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

Commissar SFLUFAN

By Commissar SFLUFAN
in The Spawn Point

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Posted
Posted
24 minutes ago, Biggie said:

God of War 2018 question. 

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

 

I'm sorry I'm terrible in gauging how much further you have to go. Just enjoy it because Ragnarok ain't going anywhere. 

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Biggie

Biggie

Posted
Posted
2 minutes ago, best3444 said:

 

I'm sorry I'm terrible in gauging how much further you have to go. Just enjoy it because Ragnarok ain't going anywhere. 

I’m going to assume since NONE OF YOU can give me any idea what point I am in the game that NONE OF YOU actually finished the first God of War. Bunch of damn liars. 
Lies Liar GIF

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BloodyHell

BloodyHell

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Posted
46 minutes ago, best3444 said:

My big question is, I'm 17 hours into the game with only 4 side quests available? What am I doing wrong? I want to play many more quests. 

I dunno, because ive completed that many at least, and keep getting more. 

Im about the same, total, but Ive done a lot of exploring. I upgraded health and rage 3 times, helped multiple characters right their wrongs, and they are amazing.

I got more by doing more. 

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TheLeon

TheLeon

Posted
Posted

Side missions seems to come in chunks. When I was done with my (I’m assuming) first trip to a green realm (is that spoiler-free enough?), I was given the option to go back home or go do a side thing. On my way to do that one side thing, I stumbled into a bunch of other random shit to do. That seems to be the pattern so far. Story story story, then a big, open-ish optional area. 

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SaysWho?

SaysWho?

Posted
Posted

Some big story happenings, shiiiiiit. Best way I can put it is I recently defeated the third major boss (excluding mini-bosses), which means I defeated 

Spoiler

Nidhogg

 

So ever since I left 

Spoiler

Ironwood, we found out quite a bit about Atreus/Loki (also, lol @ "You killed a flower?" When Atreus opened the gateway, the camera angle made me think someone would be there, and I thought it'd be Freya. But nope, it's Kratos. And we were gone for two flippin' days!

Then a Valkyrie appears! That catches me off guard, but not as much as the revelation that it's Freya. Oooo snap!

Fast forward, I defeat the defender of the World Tree and Freya has forgiven me and is part of my team. YO!

Now three side quests have opened up and I still haven't stepped foot in Niflheim.

 

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BloodyHell

BloodyHell

Posted
Posted
2 minutes ago, SaysWho? said:

Some big story happenings, shiiiiiit. Best way I can put it is I recently defeated the third major boss (excluding mini-bosses), which means I defeated 

  Hide contents

Nidhogg

 

So ever since I left 

  Hide contents

Ironwood, we found out quite a bit about Atreus/Loki (also, lol @ "You killed a flower?" When Atreus opened the gateway, the camera angle made me think someone would be there, and I thought it'd be Freya. But nope, it's Kratos. And we were gone for two flippin' days!

Then a Valkyrie appears! That catches me off guard, but not as much as the revelation that it's Freya. Oooo snap!

Fast forward, I defeat the defender of the World Tree and Freya has forgiven me and is part of my team. YO!

Now three side quests have opened up and I still haven't stepped foot in Niflheim.

 

Pretty incredible, right? Wait till you see what's coming next. 

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Kal-El814

Kal-El814

Posted
Posted

Okay fuller thoughts. I'll tag everything spoiler adjacent.

 

The story here is generally very good. I think it pays off on just about everything hinted at in the first game and then some. Gonna talk about the plot's whole ass here, so click with caution.

 

Spoiler

We double bag for your protection...

 

Spoiler

I think the balance of prophecy vs. choice is handled well here, and makes for interesting discussions between the characters along the way. Kratos, Atreus, and Angrboda all have different points of view about them, all act despite those different perspectives, and I think that comes to a nice conclusion at the end. It also helps color the portrayal of Odin as someone who's compelled to act on prophecies both known and unknown. It's the nature of the thing, not its form... good stuff.

 

The Odin swerve was well executed. I forget exactly when I caught on but I think they did a nice job lf balancing hints and feints there, and being in disguise is part of how Odin is depicted in the original mythology so it's nice to see that pay off here. Also I have read a bunch about Norse mythology as a kid and in my 20's... I am pretty sure there's no mask in those stories. HOWEVER the mask looks like the one from the Jim Carrey movie The Mask and in that movie they mention that the actual mask belonged to Loki... so... I'm pretty convinced this is a reference to The Mask mainly because it's funny to think that Odin lost an eye looking into the realm tear and seeing peak Cameron Diaz. :p

 

I thought the game did a great job of setting up an initial beef with Thor and than breaking that down to the point where, when it came time to fight him, I genuinely didn't want to and hoped that Thor lived.

