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God of War Ragnarök G|OT|Y

mxbison

Member
Got the platinum at 57 hours

I'd give it 9.5/10 just because the hinting at puzzles really annoyed me, everything else was great.

Didn't have much trouble with Berserker King and Gna, my build at the end was all in on Realm Shift and felt kinda broken, atleast on that difficulty.

I really wish we could have a dlc or small standalone like Uncharted LL with Kratos and Freya exploring an area similar to the Crater. Already sad how long it's gonna be until the next game...
 

Lokaum D+

Member
Just finished the game today and got the plat after 60 hours and i have to say that is a 8/10 imo, there is no NG+ and nothing to do after u got the plat. I didnt like the story too much and combat for me has some major flaws, lets se where this IP ll go next.
 
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6/10 for me. Excellent graphics, good story and great new characters. The best Thor I've ever seen.

I didn't like the map, level design, sections that look like they came out of Life is Strange or some Naughty Dog game, NPCs that never shut up, soundtrack that I can't remember 3 tracks, useless collectibles, zero replayability because you can't skip cutscenes or slow walk & talk storytelling moments and so on.

Maybe Top 5 of the year for me. Elden Ring is 1000 times a better videogame.
 
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Flyinmunky

Member
Finished the game. It didn't reach the highs of some moments from the previous GOW, but still found it to be great game. Found all the characters interesting and enjoyed there story arcs.

But.... I think the next one really needs to mix up the exploration/ Puzzle side of things , way to stale now.

Combat was still fun but took a bit of time to get to a point where I had enough runic moves etc to really enjoy it.
 

Neff

Member
Finished it, good shit.

Aside from some excessive melodrama and companions who won't SHUT THE FUCK UP EVER I found it an improvement over the original in every way. It's actually amazing how much they managed to pack into the game.

Egypt next pls
 

slade

Member
37 hours in and I just got to the Crater area. It's like a boss rush mode designed around a Souls like dungeon. A welcome change of pace that puts the combat system front and center. They could have done this in Muspelheim though instead of making that just combat trials with stupid conditions.
 

mxbison

Member
6/10 for me. Excellent graphics, good story and great new characters. The best Thor I've ever seen.

I didn't like the map, level design, sections that look like they came out of Life is Strange or some Naughty Dog game, NPCs that never shut up, soundtrack that I can't remember 3 tracks, useless collectibles, zero replayability because you can't skip cutscenes or slow walk & talk storytelling moments and so on.

Maybe Top 5 of the year for me. Elden Ring is 1000 times a better videogame.

6/10 is still in your Top 5? Must have been a rough year.
 

Brute

Neophyte
How the hell is this game or The las of Us, Spider-Man or any other big narrative-driven Playstation title a walking simulator?!? The actual gameplay in all these games is superb and often industry-leading. Like, come on. If you don´t like story-driven games, that's fine. Play something else.
The Last of Us is one of the finest story-driven video games of all time.

God of War Ragnarok is a repetitive snoozefest.
 

Pakoe

Member
Just wondering how far I am, currently 23 hours in.
Just got the spear that Brok has blessed

I am really enjoying this game. First time playing it on No Mercy. Game is so well made. GOTY potential for sure (but I still need to play Elden Ring)
 
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TrebleShot

Member
Just got to the end of the story, what an incredible ride, the graphics, story performances, music and gameplay are on another level.
What a tightly curated and beautiful creation, from start to end it kept you gripped and is up there with the finest in the world of video games. It may be the best game ever made.
 

SlimySnake

The Contrarian
Been playing the game on GMGOW. It is way easier than the first. Likely because you have your chains from the beginning, and you seem to do more damage. Enemies leveling up mid battle isnt really a dealbreaker either since you do so much more damage by setting them on fire or by freezing them and then switching weapons. Only the Elves gave me some trouble, but even they were manegable.

The shield that lets you block yellow attacks makes everything so easy. I cant believe i missed that shield and went with the parry one on my first playthrough. This is easy mode.

One thing that stood out to me is that there are no boss fights between the first Thor fight in the opening and the Freya Valkryie fight. Thats literally 10 hours without any setpieces or boss fights. GOW3 was 10 hours long.

The game is very poorly paced and doesnt have enough setpieces/boss fights. I think i counted 6 total. In a 50 hour game.
 

R6Rider

Member
Finished the story last night. Wanted to at least get the story done before starting Callisto Protocol.

I think I had a total time of around 34 hours. Will definitely finish up the extra stuff on the maps too.
 

The_hunter

Member
I defeated the boss berserker king. Went strength build, berserker chestpiece and slow time relic with a parry shield. It was hard until I switched to the parry shield.
 
