Game Review · Purchased November 9, 2022 · $100.00 CAD via Walmart.ca
The Setup
Picked up right on launch day, Ragnarok continues Kratos and Atreus’s Norse saga three years after 2018’s God of War, as the pair prepare for the prophesied Ragnarok while confronting Thor and Odin across all nine realms.
The Review
The combat retains everything that made the 2018 game feel so good — the Leviathan Axe and Blades of Chaos are just as satisfying to swing here, and the environmental puzzle design across all nine realms gives exploration real texture rather than just padding between fights. The story is the real headline, though: this is genuinely ambitious mythology-building, with Thor and Odin as compelling antagonists, and letting you directly control Atreus in dedicated sections adds welcome variety to a formula that could have easily just repeated itself.
A few specific encounters have unfairly spiky difficulty that stands out against how well-tuned most of the rest of the combat is, and the second half leans on more backtracking than I’d like. The health-item button doubling as the grapple button also caused more than a few accidental deaths in the heat of combat. None of that meaningfully dents what’s otherwise a hugely ambitious, well-told conclusion to this era of the series.
What I Liked
- Combat retains the brutal, satisfying feel of the 2018 game
- Ambitious Norse mythology storytelling with compelling new antagonists
- Playable Atreus sections add genuine variety
- Excellent PS5 visuals and performance/graphics mode options
What I Didn’t
- Some specific encounters have unfairly spiky difficulty
- Noticeable backtracking in the second half
- Health item and grapple sharing a button causes accidental deaths in combat
The Verdict
Rating: 5/5
A hugely ambitious, well-earned conclusion to this saga — an easy launch-day purchase that was worth every bit of the hype.