 

Also... can we talk about the game bothering to loop back around and call out Kratos for indiscriminately killing an important Elf in the last game? And how that makes him feel and act in Alfheim this time? So good.

 

Interesting to see where the story goes from here. They have options.

 

My main issues with the story, and these are relatively small beefs, are consistent with this game just taking a kitchen sink approach to everything. There's so much time spent on the particulars of prophecy, on realm travel, on averting fate, on the literal fates, on who can leave what realm and when, on Nidhogg... then we get "giant stuff" for the explanation of the marbles and Atreus knowing how to be a benevolent Shang Tsung. Which would be fine except that ends up kinda being the whole thing? And there's a bunch of stuff that kinda goes nowhere? What was the realm tear Odin was obsessed with? Why did the mask lock onto the wolf in Helheim? Why do giants have marbles? If Loki's marble can let Agrboda track him, shouldn't she be able to find the giants?

 

None of these are dealbreakers, but given how in depth some of the other core portions of the story go, it would have been nice to address some of that stuff instead of some of the nice but non essential side quest tangents.

 

 

The characters are almost all great. All the old ones get plenty of time to shine and most of the new ones are pretty great as well. I think a few characters in particular stand out really well. There are a couple quibbles but overall I think this is one of the more solid core casts we've seen in recent years and there are a lot of memorable lines and interactions.

 

Spoiler

Ribbed for your pleasure...

 

Spoiler

Just about everyone gets their time to shine.

 

Kratos is... one of the most interesting and well portrayed characters in games now. I can't believe it. He sucked ass and was one of the WORST characters for so long, but... here we are. It can't be denied. The acting is phenomenal. Every beat is earned. It would have been so easy to fumble the ball after GoW by making him not learn anything from that adventure or to have him being too flexible. His justifications for everything this time around are sound even if they're wrong which isn't easy to do. And he learns from his mistakes! And apologizes! And is introspective! Again in the old games he was skullfucking his enemies and then goes all "by the gods what have I become" before yeeting himself off a cliff somewhere, but... he's learned! That scene where he tells Atreus he's been fucking up and falling back into his old ways is just... so good. It's not an e4ven road and even that is done well. He kills Heimdall after trying to be better, but it's his relationship with Atreus that ends up pulling him back on the "right" path. It's just so well executed.

 

Most of the other characters are very well done as well. I probably could have done with a little more long term tension between Freya and Kratos all things considered, but I think that her characterization overall was very good and the slow burn up to them mending the fence was really well done. Taking Brok and Sindri from comic relief to really engaging characters was a feat. They call out the extent to which the player takes them and their services for granted, so cool. Freyr's team was a bit undercooked, I think, though maybe some of that is in side quests that I didn't end up finishing. People seemed bent out of shape when the Traveller yeeted himself off the boat; I don't think I'd even heard him talk before that scene? Maybe once in the background.

 

Kind of a shame that some of Mimi's most interesting stuff is in side quests, but I appreciate that there's only so much main game and they need to focus on the main characters.

 

The Asgardians are a little more mixed to me. I feel like Thor's family should have given Atreus and Kratos more shit for their role in killing Thor's sons. Yeah it's ultimately Odin's fault, but I think Atreus in particular got off light all things considered. Thor was really well done overall, like I called out before. I go back and forth a little bit on Odin. He's really good, but after a whole game where he's unseen and Mimir talks about what a magnificent bastard he is, it would have been a bit more interesting to see him really flex, I think. Unless I missed something, Heimdall feels oddly one dimensional in this cast. He's just a bastard. Maybe that's so Kratos and the player are justified in killing one of the Aesir in this game? I dunno.

 

All in all one of the better casts in recent memory I think. Just very enjoyable.

 

 

Some thoughts about the gameplay and pacing... I think there's too much game here and some stuff feels over engineered. I know that's a weird complaint when the gameplay is generally great, but I don't think there's enough variability in the combat and the encounters for it to not get old over the course of doing everything in the game. A high class problem, but by the time I got to the second to last area before the endgame it was the story moving me forward because I just couldn't bring myself to fight in every optional encounter that the side quests were going to barf at me. The main path is longer than GoW and there's more side stuff... there's only so many times fighting higher level versions of the same mobs is engaging.

