God of War Ragnarök Critique - Still Not a Masterpiece

God of War Ragnarok is a game that tells two very different stories the first story is about a gripping narrative between a father and his son Kratos wants to protect his son from the dangers of the world but caught up in the Winds of Fate Kratos realizes more every day how impossible it is to save his son from the impending doom that is Ragnarok this is the emotional heartbeat that carries the story accompanied by the amazing characters of Kratos Thor and Odin throughout it all we get to witness Kratos undergo an incredibly moving character Arc as he finally learns for himself what it means to be better however there is another story in God of War Ragnarok this is the story of the writers finding different ways to stall the simple plot with padding fuel biological character decisions and plot holes only for it all to lead to a disappointing final act now I am completely aware that I just pissed off a good amount of people watching this video and to make it all worse I can't justify any of my claims until the end of the video because that would involve spoilers what I will say now is that if you enjoyed this story I am not trying to take that away from you because I did too the acting was perfect most of the characters are well written and many of the heartfelt scenes do land but I assure you that this story has too many blemishes to be considered a masterpiece of course there is more to a video game than its story so one of the other parts of this game God of War ragnarok's gameplay tells two very different stories the first story is about the amazing combat system that combines the character Combat Action genre with some souls-like elements for great effect although I believe that the zoomed in camera holds back the combat system from its true potential what we have here is still loads of fun to play anyways however there is another story to God of War ragnarok's gameplay this is the story of about bunch of crappy puzzles that dominate far too much of the gameplay Loop not only are the puzzles poorly designed they are also so nonsensical that they'll leave you screaming Kratos you've literally murdered Titans and a dragon just climb over the tiny gate made for literal dwarves and get to the chest in addition to my problems with the story and puzzle design Santa Monica Studios have employed a series of trade-offs in service of crafting a cinematic experience that I find myself disagreeing with my two biggest issues are with the zoomed in camera as I just mentioned as well as the lack of a jump button that makes the level design feel like a bunch of tiles connected through button prompts furthermore God of War Ragnarok carries all the tropes associated with the movie-like genre there's the non-interactive climbing scenes a ton of shimmying through small cracks and at points very slowly paced narrative sequences I have grown more bored with these non-interactive sections with every new release of a movie like game and when combined with all the boring puzzles they only serve to slow down the pace of play even more and yes I just made up the term movie-like for this critique I know it's stupid but I don't care and you can't stop me God of War Ragnarok is a good game and at times it might even be great but just like with God of War 2018 before it Ragnarok is still not a masterpiece despite 2018's greatest flaws being fixed in Ragnarok this sequel has its own fair share of issues that hold it back from how great it could have been it should be obvious by now that there will be spoilers for the entire game so you've been warned and just for context the only other God of War game I've played is 2018 though I do plan on visiting the original trilogy at some point in time because I do like Devil May Cry and that genre of game please like subscribe and consider donating on patreon if you like this video of course I suspect that a lot of people will hate this video because negative criticism towards a popular thing is illegal so you can also dislike and leave a mean comment whatever makes you happy I have me in an effort to not come across as the most negative man on the internet I am going to cover everything that I loved about God of War Ragnarok first that being the characters set design in combat to do this we don't have to look any further than the beginning of the game because it Nails all three of those things 2018 started off with Kratos and balder destroying an entire Canyon in their battle and Ragnarok is somehow more epic even the first boss Bjorn the bear is mechanically interesting this boss teaches the player to Parry yellow attacks and Dodge the occasional red attack and when Kratos parries the bear in the middle of a combo he can always get at least one hidden before having to Parry again this gives the first boss a somewhat High skill ceiling because one executed correctly combat can become a constant flow of parries and hits which is really satisfying we almost kill the bear only to realize that we were fighting our son atreus the whole time a is going through a character Arc scene many times in fiction of a chosen one character who can't control their power because it's so immense a trace is power being shape-shifting into animals after returning home we find the amazing introduction scene that blew up on Twitch if God of War Ragnarok Wins Game of the Year 2022 this scene may be responsible for that because it's just that great right away after beating the first boss the main villains of the entire game come knocking on kratos's door