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God of War Ragnarök G|OT|Y

I've downloaded my old god of war 3 remastered for ps4. Can't edit 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.
I will have to get 1 & 2 on emulation, I don't think Sony offers any other way to play them on PS5.

Anyway, I want the PS3 versions of 1 & 2, their controls are improved.
 

Freeman76

Member
I was loving this up to the Bison riding segment collecting fruit and I dont know why but since hitting that part ive not switched it back on in 3 days
 

SlimySnake

The Contrarian
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.
It's both. The PS3 games were able to do those things because they had a fixed camera view and tiny arenas. This game features wide open worlds and continues to push visuals on par with other last gen games. You can see what happened with Bayonetta 3 when devs said fuck it to the limitations of the consoles and pushed massive setpieces. It came at the cost of visuals. SSM cant afford to do that because everything still has to look sufficiently on par with last gen standards.

Why do you think they blurred out all the detail in the opening when Thor throws you from your home to another level? they are loading the game in the background. They did it with the baldur dragon fight as well. It's why they have you go through cracks in walls, and more hilariously ducking through bridges in open world areas. For them to do the setpieces we want them to do at that level of fidelity they will either need far more RAM or an SSD beyond just an increase in tflops. Just look at how small the levels were in Asgards. Each area is much smaller than anything in the game because they had to push the visuals in the background to show lots going on. They were definitely limited by the GPU and SSD budget.

And like I said, devs couldve found a way around it. Thats why I blamed the director in my original post. His vision is equally at fault. Maybe do a titan fight like they did in the finale of GOW. Limited but still more than just the salad dressing we got in this game.
 
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SlimySnake

The Contrarian
I was loving this up to the Bison riding segment collecting fruit and I dont know why but since hitting that part ive not switched it back on in 3 days
It gets way better from that point onwards. Keep playing. His combat gets better too thanks to some cool NPCs complimenting his abilities.
 

Bojji

Member
Playinumed it today, really great and polished game.

I liked to see second look to the characters that were only mentioned in the first game and portrayed as completely evil. Story wraps up quite satisfactory.

Graphics is good, it's worse than true next gen games but art direction is top notch.

Great music as always and very good VA.

I really love that this game is linear but still gives a lot of freedom (compared to PS3 uncharted games for example). I prefer something like this (tales of arise is another example) to true open world games.

Overall, sevond best game released this year - nothing beats Elder Ring.
 
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.

Titan fights are completely overrated

GoW3 is one of the worst ones in the series.

Nobody is claiming Ragnarok is perfect but it’s easily up there as the best in the series. Cory’s GoW 2018 had hardly any boss battles at all. Guess Cory 2018 should have had Cory 2005 direct instead
 

SlimySnake

The Contrarian
Titan fights are completely overrated

GoW3 is one of the worst ones in the series.

Nobody is claiming Ragnarok is perfect but it’s easily up there as the best in the series. Cory’s GoW 2018 had hardly any boss battles at all. Guess Cory 2018 should have had Cory 2005 direct instead
You mean 2007. ;p david jaffe directed the first game.

I can excuse GOW 2018 for its lack of big boss fights because it was a reboot and they had to get a new combat system, set up a new mythology and completely revamp their world design. They definitely upped the mini bosses and enemy variety this time around but its still lacking those big setpieces.

You are the first guy ive seen calling GOW3 the worst in the series. Everyone i know still talks about the insane setpieces and boss fights in that game. Guess what it also had four different weapons. The cestus is still my favorite weapon aside from the Axe.
 
You mean 2007. ;p david jaffe directed the first game.

I can excuse GOW 2018 for its lack of big boss fights because it was a reboot and they had to get a new combat system, set up a new mythology and completely revamp their world design. They definitely upped the mini bosses and enemy variety this time around but its still lacking those big setpieces.

You are the first guy ive seen calling GOW3 the worst in the series. Everyone i know still talks about the insane setpieces and boss fights in that game. Guess what it also had four different weapons. The cestus is still my favorite weapon aside from the Axe.

Cory started working GoW2 around 2005

GoW3 is nowhere near as good as GoW2. The set piece titan moments were definitely cool visually, but shallow.

I never felt Ragnarok was missing big set piece moments.
 

gow3isben

Member
Someone list me some of the MUST do side missions. What were your favs?

I gotchu. I think 12 or so of the side missions are witcher 3 quality.