 

I think the combat options / value ratio here isn't good. In GoW there's more nuance to the abilities and item perks than has a meaningful impact on the gameplay and that's cranked all the way to eleven in this game. It would be one thing if the granular changes to the skills really changed the gameplay, but... they don't. I never felt that changing my armor or runic attacks would have impacted a fight, and when I charged them around just to see, they didn't feel all that different. Maybe on Give Me God of War? But I dunno how many people are going to fuck with that, Give Me No Mercy is challenging already.

 

While the camera is better, some of the encounters do not play nicely with it. You can get have enemies spawn out of sight and at a higher vertical level than you, and if the RNG doesn't have someone call out their incoming projectiles, you're dependent upon seeing the threat indicator (not always feasible given the fact that a lot of enemies and effects glow and can make them very hard to see) or scanning the environment to look for mobs that may never be there. It doesn't happen often enough to justify always looking around like that, but it does happen often enough to get annoying when you get hit by an enemy. But it's better than GoW for sure, which is nice.

 

Some equipment and skill tree spoilers as well as a larger double tagged spoiler related to gameplay...

 

Spoiler

Having more shield options was a really great idea, I'll probably shake that up more than I did if and when I go back.

 

But having perks to unlock when you max out a skill? Kratos's L1+Circle weapons (relics I think)? All the perks for the bow abilities? Three different kinds of Spartan prolapse? There are so many options that have such a small, direct impact on the actual gameplay here. More isn't always better, and here it's just... fine. I never felt more powerful when I unlocked stuff after hitting level 3 or so.

 

Gameplay spoilers...

 

Spoiler

Playing as Atreus never clicked with me. Plinking at people with arrows, slapping them with a bow... just fundamentally not as interesting as playing as Kratos and by a lot. Even his animal forms felt weaker than just Kratos with his fists. I get that he's not the God of War but this GAME is God of War and I'm not looking to have that particular power fantasy interrupted to fill a Hel-Walker with 8 arrows to stun it. His story sections are great and as a character he's compelling, but his gameplay was really the only portion of the game I actively did not like. Also not looking forward to his fruit and root picking adventure next time. :| 

 

 

Some last spoilers about stuff at the end of the game and after the credits roll.

 

Spoiler

There's a good deal of interesting post credits stuff. Neat that they addressed some of it that way, but wild that some big reveals happen after the larger emotional closure to the game overall. I dunno that people who have beaten the game are "done" so I won't say more.

 

And one silly thought that occurred to me... What language are the characters speaking to one another in this game? Atreus speaks ancient Norse words when shooting his bow. In the first game Kratos says he can speak it but not read it, so presumably it's Ancient Norse? Even though Atreus doesn't use the "english translations" when he says Norse words?

 

Anyway...

 

TL;DR... it's a really great game. I think it could use more focus, could probably stand to have some fat trimmed, and the pacing left something to be desired for me personally, but these are high class problems for a generally really tremendous experience. It's wild to see how far this series and Kratos specifically have come, and I'm looking forward to seeing where the franchise goes from here.

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stepee

stepee

Posted
Posted
46 minutes ago, Kal-El814 said:

Okay fuller thoughts. I'll tag everything spoiler adjacent.

 

The story here is generally very good. I think it pays off on just about everything hinted at in the first game and then some. Gonna talk about the plot's whole ass here, so click with caution.

 

  Reveal hidden contents

 

The characters are almost all great. All the old ones get plenty of time to shine and most of the new ones are pretty great as well. I think a few characters in particular stand out really well. There are a couple quibbles but overall I think this is one of the more solid core casts we've seen in recent years and there are a lot of memorable lines and interactions.

 

  Reveal hidden contents

 

Some thoughts about the gameplay and pacing... I think there's too much game here and some stuff feels over engineered. I know that's a weird complaint when the gameplay is generally great, but I don't think there's enough variability in the combat and the encounters for it to not get old over the course of doing everything in the game. A high class problem, but by the time I got to the second to last area before the endgame it was the story moving me forward because I just couldn't bring myself to fight in every optional encounter that the side quests were going to barf at me. The main path is longer than GoW and there's more side stuff... there's only so many times fighting higher level versions of the same mobs is engaging.

 

I think the combat options / value ratio here isn't good. In GoW there's more nuance to the abilities and item perks than has a meaningful impact on the gameplay and that's cranked all the way to eleven in this game. It would be one thing if the granular changes to the skills really changed the gameplay, but... they don't. I never felt that changing my armor or runic attacks would have impacted a fight, and when I charged them around just to see, they didn't feel all that different. Maybe on Give Me God of War? But I dunno how many people are going to fuck with that, Give Me No Mercy is challenging already.

