Sony God of War Ragnarök - Information Thread, update: initial OpenCritic reviews of Valhalla DLC posted

[Best]

Ok, 13 hours in and jfc is this game amazing. It just keeps getting better and better. I reached a section just now that is utterly gorgeous! The characters, story, combat, and gaming world are next level shit. 

 

The voice acting is truly amazing.

 

Spoiler

Odin is so well done and interesting. Thor is awesome, too.

 

[Biggie]

I am playing through GOW 2018. I just told the Boy that he is a god and to be honest he has kinda turned into a cocky dick. Heading back up the mountain now. How far am I from finishing?

[stepee]

55 minutes ago, Biggie said:

I am playing through GOW 2018. I just told the Boy that he is a god and to be honest he has kinda turned into a cocky dick. Heading back up the mountain now. How far am I from finishing?

 

Yeah he definitely turns cocky at that point, but tbf Id probably let it get to my head too. I wanna say like 5 hours if you are just pushing through?

[Bacon]

If it is spoilers don't tell me, but what where those items Kratos picked up at the very start of the game. Right before you get your armor from your chest. Kinda looked like upgrade materials, and I had an item to upgrade the axe, but the red craggy spike didn't upgrade my blades 

 

talkin about this right here

Spoiler

 

[Bacon]

Oh yeah!

 

The red rock thing is how you broke the mirrors in GoW and the blue thing opens the world door things. 

[stepee]

RATATOSKR FUCKING RULES

[Brian]

Kratos, Mimir, and Atreus vibing on a boat and telling stories never gets old. 
 

I always pick the standard difficulty and it’s nice when that difficulty is well balanced. 

[Best]

21 minutes ago, Brian said:

I always pick the standard difficulty and it’s nice when that difficulty is well balanced. 

 

I really feel this game is easier than the first. That goes with puzzles too which I'm fine about. The standard difficulty is perfect for me with enough challenge that never gets frustrating.

[Kal-El814]

Just finished. I’m sleepy. 
 

It’s great.

 

Probably a bit overstuffed with content (like 30 hours in I got to ANOTHER big ass area full of side quests with a gimmick and Jesus fucking Christ in a Target shopping cart it’s all too much) to the point that the pacing of the game suffers even if you mainline it. And there are some things set up that never really go anywhere, which might have made more sense to flesh out than the some of the unrelated side stuff. There are also some late game and optional combat encounters that are just… not good. Between the stuff they puke out at you and the stuff you puke out on them it can be impossible to tell what’s happening unless you back out of combat at the hard difficulty and that’s just less fun than being in everyone’s face with an ax. 
 

But the story is (for the most part, like I said some stuff is underdeveloped) very good and the characters really shine. The dialogue is the best part of a great game. 
 

More spoiler thoughts when I’m awake. I think the overall highs of this game and most of the gameplay additions make the best parts of this better than the best parts of the preceding game. I think Ragnarok is a better game overall, it’s just a bit too ambitious in spite of itself. 

 

[Best]

Woke up at 3am this morning to play more if this. Says 15 hours in. It's so engrossing storywise and I just want to continue to find out what happens next.

 

I only have two side quests available. Where do I get more? I don't want this game to end!

[Spork3245]

Two things that stand out graphically to me are the textures and texture-detail, and the animation. If you constantly hit the capture button you’ll get freeze frames of tiny animation details that there’s almost zero chance of noticing otherwise (many tiny facial reactions/movements)

[SaysWho?]

I'm nearly finished with

Spoiler

Ironwood.

Trying to decide if I want to go to an optional realm that opened up or continue the main quest.

[Spork3245]

Are we moving to open spoilers itt? If so, I’m going to start avoiding. 

[BloodyHell]

8 hours ago, best3444 said:

 

I really feel this game is easier than the first. That goes with puzzles too which I'm fine about. The standard difficulty is perfect for me with enough challenge that never gets frustrating.

You're the first person ive seen say it was easier. A bunch of reviews talk about how it's harder.

[BloodyHell]

2 minutes ago, Spork3245 said:

Are we moving to open spoilers itt? If so, I’m going to start avoiding. 

This. Please keep spoilers in tags. Im past the place he mentioned, but lets not ruin actual location and story beats.

[SaysWho?]

If you're talking about my post, I didn't think a location would be, or at least that one, so I can put it in spoilers if that's helpful and keep them in spoilers until the game is finished.

