I have adored most of my time with this game for sure. I think the story has some issues that didn’t quite sit right with me, especially regarding the ending but overall, this is a one of a kind, blockbuster type of game that everyone should experience. The previous game and this one especially have a habit of constantly giving a really cinematic, large scale, professional feel which i can’t quite describe properly.
it’s truly unique in how epic and well done it can feel for a video game that even if something feels slightly off, it sticks out like a sore thumb and thankfully, there isn’t a lot of that at all in this game.
It kind of feels like what the MCU should be (weird comparison coming) Just this big epic blockbuster with great action, music and a great band of characters going on an amazing adventure but also kinda feels PG in a weird way? Like the game is actually funny but it’s also really really emotional and heartwarming and it doesn’t break the tone, it’s just perfectly balanced man, so well done. The cutscenes in general just feel like scenes from a film, the first few hours of the game especially i was so impressed by the artistry of this game, the one take camera continues to work beautifully, in slower dialogue scenes as well as in intense action scenes which are fucking beautiful to watch btw, the animation and just the choreography of the action is so well done, you can feel the weight in kratos’ attacks with a perfect use of audio and shifting the camera in closer or further away to just nail that feeling of power, just the storyboarding of these sequences is so impressive and memorable, these elements are unlike anything else in the industry right now, there is clearly some very talented people working at santa monica and they set a new bar.
Combat for one, feels so much better. they somehow made the weapons even more satisfying and fun to use, the finisher animations add a nice gory flavour to the combat and the small tweaks to traversal and the parrying mechanics make combat so much more satisfying. The parrying system is so much better now, much more comparable to parrying in sekiro and you can combine attacks more to build stun damage. The changes seem small at first but the feel of combat is just so much smoother.
this is also helped by the MASSIVE amount of enemy variety in this game, i was seriously finding new enemy types, 35 hours into the game and they can all have distinct moves and ways of dealing damage, the asgardian warriors being my personal favourites to fight, who can utilise bifrost energy to drain ur health away. Along with this comes a much larger amount of unique bosses, including mini bosses and big story fights and some of these fights are seriously fucking cool, not just because of the story significance but also the mechanics of the fights, they really took the model of what made the valkyrie queen boss fight in 2018 so good and applied that philosophy to every boss, just so good man. It seriously makes the last games combat look like child’s play.
The only complaint i have is that we are not given 4 weapons, you get 3 and you have one place left on the D pad for one more and i was so convinced we would be able to get thor’s hammer or some shit because why tf wouldn’t you do that??????? Feels like a missed opportunity definitely, it’s not like you even have to be worthy to pick up the hammer like in marvel, it’s literally just heavy, why wouldn’t you do this man???? I’m guessing time and resources and it sucks cuz this gonna lead to the fucking spear getting so much hate because it’s the only new weapon even tho it’s fucking awesome, i really like it btw, it’s a lot of fun to use. But again it’s weird that we have gone through this entire saga and haven’t been able to wield a single one of the norse mythology weapons. Feels like a massive wasted opportunity.
And this combat is also made even more enjoyable with the fucking score of this game. This will honestly be such an underrated part of this game but the score by Bear mcreary ( awesome name btw ) is genuinely brilliant and makes the game just feel that much more cinematic and emotional, seriously take the music away from half of the scenes in this game and it’s just not the same. It’s so so good. Movie level good.