 

While the camera is better, some of the encounters do not play nicely with it. You can get have enemies spawn out of sight and at a higher vertical level than you, and if the RNG doesn't have someone call out their incoming projectiles, you're dependent upon seeing the threat indicator (not always feasible given the fact that a lot of enemies and effects glow and can make them very hard to see) or scanning the environment to look for mobs that may never be there. It doesn't happen often enough to justify always looking around like that, but it does happen often enough to get annoying when you get hit by an enemy. But it's better than GoW for sure, which is nice.

 

Some equipment and skill tree spoilers as well as a larger double tagged spoiler related to gameplay...

 

  Reveal hidden contents

 

Some last spoilers about stuff at the end of the game and after the credits roll.

 

  Reveal hidden contents

 

And one silly thought that occurred to me... What language are the characters speaking to one another in this game? Atreus speaks ancient Norse words when shooting his bow. In the first game Kratos says he can speak it but not read it, so presumably it's Ancient Norse? Even though Atreus doesn't use the "english translations" when he says Norse words?

 

Anyway...

 

TL;DR... it's a really great game. I think it could use more focus, could probably stand to have some fat trimmed, and the pacing left something to be desired for me personally, but these are high class problems for a generally really tremendous experience. It's wild to see how far this series and Kratos specifically have come, and I'm looking forward to seeing where the franchise goes from here.

 

Wont be able to see your spoilers until after I beat it in a couple weeks but overall what do you think is a better game between 2018 and this one?

 

Also I do wonder if some of your complaints will be mitigated for other people who might not devour all of it over such a short period of time.

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SaysWho?

SaysWho?

Posted
Posted
44 minutes ago, stepee said:

 

Wont be able to see your spoilers until after I beat it in a couple weeks

 

Yeah, at the rate I'm going, it's another gaming thread where I see all the spoiler tags and think, "I hope that fucker still cares about my response to that post next month :|" 

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TwinIon

TwinIon

Posted
Posted

Ragnarok is very much God of War 2018 but more! It's not substantially different in function or feel, but there's more of everything and everything is very well done. If you hoped that the last game was the starting point of an evolving series, I suppose you might be dissapointed, but if you loved that game and wanted more of it, then Ragnarok delivers in spades.

 

I do agree with @Kal-El814 in the criticism that at times there is too much that feels too inconsequential. Yeah, unlocking new skills is good, and some armor pieces have specific traits that really make a difference, but there's also an endless number of runic this or artifact that serving very little purpose other than to give you a reason to keep opening chests. I've gotten lost in the menu more than once looking for where to slot the doodad that I just picked up, and most of the time I can't tell any difference.

 

I'm playing on normal and I still die a number of times on harder fights, so maybe others will notice the nuance a bit more.

 

Still, I enjoyed that you could somewhat tune things one way or another. I really like the armor that heals you when you do a stun grab, so I've built towards that end. I basically equip anything that increases stun so I can convert that to health. I like that build both because I get health, but also because the feedback loop is quite clear. Stun things, get health, repeat. Most of the armor I've found so far (lvl 6) is all "chance for good thing when doing x thing," which makes it easy to not notice, even if it is being beneficial. I do wish that you could find wrist and wast armor that had substantial effects like the chest armor does, and not simply supporting benefits.

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stepee

stepee

Posted
Posted
15 minutes ago, Xbob42 said:

High framerate mode was literally the first thing I changed, very much appreciate the option as I won't have to wait for a PC version a year down the line. Shame that high framerates probably won't last much longer in this gen.

 

I think it’s best to think of it as just a nice bonus with this game and not to expect to see it ever again this gen with a game like this :P

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Best

Best

Posted
Posted
20 minutes ago, SaysWho? said:

Damn, the last place I was in, four or five side missions popped up and I cleared them all from the map in addition to exploring every nook and cranny of the map I could find.

 

Next session, I'll continuing the main story. :p 

 

This has been exactly what I've been doing the last two nights. Mainly because I don't want the main story to continue lol. The game is just too damn good and I don't want it to end. 

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Biggie

Biggie

Posted
Posted
2 minutes ago, best3444 said:

 

This has been exactly what I've been doing the last two nights. Mainly because I don't want the main story to continue lol. The game is just too damn good and I don't want it to end. 

                                                                                                        :daydream:

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