This review contains spoilers
It's impossible to review God of War Ragnarök without comparing to its predecessor.
God of War (2018) set a new tone to the franchise. It had a new type of gameplay, a better story, distancing itself from the pure rage of past Kratos.
GoW 2018 had an amazing storytelling, a point A and a point B in your journey, with lots of different steps between those points to develop the relationship of father and son. During the game you feel the characters growing with the world, with the NPCs you encounter, and how both Kratos and Atreus change along the way. And then the game finishes with a cliff-hanger of Thor appearing at your door. All the story was accompanied by a smooth gameplay, great weapons, and maybe the only critique might be the lack of variety of bosses.
Could Ragnarök hit the same notes? Or even make things better?
Technically the game is amazing. The new realms are much more complex, they are beautiful, colourful, an incredible upgrade from GoW 2018, it really made the PlayStation 5 feel above the PS4.
Gameplay? Surreal. Kratos is a beast at this game. We didn’t get that much “Metroided” at this game as I was expecting. The new weapon is great to use, I like the runes, I like the different shields. Maybe the only downgrade is the lack of skill tree for rage. It has a smooth combat, it is fun to play, it feels good to do different types of attacks with different types of weapons.
Gameplay? Yes, again. Because now you can play as Atreus. Unfortunately, it’s far from being as good as playing with Kratos. Atreus’s move pool is much more limited, it often feels even boring.
The story? Unfortunately to me, it was absolutely underwhelming. It was like waiting for the sequel of an amazing book and getting a feeling of “Is that all there is?”.
The story takes so much time to really start. The whole process of freeing Tyr is longer than it needed to be. The Ironwood sequence makes the game have a low replay value. It takes almost THREE HOURS to go through and nothing there is particularly exciting, the writing is weak, it’s too much teenage drama.
Things happen because they need to happen, it does not feel like a cohesive narrative. At no moment I felt "Wow, that's the war to end all (or at least one) realms!"
Odin is an incredible character when he’s himself at the game, but in the end his motivations are weak. The whole talk about the mask is weird, and in the end he seems not at all concerned by Ragnarök.
Every Atreus “Be better” moment did not feel earned. Most of his steps were wrong and his fault, and we need to hear him as the right one.
It feels like some side quests were more sentimental, interesting and well developed than some moments of the main quest.
I’d probably rate Gow 2018 a 9.5/10, and this one a 7.75/10. It was mostly fun for 50 hours of gameplay but it did not live up to my expectations.
God of War (2018) set a new tone to the franchise. It had a new type of gameplay, a better story, distancing itself from the pure rage of past Kratos.
GoW 2018 had an amazing storytelling, a point A and a point B in your journey, with lots of different steps between those points to develop the relationship of father and son. During the game you feel the characters growing with the world, with the NPCs you encounter, and how both Kratos and Atreus change along the way. And then the game finishes with a cliff-hanger of Thor appearing at your door. All the story was accompanied by a smooth gameplay, great weapons, and maybe the only critique might be the lack of variety of bosses.
Could Ragnarök hit the same notes? Or even make things better?
Technically the game is amazing. The new realms are much more complex, they are beautiful, colourful, an incredible upgrade from GoW 2018, it really made the PlayStation 5 feel above the PS4.
Gameplay? Surreal. Kratos is a beast at this game. We didn’t get that much “Metroided” at this game as I was expecting. The new weapon is great to use, I like the runes, I like the different shields. Maybe the only downgrade is the lack of skill tree for rage. It has a smooth combat, it is fun to play, it feels good to do different types of attacks with different types of weapons.
Gameplay? Yes, again. Because now you can play as Atreus. Unfortunately, it’s far from being as good as playing with Kratos. Atreus’s move pool is much more limited, it often feels even boring.
The story? Unfortunately to me, it was absolutely underwhelming. It was like waiting for the sequel of an amazing book and getting a feeling of “Is that all there is?”.
The story takes so much time to really start. The whole process of freeing Tyr is longer than it needed to be. The Ironwood sequence makes the game have a low replay value. It takes almost THREE HOURS to go through and nothing there is particularly exciting, the writing is weak, it’s too much teenage drama.
Things happen because they need to happen, it does not feel like a cohesive narrative. At no moment I felt "Wow, that's the war to end all (or at least one) realms!"
Odin is an incredible character when he’s himself at the game, but in the end his motivations are weak. The whole talk about the mask is weird, and in the end he seems not at all concerned by Ragnarök.
Every Atreus “Be better” moment did not feel earned. Most of his steps were wrong and his fault, and we need to hear him as the right one.
It feels like some side quests were more sentimental, interesting and well developed than some moments of the main quest.
I’d probably rate Gow 2018 a 9.5/10, and this one a 7.75/10. It was mostly fun for 50 hours of gameplay but it did not live up to my expectations.