Amazing game. The continuation of our journey through Norse mythology, the combat is so smooth and the map design is very well thought out. Nothing feels like filler or that it was added just to fill the gap. In this game, you can appreciate Krato's grow, not only as a father but also as a person and see what Atreus wants to become. The ending of the game and the DLC is both epic and heartwarming. I hope i can throw hands with Ra in the future Santa Monica.

This game is a masterpiece in writing... and an INCONSISTENT Piece of sh!t trash in gameplay and level design. I'd rather play Sekiro for the 67th time than get rage baited by this lack of inconsistency in enemy tracking, parrying, dodging and making the bosses just a damage sponge.
Every map piece is a f*cking maze for no ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ reason and you spend way too much time platforming than playing the game.
I did not mind playing as Atreus or going to Ironwood as people have complained but damn did you manage to f*ck this up.
If you make me memorize parry timing and then you don't respect your own f*cking time frame and mislead me with the f*cking yellow sh!t circles, I cannot respect your game since you don't respect my time.
It's incredible that it's worse in every way than the 2018 game except the story.
I'm not mad at buying this but I'll think twice of future purchases.

God of War Ragnarok is the sequel to God of War (2018), and is the fifth mainline installment in the God of War series (not counting the innumerable spin-off games).

This game is very much a sequel; while it is possible to pick this up and play it without playing God of War 2018, I think it is a better game if you have played the former, as it is very much a continuation of the plot of that game.

The game picks up three years after the end of the last one; Fimbulwinter is here, and Midgard is cloaked in eternal ice and snow. Freya is seeking revenge for the death of her son Baldur, and Kratos doesn’t want to kill her because she was once his friend.

The game really kicks off with Thor and Odin showing up; Odin is kind of weasely, but he offers Kratos a truce – no more blood being shed, on either side, and he’ll leave them alone. He even offers to sweeten the deal by dealing with Freya. All they have to do is stay put, and not look for Tyr.

Kratos refuses – he doesn’t trust Odin’s offer, having spent decades being told how evil Odin is, and naturally, this leads to an epic opening boss battle with Thor, and, afterwards, the group doing exactly what Odin told them not to do – look for Tyr.

This game’s plot is kind of a mess. The core of the game is a small group of people struggling against another small group of people – Kratos and his group of buddies (which expands out to about a dozen people in this game – the Kratos, his son, Mimir, the two dwarves from the first game, plus spoilers) versus Odin, Thor, and Heimdall.

Unfortunately, this game is also called God of War Ragnarok, implying that there is going to be a great clash of armies that come together at the end of the game to herald in the end of the world (or at least, a big cataclysmic battle). However, the scale of the story being told – a personal story about pain, about loss, about forgiveness, about learning how to let go (and how hard that can be), and also of growing up and maybe growing apart, as well as protecting one’s family (blood or otherwise) – clashes utterly with these ideas of a huge battle, and indeed, almost the entire game centers around this small, intimate little group of people.

And then, at the end of the game, with two hours left, decides “Right, Ragnarok has to happen at the end of this game” and so your merry little band of heroes splits up and everyone shows up to Ragnarok with an army.

It’s incredibly awkward and contrived and completely at odds with the tone and scale of the rest of the game, and it shows. It feels like they felt OBLIGATED to have this giant cataclysmic battle but there is little setup for it, and no payoff – all this off-screen work accomplishes nothing but increase the budget for the last part of the game, and has zero influence on the actual gameplay of the ending.

The result of this is that the game goes off into left field very, very hard plot wise, and it doesn’t feel like it concluded naturally at all – doubly so because they still keep trying to tell this small intimate little story while this giant battle is going on.

It’s very awkward, and as a result, the end is not very satisfying.

Odin is a weasel, but he doesn’t work very well as a primary antagonist; he isn’t very scary and he only goes full mask off at the very end, which means there’s not much build-up with him. Worse, his ultimate goals are pretty petty and small scale, which makes the whole game feel like even more of a contrived mess at the end.

I liked the start of the game, and it was fine through the middle, but the end derailed really hard, and alas, that’s the end of the Norse saga. Many plot threads that were set up earlier in this game are simply cast aside or forgotten, or not really addressed very well, which makes me wonder why they even included them in the first place.

Honestly, it feels like they didn’t really know how to tie in the story they were telling to Ragnarok happening, and so they didn’t even really bother.

The good news is, the gameplay is pretty solid – it’s a better game than the first game, with three interesting weapons to use, and a fairly decent and fluid combat system. There’s a good number of interesting boss monsters, but it is fair to say that the game also contains a lot of mooks that don’t really contribute too much, and there are some filler bosses in the latter third of the game that feel like they are there for the sake of being there. I did, however, enjoy how the combat system worked, and it felt like it was reasonably challenging in the harder bits on the standard difficulty without being overly punishing. There are some superbosses that are harder than the final boss, but they’re cool and reasonably fun. Some of the bosses do have some pretty good mechanics to them, too.

If I had a complaint, it is that for being God of War, you only end up fighting like four gods, and Thor himself is honestly not that interesting of an opponent. It’s actually kind of weird how few gods you fight, and while the other bosses are fine, you can do cool things with divine power.

Visually, the game is really good looking; the game world looks very nice, and while it does have some of the funny genre conventions such as a small pile of rubble blocking your way, the level design is mostly quite good and the worlds themselves – and the enemies in them – look really good. Kratos’s attacks are also quite good looking, as are the attacks of many of the enemies, and the game can do a lot without getting too cluttered, though every once in a while the whole world is glowing and it can get a bit confusing as an enemy does a super attack.

Finally, the game is FULL of dialogue, and very good, fun dialogue at that. The characters talk to each other a lot, while moving from place to place, and this is a great way to communicate story and characterize people without bogging down the game with cutscenes. I was made to laugh a number of times as I went through the game and heard funny stories, or characters telling each other riddles, asking questions of Kratos (whose monosyllabic responses are always amusing), and other fun little interchanges between people. These really helped to make the characters shine, even when the actual core plot had problems.

All in all, this was a solid game whose plot faceplanted hard at the end of the game, resulting in the payoff feeling lackluster. But the game itself is an improvement gameplay wise on God of War 2018, so if you enjoyed the first one, you’ll enjoy this one as well.