[Spork3245]

8 minutes ago, SaysWho? said:

If you're talking about my post, I didn't think a location would be, or at least that one, so I can put it in spoilers if that's helpful and keep them in spoilers until the game is finished.

 

Spoiler

I’m well past that point, but when it’s first mentioned in the game it’s kind of unknown as to whether it’s an item or a location. Not trying to pull an over-sensitive to spoiler type of thing, but I’d certainly argue that locations are spoilers.

 

[SaysWho?]

3 minutes ago, Spork3245 said:

 

  Hide contents

I’m well past that point, but when it’s first mentioned in the game it’s kind of unknown as to whether it’s an item or a location. Not trying to pull an over-sensitive to spoiler type of thing, but I’d certainly argue that locations are spoilers.

 

 

Nah, I didn't take it as overly sensitive. I'm quite sensitive to spoilers myself, so if anything could mess up a fresh experience, I'll keep it behind spoilers.

[Spork3245]

12 hours ago, Biggie said:

I am playing through GOW 2018. I just told the Boy that he is a god and to be honest he has kinda turned into a cocky dick. Heading back up the mountain now. How far am I from finishing?

You’re maybe (length spoilers?) 

Spoiler

Half way to 2/3rds. Game goes way longer than it feels it would as it constantly has a “this moment feels epic, must be near the end” vibe.

 

[Best]

46 minutes ago, BloodyHell said:

You're the first person ive seen say it was easier. A bunch of reviews talk about how it's harder.

 

Well I'm playing on the standard difficulty and rarely die. In the 2018 version I would get my ass handed to me so I had to play on easy. 

 

You have to agree that the puzzles are much easier which I'm grateful for. 

[Spork3245]

13 minutes ago, best3444 said:

 

Well I'm playing on the standard difficulty and rarely die. In the 2018 version I would get my ass handed to me so I had to play on easy. 

 

You have to agree that the puzzles are much easier which I'm grateful for. 

You’re playing on “Give Me Balance”? Personally, I find the game much more difficult, enemies seem much more aggressive and more “damage-spongy”, Kratos also seems more frail in terms of how much damage he receives. In the 2018 game I barely used my shield, in this one I’m constantly blocking and trying to parry.

[Spork3245]

11 hours ago, stepee said:

RATATOSKR FUCKING RULES

 

Spoiler

 

 

[Best]

47 minutes ago, Spork3245 said:

You’re playing on “Give Me Balance”? Personally, I find the game much more difficult, enemies seem much more aggressive and more “damage-spongy”, Kratos also seems more frail in terms of how much damage he receives. In the 2018 game I barely used my shield, in this one I’m constantly blocking and trying to parry.

 

Yea, I'm playing on whatever normal difficulty is named. I suck at games so this is a perfect difficulty setting for me. I read near the end it gets extremely difficult so I will run into issues soon enough. 

[Bacon]

I'm playing on no mercy. I'm not up for the annoying one shots and near perfection levels of play that give me gow requires. GMGOW often makes you play like a coward. You do more cheese and endless axe throws than the dark souls style combat I like.

[TheLeon]

I’m playing on the default difficulty as well. The couple of times I really had trouble with an encounter, it’s usually because I’ve forgotten some game mechanic, or I’m sitting on like 10k XP because I haven’t upgraded anything in a while. 

[CastlevaniaNut18]

I got back from my family visit last night and Amazon is supposed to have my copy delivered today. So I might get a bit of time with it tonight before back to work tomorrow.

[Xbob42]

As expected, game's a decent improvement over the first, which I already loved. The writing is less stiff, more natural and a lot funnier when it needs to be, or in general just more full of character and chemistry. Loved a certain section that I was really hoping for.

 

Everything I was hoping for so far, just taking my time, though. Glad there's not so much boat riding this time.

Also, the combat is DRAMATICALLY improved on Give Me God of War. I played the entire first game on that difficulty and I remember fighting the first pack of enemies in the tutorial taking me like 20+ minutes and several retries because of how brutal it was. It made me get good at the combat real fast, though, which made me enjoy the combat a lot more as I was far more proficient at it than I otherwise would've been if it was easier to kill enemies.

But there were many, many low points, the lowest for me being the fight against the Queen Valkyrie, which I just didn't ran out of patience for and gave up on. Still haven't beaten her to this day.

 

In Ragnarok, though, it feels DRAMATICALLY more balanced. In the first game, on GMGOW difficulty, enemies would turn purple and gain a ton of power if you didn't interrupt them before a second or two had passed. I'm not sure if the game had an official name for this mechanic, but it looks like players took to calling it enemies leveling up. If this happened, shit could go south REAL fast.

