Ragnarok was a meandering, bloated mess of a game. A very fun game, but it had way too much stuff in it while way too little actually happened. God of War 2018 wasn't perfect by any means, but it had a focus that Ragnarok lacked. That focus is back in Valhalla, both in its story and the gameplay. Valhalla itself is a series of randomized combat challenges that draw from Ragnarok's enemy roster, as well as some bosses from 2018 and a few enemies from the original series. There aren't any new weapons or anything and the perks don't really change how you fight, but the variety in encounters is just enough so it never gets boring. The story is also basically just Kratos coming to terms with his past and reconciling the fact that he's a completely different character in the Norse games than he was in the original ones, but the fact that you get a little bit of story in each run helps space things out while keeping things interesting. The longest I went without being in a fight was maybe 10 minutes, which includes buying upgrades and choosing what equipment I wanted to take with me for the next run. There aren't any painstakingly slow and quite frankly pointless sections like Atreus's visit to Ironwood here, so I never felt like I needed to rush through a poorly executed story section to get back to the fun stuff.

I also really like the Draupnir spear and I'm happy to get any excuse to use it again covering enemies in spikes and then making them explode on command is really fun.