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small_law

Member
I've been busy so I'm just getting into it now. I'm about 20 hours in at this point.

It borrows an awful lot from the 2018 game, and by borrow I mean "uses this same stuff exactly." They tweaked combat here and there, but it's 90% what the 2018 game was. It's starting to look like builds are similar enough to the 2018 game that they might as well be identical. Enemies in Ragnarok are more distinct and it runs smooth as glass, but if you put the two games side by side, you'd be hard-pressed to pick out which one is which. The pacing is a bit strange, but it's for the sake of character development. Frankly, this is some of the best character development I've seen in a video game in a long time.

Thing is I absolutely do not mind it when a studio makes more of a good thing. There's no reason to change things for the sake of change. God of War 2018 was a special game. No one is tired of that formula yet. All they had to do was make more of the same game for the sequel and that's what they did. At least it looks that way 20 hours in.
 

Kindela

Neo Member
A bit of an off topic, but this game got me hyped to try the first one on gmgow, since I played Ragnarok on the same difficulty. And lmao, the first one is so difficult it's insane. I gave up pretty early on when I died on that revenant + draugr fight. Died probably 50 times.
 

SlimySnake

The Contrarian
?

Tons of mini bosses and side content bosses make up for it
Eh. Dragurs at the only other mini boss during those first ten hours and they are simply not enough. The game has you fight beserkers in the second half but they are arena battles not the gow3 style setpiece bosses we have come to expect from this series. The ps3 game shouldnt have better setpieces than a ps5 game.
You sure? I swear I upgraded both and dragon scale had greater strength and defence but less vitality than sutr 🤔
Ah that must have been it. I wanted to use the greater regen enchantment that needs 170 vitality.
 
Eh. Dragurs at the only other mini boss during those first ten hours and they are simply not enough. The game has you fight beserkers in the second half but they are arena battles not the gow3 style setpiece bosses we have come to expect from this series. The ps3 game shouldnt have better setpieces than a ps5 game.

The whole end game content has huge dragon fights.

I was not unsatisfied with boss type battles in this game. GoW3 didn't have that many.
 

SlimySnake

The Contrarian
The whole end game content has huge dragon fights.

I was not unsatisfied with boss type battles in this game. GoW3 didn't have that many.
Yeah, i forgot about those dragon fights. They were awesome. But to me, GOW is about multi stage cinematic fights. I really dont consider trolls, valkyries and travelers as those bosses.

The game is much better paced in its second half. Quite a few setpieces and bosses back to back. But I was trying to point out that the Svarthaheilm and Alfheim story missions and open world areas have none of that. hell, if you dont count the valkyrie fight with Freya, you are basically looking at Nidhogg as the second real boss fight in the story after the opening Thor fight. And thats almost 15 hours in. Thats the length of U4, TLOU1, and Spiderman. It's insane.

TBH, The more i replay the game the more I notice how many mediocre levels there are in the game. I think they shouldve cut the Alfheim level altogether. Especially the story one. It really adds nothing to do the story like the Freya levels do. Shouldve just skipped that entire chapter and gone straight to Vanaheim and fought Nidhogg around 7 hours in. Then use the time saved from not making Alfheim's boring levels into making more setpieces and maybe a longer Asgard with better final bosses.
 

Mikey Jr.

Member
Just got the platinum.

Awesome game. Loved it. The combat to me is a huge step up.

Fuck the 2 beserkers though. That one with 2 of them and the one with 3 of them.

FUCK THAT SHIT. Playing on no mercy and was about to just drop it down to easy because I was getting so pissed off. I dont think god of war camera works for those kind of arena fights tbh.
 

Dibils2k

Member
can i just say, i cant believe its been 2 games and they didnt do a single segment or a fight scene using the old camera style
 
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Turk1993

Member
I have a question, do enemies ever come back when you finish everything or does the worlds stay empty? Im 80% done with the side content and i started to notice that all the maps felt empty and didn't have enemies anymore.
 

slade

Member
Just finished it at 50 hours. I kind of agree with Edge's 7 score for Ragnarok. The gameplay here is still pretty good but considering that they want to tell a cinematic story, that has to be judged as well. And I have a lot of problems with the way they went about telling Kratos' story across these two games. Personally, I don't think they should have gone the sad dad route but it is what it is. Outside of that, the final assault and what was leading up to it was way less of a spectacle then it should have been. The old PS2 titles had you fight off titans and giant monsters. The biggest giant in this game, you don't even fight. Anyway, kind of disappointed. Elden Ring is still my favorite for GotY.
 