what I think really completes this scene are the Oddball characters of Thor and Odin Thor seems so close to either breaking down in a fit of rage or breaking down in tears that he comes across as mentally unstable the feeling of a slightly insane angry fat god with low self-esteem contrasts perfectly with his father Odin who is by all means Thor's opposite Odin is a calm old man who comes across as a perfectly reasonable negotiator after playing God of War 2018 and seeing the eve people Odin brought to the lives of so many his easy going appearance makes him seem even more like a psychopath at least Thor seems mentally unstable after all the terrible things that he did whereas Odin just doesn't give a sh and that makes him all the more evil being the calm reasonable man he is Odin offers Kratos a truce if atreus stops trying to locate tear the God of War heralded by the prophecy to bring about Ragnarok then Odin will leave them be this truce appears to be reasonable which makes it all the more confusing when Kratos replies with the simple no initially I felt very conflicted about this answer on one hand Odin's deal was pretty great and Kratos also doesn't want Ragnarok to occur in fear that it may cause his son to die so agreeing to a truce would be the best solution while on the other hand Kratos saying no does sort of make sense when viewed from the perspective of Kratos Kratos knows that Odin is a liar and when looking back on his experience with Aries he knows that any deal given by a lying God isn't really a deal at all but a future betrayal in Disguise even with that being said the smartest thing to do here would be to lie to Odin to avoid present conflict and prepare to betray Odin in a future battle after they continue the search for tear while this may be the smartest thing to do Kratos is not the type of person who solves problems through lying or negotiation since as a Spartan he was only ever taught to overcome conflict through violence when viewed from the perspective of a Spartan it does sort of make sense why Kratos says no here even if logically it might have been a recklessly dangerous move and it was a recklessly dangerous move as Thor instantly launches Kratos into the sky with mjolnir this may go down as one of the coolest moments in gaming history for just how sudden and unexpected it was Kratos and Thor have a fist fight in the sky on mjolnir until they crash land in the middle of midgard another amazing moment in this fight was when Kratos lose uses a smash the button cut scene prompt and actually dies for Thor to just bring him back from the dead this is further proof that saying no to Odin was a recklessly dangerous move as Kratos literally ties the worst mechanics are an evolution on what was taught in the bear fight he has a similar unblockable running grab attack combined with periable yellow attacks to increase the difficulty from the bear fight Thor also has two more unblockable attacks in the form of a ground pound where a player needs to dodge backwards and a slap where a player needs to dodge to the side the dialogue between Thor and Kratos in this fight display how Thor is used as kratos's foil they're both destroyers who have done terrible things but while Kratos murdered his father and is now trying to raise atreus to be better than he and Zeus were Thor did the opposite Thor never stood up to his father and kept destroying at his behest after Thor had kids he treated them in an abusive way similar to how Odin had treated his in before Thor has mostly given up on changing the cycle of Evil Within his family while Kratos is still trying to find a way after killing Kratos one and a half times Thor threatens his son causing Kratos to punch a tooth out of Thor's mouth this satisfies Thor as he was never allowed to kill Kratos but still want to get a glimpse into kratos's true power when he's enraged now that Odin gave Kratos a firm no on searching for tear Kratos and atreus naturally decide to immediately go out and search for tear their Adventures take them to the realm of the dwarves unfortunately Santa Monica didn't want to spend the money on a bunch of dwarf NPCs that look good up close so they hid them in their homes despite the lack of dwarves the Dwarven Town set piece was one of my favorites in the game there's a certain Whimsy to entering the town on the boat as the dwarves overhead waddle back into their little homes if I could live anywhere in God of War it'd be here once we break tear out of jail he turns out to be a giant he won't even help fight the normal enemies I really enjoyed how the writers set up tear to be a god-destroying beast like Kratos only to be so scared from war and wants to break the cycle of violence so much that he won't even participate in a single battle tyr has similar desires to Kratos of wanting to stop the cycle of violence but tear doesn't have the will to kill for those goals so basically he's a completely useless waste of time after rescuing tear we have a moment that I've wanted ever since 2018. in 2018 we visit alfheim and see the endings of a dark elf vs light elf War but we never got to be a part of that Ragnarok made the light elves a unique enemy type and as we try to escape alfheim we're assaulted by both sides of the war to me being able to witness a slice of the Elven Ward Justified returning to alphaim in the first place even if it didn't last for all that long we also traveled to freya's realm of Anaheim Kratos teams up with Freya to undo Odin's spell that binds her to midgard which ends with us receiving Freya as