And here it is the last God of War game in the series thus far and the long awaited follow up to the 2018 game? I really enjoyed the 2018 a lot more than I thought I was going to upon revisiting it and how does Ragnarok fare? Well, despite some issues, I think Ragnarok improves the 2018 in almost if not every way. I'll start with the good:
The story and writing is much better than the last game, where I felt the 2018 game had solid writing, here it's much more fleshed out and interesting characters like Freya, Brok, Sindri, and Mimir who were mostly decent in the 2018 game are much more fleshed out and interesting here, all of them having their own subplots and goals throughout the story. Where in 2018, they didn't have a whole lot to do outside of Freya and her relationship with Baldur, here it's much more expanded upon. Sindri and Brok's dynamic have more going on, Freya has a surprisinginly convincing face turn, and Mimir is given more humanity despite him always being entertaining. The writing with Kratos and Atreus is also good but more so with Kratos, all though the trasition between God of War 3 to 2018 should've been smoother, Kratos in general feels like a character who is trying his hardest to avoid the mistakes of his past and he can be a bit passive at times early game, if you play the older games and 2018, it's easy to understand Kratos plight and see why he acts the way he does when it comes to avoiding past mistakes and how that shape his world view. Atreus' is a decent enough, his writing isn't as good as Kratos', his sections do a good job at fleshing out the game's antagonists like Thor, his family and Odin, and Atreus himself goes through an interesting journey of self discovery despite his writing not being as interesting as Kratos due to not having nearly as much history and attachment as Kratos does. The gameplay is also improved, the amazing gamefeel is back, every strike, every kill animation, every slam and everything you do has a ton of weight to it. The RPG elements which was overly complicated and had a bunch of useless stats in the 2018 game is much better here in that all you need to focus on is attack and defense and the rest like cooldown, and vitality is up to you. Comparing stats is down much better here since the menu for comparing them is much more streamlined by comparison. You will also be switching between the 3 weapons you have more than I thought you would. Axe for singular enemies, Blades of Chaos for multiple, and the Spear for more of an intbetween and puzzles. Spartan Rage has more depth too, choosing between doing more damage or getting health back and I also like how the accessiblity menu allows you to automatically pickup items which while not as good as having health orbs being magnetized to Kratos after enemies are killed still works well enough since I don't have to worry about pressing a button to activate a healing stone. That and enemies get stunned briefly upon activating a healing stone makes it more efficent to run in and activate a stone. The Atreus sections while a bit overly hated from what I have seen does do an okay job at breaking up the pace gameplay wise, they remind of the Kai sections from Heavenly Sword and I do like the third person shooter feel of the gameplay since the over the shoulder was originally used more for those kinds of games, so shooting gameplay feels at home here. The takedown animations with Atreus aren't as good. Which now gets me to the bad.
Now, I'll transition to the bad. The pacing can get a bit uneven, and there can be a few too many walking sections especially during the Lost Sanuctary level but it later on starts to get more evenly paced. I still get a bit annoyed getting attack offscreen due to the third person over shoulder camera not being able to see everything around me and the indicators while generally being fine and allies telling you when to dodge works well it, the game can still occasionally feel cheap. The puzzles and the characters yelling out the solution can be an irritation since they will yell out the solution before you even get to think about it. Kratos can also be a bit too passive at times early game but it does to get better later when he starts to take charge more.
Overall, Ragnarok I feel is a great game and if the GOW series ended here, I wouldn't mind, it's a high note to end on.
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