SlimySnake

The Contrarian
Just finished it at 50 hours. I kind of agree with Edge's 7 score for Ragnarok. The gameplay here is still pretty good but considering that they want to tell a cinematic story, that has to be judged as well. And I have a lot of problems with the way they went about telling Kratos' story across these two games. Personally, I don't think they should have gone the sad dad route but it is what it is. Outside of that, the final assault and what was leading up to it was way less of a spectacle then it should have been. The old PS2 titles had you fight off titans and giant monsters. The biggest giant in this game, you don't even fight. Anyway, kind of disappointed. Elden Ring is still my favorite for GotY.
The final mission pretty much destroyed any chance of it wining goty. It was extremely underwhelming and lets be honest it needed that awe inspiring genre defining spectacle to put it over the top but it kinda limps to the end.

Its still a great game but ps4 held this game back and the devs couldn’t find any ways around it. 4.5 years and no Titan fights. Come on. This is why you don’t continue to replace directors every game. Cory should’ve been forced to direct this game. This is your premiere franchise and it needs a premiere director in his prime. Imagine if tlou2 was directed by a no name guy.
 

The_hunter

Member
I have a question, do enemies ever come back when you finish everything or does the worlds stay empty? Im 80% done with the side content and i started to notice that all the maps felt empty and didn't have enemies anymore.
Some spots have re-spawning enemies.
 
I'm currently 26 hours and enjoying that I have retreated the game toa. Couple of hours a day. I binged 2018 until I platnimued it but now I'm happy taking my time with this one. Lots of games to play at the minute and it's nice to break off from this when it wears a little thin. I've killed 3 of the berserker and feel pretty specd up now, just going back, through areas now I can navigate the windwall areas and the yellow cracked walls.

I'll probably binge the collesium etc but I'm only level 5 at the minute.

Ita a good game for sure, still feel like the bosses are lacking and fighting enemies in small bowl environments are a bit poo but I'm just imagining it's like the gaol in elden ring.
 
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decisions

Member
Finally finished the game yesterday. If the game had ended 20 hours earlier I would've loved it, but it far overstayed its welcome. The game has some amazing moments but the story and overall pacing and experience are ruined by an abundance of repetitive side content that goes on far after you have become bored of the formula. I played on No Mercy as well and this made a lot of the side content very annoying and punishing, as the flaws of the combat really come out when it gets more difficult (i.e. the atrocious camera, unreliable enemy reactions to attacks, unreliable off-screen attack indicator, etc.).

I would give the game like a 7.5/10. They really needed to trim the fat on this one, both in regard to the side content and story, which has too many characters and various threads that feel rushed or unearned.
 
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The_hunter

Member
Finally finished the game yesterday. If the game had ended 20 hours earlier I would've loved it, but it far overstayed its welcome. The game has some amazing moments but the story and overall pacing and experience are ruined by an abundance of side content that goes on far after you have become bored of the formula. I played on No Mercy as well and this made a lot of the side content very annoying and punishing, as the flaws of the combat really come out when it gets more difficult (i.e. the atrocious camera, unreliable enemy reactions to attacks, unreliable off-screen attack indicator, etc.).

I would give the game like a 7.5/10. They really needed to trim the fat on this one, both in regard to the side content and story, which has too many characters and various threads that feel rushed or unearned.
Felt the same way about the side content.
 

SlimySnake

The Contrarian
Finally finished the game yesterday. If the game had ended 20 hours earlier I would've loved it, but it far overstayed its welcome. The game has some amazing moments but the story and overall pacing and experience are ruined by an abundance of repetitive side content that goes on far after you have become bored of the formula. I played on No Mercy as well and this made a lot of the side content very annoying and punishing, as the flaws of the combat really come out when it gets more difficult (i.e. the atrocious camera, unreliable enemy reactions to attacks, unreliable off-screen attack indicator, etc.).

I would give the game like a 7.5/10. They really needed to trim the fat on this one, both in regard to the side content and story, which has too many characters and various threads that feel rushed or unearned.
I am playing the game on GMGOW and the flaws of the combat system are now front and center. I still like the combat, but the iframes in this game are very inconsistent. I swear i have more trouble with fucking Travelers on this difficulty than harder bosses because the hit detection is so off. So many times the dragurs manage to hit me while im clearly dodging. This was a small problem with some of the beserkers on No Mercy but its glaringly obvious with pretty much every mini boss on this mode.

Dodging should be more forgiving with more iframes. If a hardcore game like souls lets you dodge without getting hit then GOW needs to have even more iframes, not fewer with enemies getting more tracking.
 
can i just say, i cant believe its been 2 games and they didnt do a single segment or a fight scene using the old camera style
I would love it if we had the camera like this (it's too close for my taste as it is now).

