God of War 2018 was my favourite game that year, in fact I even called it my favourite PS4 game period. Playing God of War Ragnarok was an interesting experience, the immediate tinge of disappointment crept through me and slowly made me reconsider my praise for the first game. Was it really the best game on the PS4? Or was it just surprisingly great? That's the impact of expectations: I had no idea how the redesigned GoW experience would play, and was enthralled by it. The burden of expectations put onto Ragnarok made less of an impact, but also made me lose some of that rose-tinted memory of the first game.
I don't necessarily need a game to always leap ahead of its predecessor, but Ragnarok is so buried in GoW 2018s design that it took me several hours to acquaint myself with how its cumbersome, bloated menu system worked, remember how the abilities played into combat and the general flow of combat. This game wants to act like nearly 4 years haven't passed since the last game, and while the gameplay continuation can be a stumble, the story is worse: the game will namedrop people, places and fights that the characters remember easily but are only faint memories for me. The "recap" in the main menu is a sad, incomplete recapturing of events and did little to help me reconnect with this world or characters.
The first game had a simple story of father-son bonding and overcoming personal burdens and barriers. Couple that with aggressive combat and epic setpieces, it was a special experience. The sequel is so steeped in continuity and lore that it becomes a slog of organizing Norse mythology and figures. The first act of the game struggles to answer what exactly we are doing here and what our motivation is really. The game also takes one of the most despised plays from the single-player playbook of breaking up the story content by forcing us to play as a different, less powerful character at certain intervals that lock you out of side content for the duration. I don't understand why developers do this. In Spider-Man, no one wants to play as Mary Jane, they want to fly around the city as Spider-Man. In God of War, no one wants to be anyone other than Kratos tearing monsters apart.
I sound quite harsh, and I am because I consider this game to be a massive disappointment, but overall I still enjoyed it. The combat is still satisfying, although the illusion of depth faded a bit for me this time around, making me a bit more aware that the combat, while still satisfying, isn't as complex as it lets on. I wish that creating a "build" meant something outside of the last 5% of the game. The diversity of areas was great and the natural dialogue between companions worked. I felt that the game became more fun in the last third, when I didn't feel railroaded by blocked pathways or limited armour and weapon perk selections. At this point I enjoyed just exploring the world and found satisfaction in that.
I consider the story a critical failure, while the themes that the game concludes with are nice and there are good character moments, the scale of the story smothers the simple interactions that made the first game so memorable. The developers seemed more focused on addressing criticisms of the first game than really expanding and stretching the imagination of the world. For example: this game has much more enemy variety. Yay, I guess. While that is appreciated, I hardly considered that a critical flaw in the previous game, but some might disagree. Whereas the first game introduced the retrievable axe which was such a novel, satisfying and cool game mechanic it made the entire experience feel so unique and polished. There is nothing in Ragnarok that attempts to pull in truly new ideas like that. This is a game of simply refining what was already working, rather than taking even the smallest risk of its own.
I don't necessarily need a game to always leap ahead of its predecessor, but Ragnarok is so buried in GoW 2018s design that it took me several hours to acquaint myself with how its cumbersome, bloated menu system worked, remember how the abilities played into combat and the general flow of combat. This game wants to act like nearly 4 years haven't passed since the last game, and while the gameplay continuation can be a stumble, the story is worse: the game will namedrop people, places and fights that the characters remember easily but are only faint memories for me. The "recap" in the main menu is a sad, incomplete recapturing of events and did little to help me reconnect with this world or characters.
The first game had a simple story of father-son bonding and overcoming personal burdens and barriers. Couple that with aggressive combat and epic setpieces, it was a special experience. The sequel is so steeped in continuity and lore that it becomes a slog of organizing Norse mythology and figures. The first act of the game struggles to answer what exactly we are doing here and what our motivation is really. The game also takes one of the most despised plays from the single-player playbook of breaking up the story content by forcing us to play as a different, less powerful character at certain intervals that lock you out of side content for the duration. I don't understand why developers do this. In Spider-Man, no one wants to play as Mary Jane, they want to fly around the city as Spider-Man. In God of War, no one wants to be anyone other than Kratos tearing monsters apart.
I sound quite harsh, and I am because I consider this game to be a massive disappointment, but overall I still enjoyed it. The combat is still satisfying, although the illusion of depth faded a bit for me this time around, making me a bit more aware that the combat, while still satisfying, isn't as complex as it lets on. I wish that creating a "build" meant something outside of the last 5% of the game. The diversity of areas was great and the natural dialogue between companions worked. I felt that the game became more fun in the last third, when I didn't feel railroaded by blocked pathways or limited armour and weapon perk selections. At this point I enjoyed just exploring the world and found satisfaction in that.
I consider the story a critical failure, while the themes that the game concludes with are nice and there are good character moments, the scale of the story smothers the simple interactions that made the first game so memorable. The developers seemed more focused on addressing criticisms of the first game than really expanding and stretching the imagination of the world. For example: this game has much more enemy variety. Yay, I guess. While that is appreciated, I hardly considered that a critical flaw in the previous game, but some might disagree. Whereas the first game introduced the retrievable axe which was such a novel, satisfying and cool game mechanic it made the entire experience feel so unique and polished. There is nothing in Ragnarok that attempts to pull in truly new ideas like that. This is a game of simply refining what was already working, rather than taking even the smallest risk of its own.