I think it's one of the best games I've played, and it's a massive improvement from God of War 2018 in every way. The graphics are stunning and beautiful with a fantastic art direction to make the environments of the Nine Realms pop out as vividly and colorful as possible, from lust jungles to chilly snowscapes. Honestly, it's one of the most visually appealing games I've ever played and I think I would say the same even if I played it on PS4.

The combat and gameplay are almost the same from 2018 but it helps a lot it gets going much faster since you can use the blade of chaos almost immediately when you start the game and you obtain another weapon 2/3 into the game. You get pseudo-RPG elements like crafting weapons and armor, skill trees, different runic abilities, and amulets slots to increase stats.

My only personal grip is I wish Kratos could get stronger overtime without relying on overall equipment quality, such as a level system that isn't just gear level. It's honestly the one thing that is preventing me from calling Ragnarok a full-on RPG and I wish they commit to it but overall the game is fine with its equipment system is honestly more in-depth than the average action game.

The story is easily the biggest improvement from 2018 and the strongest part of the game. Unlike 2018 when Kratos and Atreus have a clear goal at the start and it's just all about the journey rather than the destination. Ragnarok has a more focused plot and it's unpredictable since the stakes are higher and the scope is grander. The story manages to achieve this well by setting how dire the situation around Kratos and Atreus is from the very start and it slowly builds up more and more.

It just had me hooked and wanting to play more and more until the end, especially with the plot twists near the end that not even I saw coming. The dual protagonist system between Kratos and Atreus being able to showcase different perspectives of the story serves well. And it especially highlights character themes such as trust in familial relationships, wanting to protect each other even if it means lying to them, dealing with grief and forgiveness across various characters around the father and son duo. It definitely has so much emotional payoff, I almost cried twice myself during the story.
Ragonrok just masterfully explores these character themes while still keeping the overall plot intact.

Not to mention there is just so much lore and world-building beyond the main story. Every side quest adds to either the Nine Realms' lore or fleshes out the characters to some degree and it's never just busy work or filter. That is something a lot of games struggle with these days. Even random objects such as poems or artifacts or even idle chat during travel shine on a small part of the characters' interests and pasts. Ragnarok engages the player with so much story and detail in almost every possible moment beyond cutscenes.

If I do have some minor quips, my only complaints besides the gear level system are the number of puzzles and how restricted movement is. I am aware God of War always had puzzles in between combat sections and story but it just felt so abundance and cryptic, I felt like I was dealing with puzzles every 5 minutes and it just hurts the flow of the combat-to-story loop of Ragnarok. That is to say, the quality of the puzzles is overall good and clever, I just wish they were fewer of them. Maybe that will also free up how restrictive it is to move around the game because revisiting areas to clean up the game feels a bit of a chore.

Besides a few gameplay designs I'm not much of a fan of, I have absolutely no complaints with the story at all and that is extremely rare for me to say in any piece of fiction, not just in video games. God of War Ragnarok took the dramatic storytelling with huge stakes and epic scopes of God of War 3 while combining it with the overall game design and philosophy of God of War 2018 to create the definitive and greatest God of War experience yet.

I was skeptical of the hype and how awarded it was at first but after experiencing Ragnarok for myself, this is one of the few pieces of art that lives up to its reputation extremely well and I fully understand every piece of praise it gets. This is truly one of the greatest games of all time, it's even peak fiction as far as I am concerned and that is something I don't say lightly at all. It does require some commitment as playing God of War 2018 is the bare minimum (the recap does not do any justice at all) but in the end, it's one of the best payoffs I've experienced in a story and I can easily recommend it anyone to do the same if they just want a raw, fantastic and amazing story.