“Why did you want to do this side mission with me, father?” asks Atreus after one of the many optional tasks. Kratos growls a little, but doesn’t dare show the back of his tongue. It’s Mimir, the severed head full of funny stories, who finally breaks the silence: “He just wants to spend a little more time with you”. It’s also a perfect metaphor for God of War Ragnarök.
Why yes, the successor of the soft reboot from 2018 essentially it looks more or less the same. But that God of War was so good that spending more time in this world is definitely not a punishment. If you really don’t want to know anything about the game, read this sentence before closing this page: anyone who enjoyed the previous game will be completely satisfied with Ragnarök.
But Mimir’s quote also applies in another way, namely for the emotional background. Ragnarök focuses almost all of his arrows on the story and the development of the relationships between the characters. It seems like the scenes were written on purpose to make you cry and, damn it, it works. Kratos just wants to spend some time with his son and we need some handkerchiefs.
God of War Ragnarök begins in the same place as the first part, which is at home. Kratos and Atreus have been in hiding for a few years because everyone wants to catch them. Freya is angry because they killed her son Baldur, Thor is angry because her children did not survive and the supreme god Odin is angry because … well, because Ragnarök is coming, the prophesied end of the world.
Atreus is tired of waiting and eager to find out who he is and what part he plays in all the prophecies. Shouldn’t he save the world, or at least help with something? What follows is an immersive adventure where everyone learns something about themselves. Can you free yourself from the prophecies and expectations to become who you want to be? Are you responsible for your fate?
In this great pantheon of quarrels between gods, everything feels very personal. Kratos is no longer like he used to be on a murderous crusade to kill all the gods, but he is willing to speak out and avoid violence if that keeps his son safe. The growth Kratos is experiencing as a human (god) is gigantic, even incredibly large at times. Not that he’s whimpering endless monologues now, but Kratos just wanting to drink blood is definitely a thing of the past.
The focus is on personal interests and motivations, which also impressively shines through in the secondary missions. The game again has a number of open hub worlds, where you can explore somehow freely. Ragnarök isn’t suddenly an open world game, but just like in 2018’s God of War, there are optional areas where you can find extra content if you feel like it.
You’ll be more pressured than ever to sink your teeth into it, as you’ll be rewarded with story snippets and emotional moments surrounding the main characters. For example, in the realm of the dwarves of Svartalfheim, Mimir asks you to dismantle the shipyards, because in the past she helped Odin to turn the dwarves into a kind of slaves. He wants to correct his past mistakes, which adds another layer to this fairly simple job.
In any case, the many characters are the biggest advantage of the game. Returning favorites like Mimir and the dwarves Brok and Sindri, as well as new friends from the realm of the gods, impress. The acting is top notch, with Danielle Bisutti as the star. Her broken Freya fluctuates between limitless anger and excruciating pain, and is a joy to watch.
Plus, the portrait of Odin is a bold choice that turns out to be fantastic. Amidst big and taciturn muscle masses like Kratos and Thor, Richard Schiff (Toby of The West Wing) plays the supreme god as a sort of Mafia boss who relies more on his brain than on sheer strength. He makes him an infinitely intriguing antagonist who is always two steps ahead of you.
This story is again brilliantly portrayed by fabulous shooting work, in which no cuts are ever made in the scenes. Everything is a take, which makes the adventures of Kratos and Atreus even more personal. You really feel like you are by their side and dating. It also provides the necessary calm, because the camera stays on faces for a long time. When there is an important conversation, you get all the nuances on the faces of the actors.
This time around, the camera gets a little more space to capture other textures as well. Ragnarök has many creative tricks in store to portray the whole in a surprising way and to make everything blend perfectly. Director Eric Williams deserves a big compliment for his sometimes daring choices, but certainly successful in the script.
Everything is a take, which makes the adventures of Kratos and Atreus even more personal
You may notice that this action-adventure review isn’t about action for 12 paragraphs. This game relies so much on history that the developers themselves sometimes almost forget that there is still a struggle to be fought. Quick, throw another bunch of meaningless enemies at the player! You are regularly faced with small fights, only because the previous fight was a long time ago.
This sometimes disrupts the pace of the game, especially if it starts to feel like a must. Some battles and environments are also exactly the same as in the previous game. “Hey, remember this great enemy? Well, here it is again! ” Fortunately, the total amount of different enemies has increased, making the game more varied in the end. However, the repetitions stand out.
It shouldn’t spoil the fun too much, especially since the combat is very good and tight. Little has changed since the previous game, but in this case that’s not bad at all. The ax and double-chained swords are as cool as ever. You have total control over Kratos and all his moves, the controls never get in the way and combos flow effortlessly from your fingertips.
New additions to your arsenal are welcome, but not a major revolution. For example, you can now load up your weapon before starting a combo for an extra dose of ice or fire. Later in the game you can choose to focus more on long-range combat, but hey, who wants that when you have your hands on those iconic melee weapons?
You also have little time to get bored of combat, as the game contains more epic moments and battles than before. Although Ragnarök, like his predecessor, has a slow start, the journey is more than ever filled with memorable confrontations.
Puzzles are great hiccup moments. The same ideas from 2018 come back here, sometimes not even with a different jacket. Open the chests with the runes by looking for three altars, which was not an exciting activity in the previous game. There are also dozens of Odin’s ravens hidden in the area, and chests hide behind all sorts of obstacles.
Not only the optional content, but also the main story is often plagued with puzzles that slow the pace. During an important mission, for example, you have to open an almost infinite series of doors by freezing the gears with your ax. That variant of the puzzle returns too often, while you mostly want to know how the story continues.
If you can’t figure it out, the puzzle will be solved for you with Mimir’s well-meaning hints. If you have to think for more than a minute, that jerk tells you exactly what is expected of you, just like Aloy mutters to herself in Horizon Forbidden West. However, the game is extraordinarily linear; runes constantly mark where you should jump or climb.
Oh, that climb, that damn climb. When will this type of game learn that pushing a stick one way to climb a wall is not satisfying at all? Navigating the world like this every now and then isn’t bad in itself, because it takes the steam out of the boiler for a while. However, Ragnarök rubs some salt on his wounds by dedicating an entire section to climbing.
Despite the above criticisms, God of War Ragnarök is a beautiful game that looks epic and grand throughout. The game finished perfectly, all animations and details are fixed and bugs are almost completely absent. Worlds are breathtaking at times, filled with small details that bring the game to life. We would have liked to see a little more of some environments, because not all areas can be explored at your leisure.
But you can’t really complain about the lack of content here. The story flows to your screen in about twenty hours, but if you want to explore all the optional missions as well, you will surely lose twice as much, and maybe even more.
According to the developers, this God of War series will not be a trilogy and Ragnarök is the closing of this story. Oddly, it looks like a trilogy. The game is so packed with amazing story moments that it feels like you’ve played two entire games in one. As if the studio had planned the story of a trilogy, but had crammed the last two parts into one package.
The minor gods would succumb under their own weight in such a case, but with Ragnarök this is absolutely not the case. The game is overcrowded, in the most positive way. It brilliantly weaves all of its storylines and grandiose action, never letting you snort and snort at the watch. After thirty hours of gameplay, we just want to spend more time in this world. Fortunately, there is still a lot to do.
God of War Ragnarök will be released on November 9 for PlayStation 5 and PlayStation 4. For this review, the game was tested on PlayStation 5.