 

Now, the mechanic is retained, but it's much less difficult to interrupt them. For one, enemies are less chaotic and easier to keep track of, two, hitting Square to have Atreus fire an arrow seems to have prioritized hitting these guys 100% of the time I've used it, even if I pointed him at a crowd, which is honestly a godsend. I don't remember Atreus being able to interrupt them at all in the first game, but it has been a while. I remember lots of rushing through enemies (and getting hit) to get a light attack off or chucking my axe at an inopportune time. No more of that; I've been able to keep almost all enemies from leveling up. And when they do, they're certainly a lot more powerful (much more resistant to stun, launches, knockbacks, attacks with grab effects, etc) but they're not just unstoppable monsters.

So you definitely get the strategic element of prioritizing stopping their level ups which makes combat a bit spicier as multiple enemies leveling up at once could still be super bad, but you don't feel constantly brutalized.

 

I still die a fair amount, but fights don't feel hopeless or broken. I have yet to be hit with BS mechanics, although projectiles are still a problem with certain enemies, as while you're fighting 3 dudes at once, a projectile coming from behind even with warning is hard to parse. Kratos can take many more hits than he could early game in the first title, so you no longer feel like he's always one step out of the grave. And his patented Coffin-Ready death animation is still here and as dumb as ever!

 

All in all, having a blast. I feel like all of Sony's exclusives give a similar vibe as God of War, but none, at least to me, actually hit that mark. They're masquerading as top-tier experiences whereas I think God of War is the only franchise they put out that really hits it on every single front. From visuals, cinematography, voice acting, chemistry, writing, dialogue (all similar but not the same), gameplay, sense of progression, respectable freedom to explore without feeling like open world bloat, and so much more. It feels like they somehow take a very high quality big budget movie and successfully stretch that concept out into a 15-20ish hour long (shorter? longer? no idea how long it is) video game without it feeling like anything was lost, while much was gained.

[SaysWho?]

I moved on from the previous area and story took a turn I wasn't expecting. In a cool way.

[Bacon]

Yeah, while I'm not going to start over, No Mercy is kinda easy so far. Feels almost like a "normal" level of difficulty not that I know what that is like in either nu-GOWs. So many HP items on the ground too.

 

I also got to a really cool part of the game that I had zero idea about. It is after beating the first new zone of the game so early-ish spoilers

Spoiler

But playing that the Boy is hella rad. Reminds me of playing as Ciri in TW3 and I wouldn't be surprised if that feeling is what the devs were going for. 

 

[stepee]

1 minute ago, Bacon said:

Yeah, while I'm not going to start over, No Mercy is kinda easy so far. Feels almost like a "normal" level of difficulty not that I know what that is like in either nu-GOWs. So many HP items on the ground too.

 

I also got to a really cool part of the game that I had zero idea about. It is after beating the first new zone of the game so early-ish spoilers

  Reveal hidden contents

But playing that the Boy is hella rad. Reminds me of playing as Ciri in TW3 and I wouldn't be surprised if that feeling is what the devs were going for. 

 

He feels so much better than I pictured to play as. He’s so agile and since the animation is so good, it makes the combat really slick and smooth. It’s like a much better playing Aloy.

[Best]

I'm 17 hours in a decided to do some side quests. I'm currently stuck on one now so I stopped for the evening. What a fucking masterpiece though. I could play this game for hours on end. 

 

@stepee @Bacon I agree 100% that

 

Spoiler

Playing as Atreus is just as enjoyable and maybe even more enjoyable than playing as Kratos. Atreus is so well done in this game. Much more mature and his dialogue is fantastic. 

 

[Bacon]

Spoiler

aaaand it's over

 

I'm sure I'll get back in his boots soon enough, but that was not enough time. 

 

[stepee]

Just now, Bacon said:

  Reveal hidden contents

aaaand it's over

 

I'm sure I'll get back in his boots soon enough, but that was not enough time. 

 

 

How good was that dining table scene tho

[Bacon]

Just now, stepee said:

 

 

  Reveal hidden contents

How good was that dining table scene tho

 

Spoiler

Food actually went into their mouths! How neat is that! We have the technology!

 

[Biggie]

God of War 2018 question. 

Spoiler

I’m at the tower in the realm between realms. 

How far do I have left before finishing? I wanna play Ragnarök dammit.