1. Mining Rig mission (probably the weakest of these mentioned but great mimir lore and encounters): Dwarf land
2. Whale side mission (Dwarf land)
3. Freya's Missing Peace (Vanaheim)
4. Sigrun Mission (Midgard)
5/6. Follow the Dog mission and Rescue *that* ally Mission (Vanaheim after second trip contender for best side mission)
7. Return of the River mission as it leads to so much more (Vanaheim)
8. Elven Sanctum mission (Elf realm)
9. Light Freyr's statue mission and then find both halves of the keys to open the one door (Elf realm second open area)
10. The two song of the sands missions (Elf realm the best side missions in the game after their combined jaw dropping ending)


Post Game

1. The broken Prison (Niflheim)
2. The one to get full credits to roll (Dwarf land)

Some of these missions have completely unique enemy encounters, bosses, puzzles, and cinematics not present in the main game and there is constant chatter and discussion amongst characters building them outside the campaign.

Someone else let me know if I have forgotten some.
 
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Kvally

Member
The loading times in this game are really fast. No idea wtf DF was talking about. I have fast travel doors come up within 2 seconds at times. max ive seen that door appear is 5-6 seconds. It doesnt matter if you are switching between realms or simply traveling within a realm. Loading is almost always just a second or two. really helped clean up the final few trophies.

The only reason why the loading takes so long during the campaign is because they have dialogue sequences thye probably added because the PS4 loading times are so long.
I have to agree with DF. There are indeed long loading times on PS5 and too many of them. Going through the transport door walking around until the next door appears. Every 10 minutes squeezing through crevices or ducking through tunnels that mask loading. It’s crazy.

I can’t even imagine it on PS4.

But I like the game either way.
 
I was loving this up to the Bison riding segment collecting fruit and I dont know why but since hitting that part ive not switched it back on in 3 days

I did the same thing, but it does get so much better. Turn it back on at some point soon and it will grab you. It then dips to a bit shite again then comes back really strong.

Pacing is a bit of a mess in the game but where I am at now is absolutely great and I'm looking forward to getting back on it again.

I'm playing it much slower than the 2018 one and playing dark tide and apex in between sessions. Making it much better for me.

It gets in the swing of it.
 
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Finally got a chance to start on the game and played about 4hrs tonight. Finished Tyr’s quest on Svartalfheim. Really beautiful level on the surface. Down in the mines felt a bit slow and tedious, but at least it picks up for a little bit at the end of the quest. Back at Sindri’s house. Really like the vibe and lighting there. Speaking of Sindri…is it me or is his voice actor doing some the other characters too?

On the topic of characters I really like Thor and Durlin. Odin seems out of character, like a wise-guy mafia boss instead of the revered creepy specter type character I’m used to seeing him as. Atreus isn’t as whiny and annoying now which is good. He’s still a little shit, but that’s to be expected.
 
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I think the game is just starting to wear me down with the nobody ever, for more than five seconds, shutting the hell up and letting me play a video game. I'm not just talking about the never ending puzzle and direction hints that's already been discussed, but just everything. Someone is always talking about something, telling a story, making a comment, jabbering away. Even the rare moments when a character is by themselves they still don't shut up. I can't even fight some enemies without all the companions yapping away about stuff going on during the fight. Back in the boat "hey, how about we continue that story you started 90 mins of gameplay ago" - -how about NOT.

It's just becoming exhausting, a non-stop flood of exposition and dialogue. Sometimes a game needs to know when to just let things breathe and let the player take things in. It's truly like an anti-Elden Ring in that way. I feel somewhere in between these two types of games is my favorite game of all time.
 

SlimySnake

The Contrarian
I have to agree with DF. There are indeed long loading times on PS5 and too many of them. Going through the transport door walking around until the next door appears. Every 10 minutes squeezing through crevices or ducking through tunnels that mask loading. It’s crazy.

I can’t even imagine it on PS4.

But I like the game either way.
Those are two different things. Transport doors are very fast after you have exhausted all the dialogue options they put in to fill the loading. The sequeezing through cracks are plentiful but they are due to the game design being held back by the PS4. The loading times in the transport doors are litearlly 1-4 seconds once you hit the end game and they dont have any dialogues for you. You can test it this out yourself. It depends on how big the level is. If you go to nilfheim to the odin tree. It's a second max. An open world area might take 3-4 seconds. But it's not 20 seconds like he said.
 

SlimySnake

The Contrarian
I think the game is just starting to wear me down with the nobody ever, for more than five seconds, shutting the hell up and letting me play a video game. I'm not just talking about the never ending puzzle and direction hints that's already been discussed, but just everything. Someone is always talking about something, telling a story, making a comment, jabbering away. Even the rare moments when a character is by themselves they still don't shut up. I can't even fight some enemies without all the companions yapping away about stuff going on during the fight. Back in the boat "hey, how about we continue that story you started 90 mins of gameplay ago" - -how about NOT.

