On April 15th, 2023, I completed one of the best games of last year and of this generation so far. God of War Ragnarok was a highly anticipated game for PlayStation console owners and did it ever deliver. God of War 2018 has a special place in my heart as it was an extraordinary game and one of the first few games that got me into story-driven action-adventure genre. The first game ended on a very note and it set high expectations for the sequel.
In my opinion, the sequel delivered on every single level except the ending. I will get back to the ending after addressing everything that I really enjoyed about this game. For those of you, who haven't played or completed the game yet, or if you are planning to play it soon, I would advise you not to read any further. I will be reviewing the story and highlighting some major spoilers.
It took me about twenty-five years to beat the game. I just played one really cool side mission and then spent the rest of my time on the main story. The game looks beautiful and it offers several different biomes. All the characters from the 2018 game were back and some really cool characters were introduced, like Angrbooa, Tyr, Thrud (my favorite), Sif, Freyr, and more. They were all written exceptionally well as I enjoyed all of them. The game offered many powerful moments, from Fenrir's death to Freya being able to end Odin's curse to Kratos and Atreus bonding again as father and son to Surtr the fire giant becoming Ragnarok to Kratos becoming the general and leading all the realms against Odin and Asgard, and more. God of War Ragnarok is a great game and I would recommend everyone to play it.
Like most games including all the great ones, it starts slow as it gets all the players familiarized with the combat and movement of the protagonist, Kratos. Things do get spicy right away as Kratos and his son Atreus somewhat got ambushed by Freya. She wanted to kill Kratos to avenge her son's death in the previous game. Kratos had no intention of fighting back as he cared about her. He just defended himself and ran away with his son. The two made it home and then we all witnessed a very sad moment as Atreus had to say goodbye to his buddy Fenrir. It was a wolf who Atreus loved dearly, and he was about to die. When I was watching that moment, it did hit me really hard, especially when Atreus did a prayer in Norse to bless Fenrir.
Shortly after that, Kratos and Atreus were visited by Thor. The 2018 game ended with Thor right outside of Kratos' house, so we all knew the scene with Thor was coming. Right after Thor entered their house, another uninvited guest knocked on their door. It was the All-Father Odin. This is where the story of the game actually starts. They visited the house to offer peace and no war as long as Atreus gives up his quest to look for Tyr. Kratos had no idea about his son looking for Tyr, yet he still didn't accept Odin and Thor's offer. This resulted in a fight between Thor and Kratos after Thor took Kratos up in the skies. To be honest, as I was fighting Thor during that sequence, I had a feeling that the final boss fight against him, in the end, was going to be one of the best fights in gaming history. Yes, I had high hopes for the fight and the ending.
I believe most gamers would agree that there were better fights in the game than the final Thor fight. Before you say 'Well if you had played the game at higher difficulty, you would have appreciated the final Thor fight a lot more,' I played all the fights at normal difficulty. The best fight in the game hands down was the Heimdall fight. The boss fight with Garm the Giant in Helheim and the boss fight with Hrist and Mist in Muspelheim were both better than the final Thor boss fight.
So why is Heimdall boss fight the best fight in the game? Developers really did an amazing job for the build-up of that fight. They first had you fight him as Atreus, when Atreus first visited Asgard and when Heimdall was being a total jerk to him. During that fight, it was proven that Heimdall can read your moves in his mind before you actually use them against him. You couldn't fight him with just your bare hands or your weapons.
When Kratos heard about Heimdall and found out that there could be an occasion where he would need to fight and stop him, he was sure that he could take him down with whatever weapon he had at his disposal. Kratos was certain about that because he had taken out much stronger Gods than Heimdall, such as Ares and Zeus. Then Mimir shared his thoughts and said that even though he doesn't doubt Kratos' capability and his resume of taking down big Gods, fighting Heimdall is going to be a brand new challenge for Kratos as Heimdall can read moves before you use them against him. Brok then chimed in and said that if they could find a magical spear in Svartalheim, that could help Kratos defeat Heimdall. The spear was called Draupnir Spear. The spear was connected to the ring that Kratos wore after he took that ring to the Lady of the Forge in Svartalheim and after she worked on it with Kratos' blood. Then Brok blessed that spear per Kratos' request. That entire scene was amazing and emotional. I loved it.
