God of War: Ragnarök Mini-Review

Return of Boy

This is not a full review of God of War: Ragnarök. This is, as the title suggests, a mini-review. Why? Well, I played most of this game at least a year ago and only recently started playing it again. I am now done with the game and wanted to give a few of my thoughts about it. I have forgotten a lot about the game so I decided to only write about four specific things within the game. I hope you all enjoy.

The writing

The quality of the writing in Ragnarök is not only top-notch but the way it is written is excellent as well. Let me explain. The game always seems to know what the player is up to and what they have accomplished thus far. I know that this is true of all games but it is particularly true for God of War: Ragnarök. You’ll be doing something and start moving to a new area and the characters will have dialogue about what you just did or about what you need to do in the next area. It was almost uncanny since it seems that the writers wrote dialogue for nearly every eventuality.

Another example of this is when Atreus and Mimir are talking or telling a story while riding around in a boat. If you (as Kratos) jump out of the boat, these characters will stop talking. They’ll even say something along the lines of “Oh, we’ll come back to this later.” Not only that but when everyone gets back in the boat, Mimir or Atreus will say “Anyways, what were you saying?” They will also reference the exact point where they were cut off in the conversation. It was very impressive and made the characters feel alive instead of simply being passive NPCs.

Main Story

I’m going to be bold here and state right up front that I thought the main story was the weakest part of the game. There, I said it. The 2018 reboot was an epic journey with a set goal that you were moving towards but in Ragnarök, there never really is one main goal. There wasn’t one, at least, in my opinion. Also, it felt like there was a lot of waiting around for other characters to do stuff so the story could advance. It left the whole thing feeling unfocused from my perspective. This wasn’t helped by the large cast of characters either. I liked all the characters but when there’s twenty of them running around it becomes hard to keep track of everything while also slowing everything down at the same time.

I admittedly may have been more into the story if I knew the backstories and legends of Norse mythology. If I did know all of the stories, then I probably would have been beside myself. The game constantly introduces new characters and concepts that I have no knowledge of. It does so in an epic fashion most of the time as well but those moments really didn’t click with me because I didn’t know what was happening. As such, the main story was all peaks and valleys for yours truly.

Combat

Once again, the combat was the star of the show. For starters, the combat seemed much harder (at least in the beginning) than 2018’s God of War. This was especially true of the optional bosses. There was an elven side boss that really pissed me off and contributed to me quitting the game for a while. When I picked the game back up, I left that boss and advanced the main story. I am happy to report that I have now beaten said boss. I found that to be true of most enemies and bosses in the game in fact. If they’re giving you trouble, just return later and you can usually take care of them no problem.

On the subject of bosses, they even have weak points this time around which I appreciated. I’m all for it whenever a game adds a new wrinkle to boss fights or makes it so they’re more than fighting a big enemy with a huge health bar. It makes it more of a challenge and keeps my attention. I hate it whenever a fight is a war of attrition that goes on for far too long. Good thing Ragnarök does not do that then.

There are so many facets to the combat that I could talk about it all day if I wanted to. Luckily for all of you, I don’t want to do that. Just know that they took the combat of the first game and added more layers on top of it. So many layers in fact that I had forgotten several of them when I returned to the game after a year away from it. There is even a new weapon but I won’t spoil that for you.

I have something to admit to you all today, I, The Pretend Gamer, cannot parry to save my (or Kratos’) life. There are different kinds of parries in Ragnarök. I can do the one with the two blue lines but I found it difficult to successfully parry enemies with green lines. I don’t know what it is about it but I just can’t do it. You hit the parry button twice for the double blue line ones but for the green I was always confused about when to do it. Hence why I was never any good at it which is a shame since a large part of the combat is about parrying.

I loved the combat of God of War: Ragnarök. I know I did because, especially towards the end of the game, I didn’t groan whenever combat appeared before me. You know you’ve made a great combat system when I don’t groan and complain whenever I have to do it.

The Crater

The Crater is an optional side area in God of War: Ragnarök. I want to applaud anybody who had a hand in creating this area because it was, by far, my favorite part of the game. The Crater features its own side quests, boss battles, and even its own storyline. By the way, I was more invested in the storyline of the Crater than I was in the main storyline if that tells you anything. Did I also mention that you can fight dragons in the Crater?!

The best part about the Crater is that I was led to it by an innocuous side quest. Kratos and Atreus are looking for a lost friend of theirs when they stumble upon the Crater. I thought it was going to be a simple side quest and I did not expect to find this huge side area. Boy, was I glad to be wrong though.

Not only is the Crater a secret area but there is a whole other secret area on the other side of it which you have to explore in order to access everything in the Crater. You know, the first secret area. This second secret area has even more quests and activities to do. This whole section of the game was a gift that kept on giving. I couldn’t get enough of it. The only thing that I didn’t like about the second area was that it was hidden behind a barricade that I didn’t know you could knock down. Pro tip: you can in fact knock it down.

The Crater epitomizes what I loved the most about God of War: Ragnarök: the exploration. I loved poking into the corners of every map and discovering secrets both big and small. There are other secret areas but none match the scale of the Crater. The only map I didn’t like wandering around in was Svartalfheim because navigating the mines was a pain in the ass. Besides that place, however, I had a wonderful time wandering around in God of War: Ragnarök.

And there you have it. That’s my mini-review of God of War: Ragnarök. Even though I didn’t enjoy the main story as much as others, I still had a really good time with it and I think it is a really good game. I hope to see more from this series and I think we will most certainly will. I still have to play the rogue-like Valhalla add-on that came out late last year. That will have to tide me over until the next game in this series comes out. I can’t wait to see what they have in-store for us.

Thanks for reading! Did you all play God of War: Ragnarök? Did you like it? Or not at all? Let me know down below!