Now onto the writing and the story. I do like it, most of it and maybe i’m looking at the game the wrong way because of marketing or miscommunication but personally my main problem first of all is the ending. This game is supposed to be the last in the saga, Ragnarok, the end of it all. But personally i wasn’t too satisfied with how it ended, so many loose threads, so many stories still left unfinished, the finale feels slightly rushed. After you kill heimdall i feel like everything after just happens a little too quickly, throughout the whole of the final battle i kept thinking, no way this is it, the music was all sad throughout and i was convinced odin had some master plan but it never really happened, Kratos just kinda walks into asgard and kills everyone no problem lol. The whole plot with the mask and infinite knowledge feels a little wasted, i was convinced time travel would have a big role in this game but no lol. I feel like this was a result of this game being basically two games mushed into 1, as this norse saga was supposed to be a trilogy originally and that hurts the pacing at times, it’s either going too fast or it grinds to a halt and i think that is the main problem with the story, it’s pacing. Some of the atreus sections can go on for a long, long time and the game picks ups immediately after these are over and i think the ending is just tooo fast for the amount of brilliantly executed build up that takes place in both games. I think the first game has a much tighter and better executed story which i think is a result of the change of game director, which is in my opinion, super dumb. I know cory said that it took everything out of him to direct the first game but i wish that he did stay on, because it’s feels clear that the story would have benefitted from it. Cory is a much better story director than eric, but eric is a better gameplay, combat design director. So we get a masterful combat system in this game but the story is slightly sacrificed.
These were my main issues with game so it’s all uphill from here. Other than than the bits i’ve mentioned, there is some great writing in this story, some great character moments and twists that i did not see coming, kratos and atreus are the heart and soul of this game, they keep the game together even when it gets messy and seriously both of their character arcs are perfect and the acting and mocap done for them is fucking excellent. Kratos’s role in the story and how he changes throughout is actually just brilliant. He’s come so far from who he once was and it feels so earned and real, its moving stuff. He is a fantastic character. Mimir is back and he’s great ofc, he gets a little more to do and you can tell how close the main trio are when they are all together, he’s like a brother to kratos and an uncle to atreus, love their dynamics.
Freya is back and she has a great character arc. The villains are great, Thor is brutal and depressed and so much more than just his hammer, it’s honestly kinda sad with the parallels you can get between him and kratos. They are very comparable characters but thor deals with his struggles very differently. Odin is the real villain of the story The guy is evil asf, would have liked to see him be a little more evil, we are told more about him than we are shown which may be purposely done to portray what odin is trying to convince atreus with throughout, would have liked more of him and atreus together and i assume that if this was a 3 part story, we would have got more of that but alas. I do enjoy how they handled tyr and the twists they took with him but at the same time, it’s kinda fucking weird that through this entire sagas main story we didn’t actually meet him, like, there was so much buildup for him in 2018 and the game does that a lot. minimises things that have been built up for ages. Jormungander as well for example, barely plays any part and his big time travel moment is like not even in a cutscene. it happens during gameplay while ur doing something else, again kinda weird to build that up for so long and barely even see it.
The more i think about things like this, the more i’m frustrated at this game, because it’s definitely an amazing game but for everything that’s been built up to the last 4 years, it’s kinda disappointing? sort of, maybe my expectations were way too high, it’s still awesome and i loved it but it’s so close to being even more than it is that it feels dissatisfying, it’s amazing but it’s so close to being a masterclass that it makes the game suffer for not quite being there. Very difficult to explain. like imagine if you were in a race and you come first but you also just miss out on breaking a record, you would feel pissed at how close you were even tho you did great. That’s how i feel about this game. It’s great but it suffers from being so close to breaking records that it’s annoying.
Onto more positive notes tho, the final line before the credits roll is so so good on retrospect. It’s like reading the last few lines in a great book.
Mimir: “A hole.”
Kratos: “What?”
Mimir: “Gets bigger the more you take away.”
….fade to black
Like omfg, what a callback, poetry man, ik they had that line planned for a while.

Also i really like a lot of the side content in this game, most of the regions have large notable side missions that are completely unique and feel just like the main story missions with unique bosses, interesting storylines and spectacle. In alfheim there’s freeing the hafgufas, which are beautiful, in svartelheim there’s freeing the giant creature in the lake, which becomes its own level, in vanaheim there’s a couple, but one gives you access to a whole new huge area which was unexpected. There’s also the new berserker boss fights spread throughout the realms, which are the replacement for the valkyrie bosses from 2018 and some of them are fucking haaaaarrrrdddd but usually in a fair way, it’s extremely satisfying to knock ‘em down. Very fun fights. Then there’s the 2 challenge realms, musphelheim and niflheim which are fun distractions that i haven’t delved into too much yet