It's just becoming exhausting, a non-stop flood of exposition and dialogue. Sometimes a game needs to know when to just let things breathe and let the player take things in. It's truly like an anti-Elden Ring in that way. I feel somewhere in between these two types of games is my favorite game of all time.
It's very uncharted in that way. I think the first one had a better balance where Mimir would tell you stories while you were in a boat. But now because of the side quests being more story driven, there are people constantly talking. Its even worse in story missions. Kratos, Freya and Mimir are constantly yapping away in Freya's story mission giving her advice which is so unlike Kratos. Then you have Brock going on about Freyr. There is literally 4 people talking constantly in that level. What's weird is that despite all the unskippable cutscenes, all the yapping away during the levels, they STILL have forced walking sections. I really dont understand this. If you have to spend that much time telling a very simple story, if you need to write that much dialogue to make your characters relatable then you've already failed. Ive taken screenwriting classes and they teach you to be judicious with your words because you only have 120 pages to tell 2 hour story. Maybe video game developers shouldnt have to spend 6 hour cutscenes plus 2 hours of walking sections and another 20 hours of talking during gameplay to tell a decent story.

Ive beaten the game three times now, and the puzzle hints are just not a problem. The game barely has any puzzles in the story sections. They are relegated to side content and thankfully characters dont talk too much during non-story side content.
 

Kvally

Member
Those are two different things. Transport doors are very fast after you have exhausted all the dialogue options they put in to fill the loading. The sequeezing through cracks are plentiful but they are due to the game design being held back by the PS4. The loading times in the transport doors are litearlly 1-4 seconds once you hit the end game and they dont have any dialogues for you. You can test it this out yourself. It depends on how big the level is. If you go to nilfheim to the odin tree. It's a second max. An open world area might take 3-4 seconds. But it's not 20 seconds like he said.
I am telling you my experience and how it has happened for me. It's too much.
 
Made it past
Asgard
, I tell you one thing, I cant wait to devour Witcher 3's open world again because hooboy I feel cramped in Ragnarok.
Other than that, 10/10.
 

Pakoe

Member
Finished the game after 36 hours. Skipped the last few side quests because I really wanted to know how it would end lol.
Amazing game, 9,5/10 for me. Haven't encountered any bugs, which is rare nowadays.
 

dorkimoe

Member
I feel like the game is pushing me through the main quest. Will I ever get a chance to do side quests and how do I get them
 
Another little thing: they might as well just bump you back up to full health after every combat encounter. Just end up wasting time a lot. If I come up to a mini-boss or other type of tough fight and only have like 1/3 health left I just let it kill me so I restart from the checkpoint with full health anyways. Dumb. It'll even start you on major story bosses with half health if that's what you have. Just wasting player time.
 

Gudji

Member
Give me NG+ SMS.

road rage GIF
 
I posted this in the spoiler thread but no one responded so posting it here. Not much spoilerish in this clip though. What is the trail thing in the sky in Alfheim?

 
I have to agree with DF. There are indeed long loading times on PS5 and too many of them. Going through the transport door walking around until the next door appears. Every 10 minutes squeezing through crevices or ducking through tunnels that mask loading. It’s crazy.
Those transport doors are annoying as F and they could have been skipped out of the PS5 version altogether (however they are used for exposition, so removing them would have been pretty complex in the end)... but sometimes there is no exposition, so they should be skipped 90% of the time.

Same for the squeeze sections, you can't just remove that kind of thing from a level or what hot, even if the PS5 has finished loading after 1/4 of a second.

So hopefully if they make DLC it will be like the HFW one and this is PS5 only, so we can see what can be done with this engine...

It's not like it made the game bad or anything remotely close to being bad.
 

R6Rider

Member
Just got the platinum, normally don't go for them, but it was easy enough and mostly fun. Final optional bosses are lame and pretty unbalanced for a majority of "builds".

Also did the three stone Troll fights and stone dragon fight.

Just over 45 hours of total playtime and I'd rank it as my second favorite game this year.
 

Swift_Star

Banned
Just got the platinum. I didn’t have the patience for the trial and error that are the two last optional bosses so I cheaped out and put in story mode and midboss checkpoint.
I left satisfied. Can’t wait for the sequels
 

stn

Member
Beat it last night, 25 hours. Brilliant brilliant brilliant game. How long will it take to get the platinum? I mostly focused on the main quest and only did a few favors, so I probably have a lot of post-game stuff to do.
 

Pilgrimzero

Member
Finished it. I liked it BUT

Pacing was all over the place. Which made the story not as fun to experience as the previous game.

Should have been a trilogy. Obvious they crammed 2 stories with in there and it showed. Things that seems to be big plot points just got dropped in the 2nd half.