So once the spear was acquired, players can now throw that spear at the enemies more than once and really quick. Kratos with the spear can now mess up with Heimdall's timing as he would need to read multiple hits really quick. Also, if Kratos throws the spear at the enemy or on the ground near the enemy, he can detonate it if he holds his ring and stomps on the ground at the same time.
The fight from start to finish was dope. It had three phases to it. The first phase was a bit easy as Heimdall was fighting us while riding a bull if I'm not mistaken. While Heimdall could read our moves, the animal couldn't. It was in the second phase where we fought Heimdall one on one. When we landed our first hit on Heimdall, the game went from live gameplay to a cutscene to highlight how shocking it was for Heimdall to get hit for the first time in a long long time. Then we use the spear for the rest of the fight to continue messing with Heimdall's timing. Whenever you get to slow him down with the spear, you get a few seconds to do some damage to him with either your bare hands or any weapon you want to hit him with. After the second phase, you get a cutscene and it seemed like the fight was over. Kratos warns Heimdall to stay away from his son and accept peace. Heimdall refuses which results in Kratos chopping off his hand. As soon as Kratos starts to walk away, Heimdall somehow heals his hand and tells Kratos he won't leave the battlefield until someone dies. During the third phase, you use the same strategy to beat Heimdall, but this time he is fighting Kratos aggressively and leaving himself more vulnerable to getting hit. The fight ends with Kratos killing Heimdall. It was very satisfying to me as I hated him (I'm sure most of the gamers hated him as well), however, Mimir didn't like it. He didn't like the fact that Kratos had started killing again and once Odin finds out about Heimdall's death, a war will begin.
Everything about the Heimdall boss fight was epic and it just gets you more excited for the final few fights of the game. I figured that the final two boss fights were going to be Thor and Odin. I wanted Kratos to first fight Thor, then Odin, and then Thor again. I wanted Kratos to defeat Thor first and get him unconscious and then go after Odin. Obviously, the game wasn't going to end without Odin dying, so I needed Kratos to finish him off at the end of a very hard-fought battle. Then for the finale, fight Thor again, but this time he's going to fight with everything he had to give since we just took away his father. So I was expecting that final fight to be really hard and even better than the Heimdall fight. Unfortunately, the game didn't go like way.
For the conclusion, we first get to do a two-phase fight with Thor. It was a good fight but in my opinion, it wasn't a masterclass. PlayStation and Santa Monica hyped us all for that fight since the very end of God of War 2018. Then in one of the final few trailers for Ragnarok, they showed Kratos and Thor colliding with one another with Kratos throwing his Axe and Thor throwing his hammer and those two weapons somewhat causing a Thunderstruck. It looked so epic in the trailers, but that happened early in the game. The final boss fight with Thor didn't have any mind-blowing moments in my opinion. Then after the second phase, Odin comes and kills Thor by stabbing him as Thor didn't get the job done by killing Kratos, and because Thor wasn't going to listen to Odin anymore. For me, it was a shocker but not a good one. I wasn't expecting Thor's story to end like that. I wanted him to get a much better ending than that.
The final boss fight with Odin was another fight with two to three phases. This one was better than Thor's fight and was slightly harder. However, if you compare it with Heimdall's boss fight, it wasn't that great. Yes, it was basically three people (Kratos, Atreus, and Freya) going against Odin, but it should have been harder than Heimdall's fight, as Odin is the All-Father and considered to be much more powerful than Heimdall. The fight ends with Odin dying in Atreus' arms and Atreus did a prayer again in Norse language to secure Odin's soul.
Even though the final two fights were a letdown, they were still better and bigger than the boss fights of many other recent games. If it wasn't for Heimdall boss fight, which was the highlight of the game, I think I would have appreciated Thor's and Odin's fights even more. It is just that Heimdall fight was amazing and set a crazy high bar for the final fights to live up to.
Overall, God of War Ragnarok is a great game with an amazing story, solid visuals, great characters, awesome combat, and a couple of magical moments. As I mentioned before, I would recommend everyone to play it.
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