time, however, is that a lot of the key characters in the story are written in a vey obnoxiously “modern” way. God of War titles were never “historic” and anachronisms or fourth wall breaks are nothing new here. But a whole lot of characters in this title in particular are, for whatever reason, portrayed with zero pretence of “classic writing”. Here’s an awkward teen that would fit in a modern teenage drama. Here are some villains who behave like modern gangsters. There’s no sense of coherent world or style, things are constantly all over the place in terms of writing and often it can be frustrating.

Combat is as “okay” as it was before, however it almost feels like the developers are using it worse a lot of the time. Many fights can get straight up tedious and the whole “RPG/Power Level/Loot” whatever system with crafting and upgrades makes some fights a simple equipment check. Which doesn’t gel with supposedly player-skill-level-based combat system at all. Main game now has less tedious optional “challenges”, thankfully, but then they’ve released an entire free DLC for the game called Valhalla which is just that, except now it’s roguelite too. I stopped playing that, because I got bored, because the combat isn’t as good as developers seem to think it is. But it isn’t usually outright terrible, even if some encounters are very poor.

But the biggest blow is taken by the exploration and puzzle solving. It’s not just that it’s more simpler and streamlined. It’s also that even with the option that the developers had to patch into the game that makes your companions not straight out tell you what to do less often… they still do it very often. And given that most of the puzzles in the game are so easy I basically solved them before the game even acknowledged that arrived to them, the fact that in my process of solving a puzzle a companion could tell me what to do was shocking. Also they’re extremely patronizing all the time and never shut up, that does get in the way of exploration.

Honestly, even if the companions weren’t so frustratingly “helpful”, the exploration in this title isn’t particularly fun. And it’s also limiting in annoying ways. What I mean is that you can get to the point where you can explore everywhere with your abilities, and still not be able to do everything in a realm, because some later story event is locking more content for this realm. So there’s no real good reason to explore more than just mild deviations on your way via critical path until after the game ends at all, because a lot of the time you will be wasting your time.

And time till be wasted in huge amounts. The game took me around 45 hours to complete, where it honestly feels it should’ve taken no more than 20. Which wasn’t helped by the fact that this time the PC version (and the game itself, actually) were quite buggy and unstable. I do not understand what Sony expected by pushing so many ports into development at once to the same team, who previously had more time to perfect their work, but the end result is that even almost a year since release and many patches after, the PC port can be very buggy and will definitely crash during longer play sessions.

I don’t know if I can call God of War Ragnarök a “disappointment”. Or if I should simply call it an overall very average and bloated game. It has some good things about it and if you, for whatever reason, liked the combat of the previous game a lot, you will like this one better (probably). But I was tired of this game way before it hit the mid point, and by the time the ending sequences began I didn’t even realize we were getting to the end. It’s messy and boring. But it isn’t bad.