Baldur was a better end boss than Odin. Heck Thor was more interesting than Odin. I was expecting him to Zeus out but nope…. Zzzzz.

What even was that ending? First games ending was emotional but this one was bland.

Again it was fun but woof the pacing and crammed up story.

My guess for next series, Celtic Pantheon.
 
Finished the story like a week ago and it‘s so boring doing all the sidequest stuff after seeing the ending. A NG+ would‘ve made so much sense.

I was talking to a friend while in the last act and he told me it‘s not the real ending yet, there‘s some more waiting for me afterwards. Turns out, it isn‘t, so for anyone reading this who hasn‘t finished the game, you‘ll feel when it ends and I highly recommend doing EVERYTHING before approaching the final chapter.
 
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One of the best games i've played in a long time in terms of post-game content.
Platinumed it. Did the final 2 bosses in the easiest difficulty cause they were not just difficult, they were boring af.

Also...is it just me of there's quite a few story beats that aren't in the main game that are actually important as hell?

I mean...the real Tyr being alive sounds like a huge plot point. The real god of war from that mythology is alive after all, lmao.
Also...is Sindri going to a possible villain? That last scene he showed up was quite something...
 
Cory started working GoW2 around 2005

GoW3 is nowhere near as good as GoW2. The set piece titan moments were definitely cool visually, but shallow.

I never felt Ragnarok was missing big set piece moments.
I agree with this.

Poseidon and Chronos are visually impressive and memorable but not much going on gameplay wise. The Chronos fight in Particular feels very silly considering how big he is.

People forgot that God of war Ascension had a fight like this this but it was no longer impressive in 2013.

If you ignore the Titan fights Ragnoraks big scale fights are on a similar scale to the previous game's and fun to fight as well.
[
] Garm is my favorite big Scale fight in the entire series [
]
 

Pilgrimzero

Member
Does anyone else think that
Kratos was going to die and Atreus would go get his soul out of the light like Broks was retrieved by his bro.

One of those big plot points that never came up
 
Does anyone else think that
Kratos was going to die and Atreus would go get his soul out of the light like Broks was retrieved by his bro.

One of those big plot points that never came up

Yep, or something to do with his soul-capture powers. The game did a ton of foreshadowing and plot-device stuff that paid off to absolutely nothing, really poor writing.

I can't say it was particularly great game. Reminded me a lot of Skyward Sword where I kept waiting for it to become this amazing 10/10 game everyone was raving about but then it ends and it's just a solid 7.5. Really great graphics but everything else is just an overstuffed 'AAA Game: The Game' type design with limited interactivity and way too much dialogue. I think it's probably the worst game in the series.
 

Ulysses 31

Member
Yep, or something to do with his soul-capture powers. The game did a ton of foreshadowing and plot-device stuff that paid off to absolutely nothing, really poor writing.

I can't say it was particularly great game. Reminded me a lot of Skyward Sword where I kept waiting for it to become this amazing 10/10 game everyone was raving about but then it ends and it's just a solid 7.5. Really great graphics but everything else is just an overstuffed 'AAA Game: The Game' type design with limited interactivity and way too much dialogue. I think it's probably the worst game in the series.
And Ragnarok just destroys Asgard and not the whole northern plain/continent... 👀
 
Yep, or something to do with his soul-capture powers. The game did a ton of foreshadowing and plot-device stuff that paid off to absolutely nothing, really poor writing.

I can't say it was particularly great game. Reminded me a lot of Skyward Sword where I kept waiting for it to become this amazing 10/10 game everyone was raving about but then it ends and it's just a solid 7.5. Really great graphics but everything else is just an overstuffed 'AAA Game: The Game' type design with limited interactivity and way too much dialogue. I think it's probably the worst game in the series.

It was one massive, endless Anti-Climax. Always building up to something that should be cool, but then zero satisfaction. Shitty writing and shitty pacing just add to the mediocrity on display.
 

FoxMcChief

Member
Man, you guys weren’t kidding. It seems like this game solves its own puzzles and leads you to where you need to go all the time.
 
Does anyone else think that
Kratos was going to die and Atreus would go get his soul out of the light like Broks was retrieved by his bro.

One of those big plot points that never came up

I also think that...

Sindri is going to be evil in the next game, and Kratos and Freya are gonna hook up
 

Pilgrimzero

Member
I also think that...

Sindri is going to be evil in the next game, and Kratos and Freya are gonna hook up

What's weird is the way it ended, he has like no reason to leave. Which is why I think it will be something like: Mimir: "Kratos there is trouble in my homeland. Come with me?" Proceeds to kill Celtic gods.
 
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