Developer: SIE Santa Monica
Publisher: Sony Interactive Entertainment
Platform: PS4, PS5
Tested on: PS5
God of War Ragnarök – Review
It hasn’t been that long since the 2018 installment of God of War was ported to PC. The game still proved to be highly entertaining and quite epic for those who missed the title when it originally came out on the PlayStation 4. Sadly, those same gamers will also have to wait until God of War Ragnarök will be ported as well, as it has only recently been released for PS4 and PS5. This new release has been on the wishlists of many gamers, and now the time has come to delve into the next adventure of Kratos and Atreus. We were quite stoked to slice and dice loads of lesser enemies on the way to epic boss battles, and we were absolutely not disappointed with the final result.
Story
The game picks up some time after the events of the previous game. Kratos just wants to be left alone while he lives his life with his son, who wants to explore a bit more of the world. Sadly, things get rowdy quickly when Odin and Thor show up at Kratos’ doorstep, asking them to stop meddling in their affairs. As Kratos refuses, he soon has to take up arms against Thor, who clearly wants to enact his revenge upon Kratos. Kratos manages to survive the fight, and soon after they start their journey to find Týr, the Norse God of War. Ragnarök is drawing closer, and it seems that the father and son duo might require some aid.
Just like the previous installment, the story is presented via many cutscenes and dialogues. The game sets the atmosphere quite quickly, and we were often more interested in seeing the story unfold rather than the puzzles or the fights that would take place in between.
Graphics
God of War Ragnarök is a gorgeous game. From start to finish we found ourselves gazing at the sceneries when we were not in combat. The game has breathtaking backdrops and the different areas are extremely fun to explore. Combat looks impressive, and it’s nice to see what new skills do when you first unlock them. The character designs are great as well, and we loved seeing the different armor sets for Kratos. Of course, the game does recycle a lot of assets, as you’ll see many identical treasure chests, you’ll be destroying the same crates and barrels over and over again, and the enemies do lack a bit of variety now and then. For the most part, we didn’t encounter that many graphical bugs, except for that one time when Atreus went full exorcist and bent his neck backwards with his bow sticking through it. That being said, even though the game has also been released on PlayStation 4, the PlayStation 5 version looks like a proper next-gen version.
Sound
The sound design of this newest installment of the GoW franchise is superbly handled. The cinematic backdrops ensure that battles remain fairly interesting, and the sound effects pack a proper oomph when slicing and dicing your enemies. Nonetheless, it’s the voice acting here that truly steals the show. The cast does a formidable job bringing their characters to life. We did encounter a very annoying bug where the music was suddenly limited to the start-screen soundtrack and the sound effects were suddenly muted when this occurred. This bug only got resolved when we closed the game and rebooted it.
Gameplay
Just like its predecessor(s), God of War Ragnarök is a hack-and-slash game with mild puzzles and open-world elements. If you played the previous game and loved the overall gameplay formula, you’re getting more of the same here. The title doesn’t bring that much new to the table, and we honestly don’t mind. It’s basically a case of ‘if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it”. For the most part, we very much enjoyed the newest adventure with Kratos and Atreus.
The game offers a variety of difficulty options, making it so that newcomers to the genre can simply enjoy the story while making sure that can beat the enemies that are thrown at them. Other than that, we were very impressed with the different accessibility options, which allow you to customize a lot of settings making sure that everyone can enjoy the game. The game has visual aids to help you, and you can even make it so that you are pointed towards your next objective or that you get more time to complete time-based puzzles. All these settings are very welcome if you are suffering from certain disabilities or simply struggle with certain parts of the game. We do applaud the inclusion of these accessibility options.
Every aspect of the game is very ‘fluid’, ranging from the transitions between gameplay and cutscenes to the seamless action of combat and traversing rough terrain. The game offers quite a few options as to how you can play it, as you’ll be able to use different parts of gear and upgrade them, and you also have different skills you can unlock during your playthrough. The game also motivates you to try out and use certain skills, as these will then unlock other ones when doing so. The only two remarks that we could give when it comes to the overall gameplay are that combat can be a bit repetitive when fighting smaller grunts and some puzzles do get repeated a lot, albeit with slightly different layouts of the terrains they are presented on. These are of course only small gripes when looking at the bigger picture, but they do become quite noticeable during longer playing sessions.
Conclusion
God of War Ragnarök is an amazing continuation of the series, even if it still has a few minor flaws. The game is visually breathtaking, the atmosphere is spot-on, the characters are properly fleshed out, and the overall gameplay loop is enjoyable, safe for the somewhat grindy combat and a few puzzles that get repeated over and over. Other than that, the game provides a huge bang for its buck, and you’ll be able to spend quite some time playing through this installment. We once again wish to applaud the many accessibility features that were added to the game, making this a very accessible title for fans of the series.
God of War Ragnarök - Review,
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