Author:
Simulacrum
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Date:
3/23/2025 1:35:40 PM
Subject:
God of War Ragnarök
I've gotten a little over halfway through. It's pretty good so far but nothing I would consider a 10/10.
Pros:
1. The story is much bigger than GOW 2018. I've been playing about 36 hours and, as I said, I'm only about 60% done with the main story. All the ancillary stuff goes on a lot longer.
2. The graphics are nice. The cinematics are top drawer.
3. Slight modifications to the UI are an improvement over 2018.
The Questionable:
1. The combat is more fiddly than it was in 2018. I can see how some people would like this, but I also see how it could be perceived as unnecessarily complicated.
2. The cast of characters is much bigger. I think this is a plus, but I can understand how some people would prefer a smaller company with more development for individual characters.
The Bad:
1. The game is much bigger. While I consider this a plus in something like Horizon Forbidden West because it successfully coincided with the higher stakes, here I can't help thinking a lot of it is just for padding and soap opera fan service.
2. The Atreus (or "Boy") segments. These just ruin the game. This kid is even more of an idiot than most fifteen-year-olds. His every rebellious decision results in over-long quests featuring his silly Legolas combat style, and nobody really wants to play this kid when they could be playing Kratos instead. His character trajectory takes too long, and it's made more painful by his "first love" experience with a silly girl NPC who adds nothing whatsoever to the game.
3. Even though it's long, the game is not truly epic in the ways titles like Ghost of Tsushima and Horizon 1/2 are. It's mostly a grueling study in teen angst, a flaccid over-long bildungsroman in which the real hero, Kratos, is too frequently set aside.
4. Freya, the Norse goddess who has been more or less substituted for Frigg, the real wife of Odin and mother of Baldur. I don't care about the substitution because Frigg is a stupid name and Freya is a much cooler character. However, the thing that makes her great at the end of 2018 and the first half of Ragnarök is her anger. In the second half, she softens and becomes an insufferably wise "feminine presence." As an enemy, she was extremely dangerous owing to her godly status and her office as supreme ruler of the Valkyries. As a companion, she's no better than Atreus, although not quite as annoying.
I will try to finish and acquire a more refined opinion, but I think this is a fair midway assessment.
