Also on: PS5, PS4
Publisher: PlayStation Publishing
Developer: Santa Monica Studio, Jetpack Interactive
Medium: Digital/Disc
Players: 1
Online: No
ESRB: M
I’ve got to admit, I’ve never been as fond of God of War post-reboot as some of my Gaming Age colleagues. Where Tyler adored the 2018 reboot, I felt kind of “meh” about it – so much so that I gave up on the game fairly early on, and skipped God of War Ragnarök entirely when it first came out on PS4/5 two years ago, Dustin’s praise for it notwithstanding. Don’t get me wrong, I wouldn’t argue that the franchise didn’t need some kind of change after God of War: Ascension; I may have played every one of the entries up until that game, finishing some of the multiple times, but by Ascension it was clear that the series had kind of exhausted everything it could do in that direction. It’s just that this rebooted dad version of Kratos seemed a little too serious and self-important for my taste.
Now that God of War Ragnarök has arrived on PC, though, I figured it was time to give the rebooted series another shot. I’ve always vastly preferred playing games on handhelds to playing them on a big TV anyway, so I figured I’d check the game out on my GPD Win Mini and see what the fuss was about.
Of course, playing it on a handheld leads to the obvious question: can they run the game adequately enough to do it justice? Thankfully, the answer to that is an unqualified yes. It runs on the Win Mini without breaking a sweat – and even if the Steam Deck is less powerful, it’s pretty clear that the game’s Verified status is well-earned. There were no hiccups, no long loading screens, no glitches, nothing negative whatsoever to say about the experience: it runs on a handheld every bit as smoothly as you could possibly hope.
As for whether God of War Ragnarök turned around my opinion of the reboot…that answer is a little less emphatic. As far as combat goes, it hasn’t strayed as far from the original games as I used to think. It’s still satisfyingly bloody and hack-and-slash-y, it just comes in smaller doses and is more spread out. Moreover, to my surprise, Kratos’ axe quickly grew on me: at first I was sure that I’d want to use nothing but the original fiery blades, but that ended nearly right away, when I realized that the axe was much more satisfying. Your attacks seem much more controlled, and the axe feels much easier to use in situations where you’re taking on a lot of enemies all at once (which, this being God of War, happens a lot).
Likewise, there are still plenty of environmental puzzles to be found, much like the earlier games. In fact, the puzzles here may also be more enjoyable, on account of the fact they feel tougher than they used to. Maybe I’m just forgetting the original games, or maybe my instincts have slowed in the decade-plus since those older games, but I often found myself having to stop and think about how I wanted to solve the puzzle.
Where I found my attention straying in God of War Ragnarök was in a lot of those moments between the puzzles and the battles. Whether it was exploring the map or the cutscenes, the game felt like it was trying a little too hard to be epic.
Obviously, to some extent this is an absurd complaint: the original God of War games had all kinds of over-the-top moments where it felt like the series was trying to overwhelm you with its scope. But it feels different here. Where before the games fit their epic sequences and set pieces into a world that was actually pretty linear and straightforward, here you have a semi-open world format where the game is simultaneously trying to push you towards you next goal while also showing off how big the world is and dangling side quests and collectibles to entice you off your path.
Worse (at least for me), it felt like God of War Ragnarök was a little too talk-heavy – and it didn’t help that some of the voice acting wasn’t all that great, either. While the games have always featured lots of cutscenes (some of them genuinely embarrassing), in God of War Ragnarök it feels like the game is all-in on the current Sony trend of being as blockbuster-y as possible. Obviously this gets into the broader debate about that direction, which is a separate point entirely, but I can’t say I particularly enjoy it.
Even if I did, though, I’d still have issues with some of the voice acting. While Christopher Judge is obviously outstanding as Kratos, I found the surrounding cast a lot more grating. I didn’t like being accompanied everywhere by sullen teen Atreus. I couldn’t stand the duo of Brok and Sindri. I absolutely loathed Richard Schiff as Odin. I know that there are plenty of people who loved him in the role, but every time he opened his mouth all I could hear was Toby Ziegler from West Wing – and as much as I loved West Wing, nothing about the voice screams Odin to me.
But still, even if I don’t enjoy God of War Ragnarök’s cutscenes, having this second chance to play the game now that it’s out on PC has at least made me realize that the newer version of Kratos isn’t as much of a reboot as I previously thought. I wouldn’t say I love the new games as much as I did the originals, and I definitely would’ve enjoyed this game more if it felt a little more focused on action and less on dialogue and characters, but God of War Ragnarök is, at the end of the day, a pretty good continuation of Kratos’ saga (and one that runs very well on PC).
PlayStation Publishing provided us with a God of War Ragnarök PC code for review purposes.