Fixed at that distance (as an example taken from a random game)
HrMTnJw.jpg


I so want to replay GoW 1, 2 & 3 after I'm done with Ragnarok.
 
I am playing the game on GMGOW and the flaws of the combat system are now front and center. I still like the combat, but the iframes in this game are very inconsistent. I swear i have more trouble with fucking Travelers on this difficulty than harder bosses because the hit detection is so off. So many times the dragurs manage to hit me while im clearly dodging. This was a small problem with some of the beserkers on No Mercy but its glaringly obvious with pretty much every mini boss on this mode.

Dodging should be more forgiving with more iframes. If a hardcore game like souls lets you dodge without getting hit then GOW needs to have even more iframes, not fewer with enemies getting more tracking.
I just can't get over the camera. Its so close that my teammates literally have to yell behind you! To the right! Every few seconds in addition to glowing arrows on your feet. Because you just can't see what is happening around you. Really shouldn't be the case in an action game. Mobility is also extremely limited. Weapon switching is slow and leaves you open.

Some fights play out well and are a ton of fun. Many fights don't.
 

SlimySnake

The Contrarian
I just can't get over the camera. Its so close that my teammates literally have to yell behind you! To the right! Every few seconds in addition to glowing arrows on your feet. Because you just can't see what is happening around you. Really shouldn't be the case in an action game. Mobility is also extremely limited. Weapon switching is slow and leaves you open.

Some fights play out well and are a ton of fun. Many fights don't.
when the camera pans back during some of Kratos' runic moves, the game looks so much better. I dont want Kratos as a tiny thing on screen like in the original games but the camera needs to be more like uncharted than TLOU. Especially now that they have gone the Horizon FW route and added far more aggressive enemies in the mix.

And yes, some fights are chefs kiss but then others are a clusterfuck. Like any good game, variety for the sake of variety isnt always the best. You need to find the right mix of enemies that is equally challenging AND fun. Putting Wearwolves with Bifrost enemies might sound like a good idea on paper but it doesnt make for a fun fight. Same goes for some of the poison enemies using range attacks while you are trying to have a melee fight.
 

YukiOnna

Member
Just finished the main story it after nearly 30 hours. I think the last quarter definitely saved it, otherwise I think for the first 75% it is weirdly paced and seems to like to avoid the idea of any story build-up. I'm not too happy with how they handled Thor. His storyline and what they wanted to do with him is fine, but he needed way more screentime and not disappear till 15 hours into the game and primarily only interact with Atreus. He really needed to have more scenes with Kratos for the final delivery. I really wish they went the traditional route with him as an antagonist. The need to subvert expectations cost them here for me. Anyways, the end to the journey was good. I'm glad there was no tragic end, a bittersweet one but that doesn't have to mean death. Kratos has come a long way. I wonder where he will head next game or what he will do. Side note, the Vanaheim storyline was the weakest for me- just wanted it over with.

Gameplay was a lot better with all the weapon variety and movesets, but I still found myself sticking to the Leviathan Axe. The bosses were also better designed, Garm and the Valkyrie pair in particular were memorable. Difficulty wasn't as tough as I'd like it though and it's a shame they held your hand throughout so much, never let you pause for a second to think it through yourself. Also, a lot of the average enemy fights were annoying due to wrong amount of enemies for the wrong arena and they overstayed their welcome.
 

slade

Member
The final mission pretty much destroyed any chance of it wining goty. It was extremely underwhelming and lets be honest it needed that awe inspiring genre defining spectacle to put it over the top but it kinda limps to the end.

Its still a great game but ps4 held this game back and the devs couldn’t find any ways around it. 4.5 years and no Titan fights. Come on. This is why you don’t continue to replace directors every game. Cory should’ve been forced to direct this game. This is your premiere franchise and it needs a premiere director in his prime. Imagine if tlou2 was directed by a no name guy.

I know cross gen is your whole schtick here bro, but come on. You can't say PS4 held this game back while citing boss fights from consoles older then the PS4. A lack of vision is what held the game back. A lack of vision that started when some guy had a baby and got too into his feelings and decided that's the direction he wanted to take Kratos. LOL.
 
I would love it if we had the camera like this (it's too close for my taste as it is now).

Fixed at that distance (as an example taken from a random game)
HrMTnJw.jpg


I so want to replay GoW 1, 2 & 3 after I'm done with Ragnarok.

I've downloaded my old god of war 3 remastered for ps4. Can't wait to play it again and show it my son. Give him an idea of where it came from and how epic the boss fights used to be.
 
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