a new battle companion after she stops trying to kill Kratos for killing her son the developers went above and beyond with the companions as Freya and atreus have unique lines of dialogue for side quests as well as mimir's stories depending on which character is present the Anaheim itself must be one of the most beautiful environments in a video game I have ever witnessed the wildlife is especially impressive with deer walking around the woods and monkeys hanging off of vines it just feels so alive the best looking jungle in video game history that sounds so stupid but it's probably true now that we're deeper into the game I think it's time we talk about God of War ragnarok's weird approach to Side Quests the developers go out of their way to make the hook for a side quest be as boring as possible only for the side content to be amazing in fact some of the side quests were so great that I was convinced I was going to get an alternative ending for doing side quests because of how much character growth occurred between Kratos atreus and Freya the first great side quest was at the end of the first Alpine visit atreus says that there's an animal in pain in the desert and we have a choice to help it the hook for this side quest is so underwhelming that it becomes part of the quest atreus keeps asking Kratos why are we taking the time to save some random animal why do you care and Kratos responds by dodging the question like usual after murdering a bunch of dark elves we find out that the animal in pain is a giant flying jellyfish after releasing the jellyfish from the dark elf Hive atreus asks us once more why Kratos of all people is helping a random animal in the desert to which he replies that he wants to enjoy whatever time left he has with his son before Ragnarok occurs Kratos admitting that he is doing something simply because he wants to spend time with his son was very touching and it's made even more impactful because the player decided to cause Kratos to change we didn't have to save the jellyfish we could have been the old Kratos who avoided all distractions and rushed straight to the finale but the player chose to spend more time with our sun which caused Kratos to change for the better as a character this is an ingenious way of tying player agency to character development that made the uninteresting hook for the side quest make sense unfortunately the other side quests also have bad Hooks and for no real story reason I think the worst example comes closer to the end of the game a character splits up from the party and is assumed dead but another character thinks he's still alive instead of having a rescue mission be the hook all we get is atreus asking Kratos to follow a magical boar and explore before leaving Anaheim that's it I bit this underwhelming hook only to enter a flying boat be attacked from dragons in the sky and then crash land into a mini DLC sized map there's also a ton of side quests here including saving the character that was presumed dead from a literal Dragon Speaking of dragons the only two dragonflights that I can remember from the game are found in this side area each with unique attacks and move sets from each other I could go on because I'm not done talking about this area it was amazing and I only found all of this because I decided to follow some animal on a whim on some level this gives me a similar feeling to that of Elden ringer breath of the wild when I find a new amazing location on my own but I can't say that I agree with its implementation here Elden ring and breath of the wild are able to have amazing moments of Discovery while also having great hooks in the form of interesting landmarks in the distance God of War's most interesting side content is not offered with the hook of environmental landmarks just some dwarf asking Kratos to get her green orb and Freya saying she has unfinished business in Anaheim that isn't enough for me I want better hooks for side content because I think a lot of people missed out on some great character moments in addition to the weak hooks I think that a lot of people might miss out on the side content because they're getting bored of the main stories slow pacing and they don't want to slow down the game further by doing side quests I'll cover the pacing with heavy spoilers in depth at the end of this video but right now I'll just say this while the pacing is brought to a halt in certain areas like yotenheim that isn't my main issue my main issue with the pacing is that the characters do illogical things that accomplish little and only seem to exist as a way for the writers to stall out more time before Ragnarok so then not only do some levels stretch on for too long but the reward for reaching the end of these stretched out levels is unsatisfying because it either does nothing to advance the actual plot or has no payoff in the end one illogical character moment that occurs to stall the plot takes place after atreus learns of the Giants prophecy at Ragnarok etreus will become Odin's champion and his father will die desperate to avoid this fate atreus thinks that the best move is to travel to Asgard and become Odin's Champion smart move atreus could be thinking that the best way to avert prophecy is to do the least expected thing and cause the prophecy to happen logically this makes about zero sense and atreus also never says that this is his reasoning so I don't think it is the real reason stated by atreus for going to Asgard is to spy on Odin I can infer that atreus does this to become a secret agent for his dad but it's a bit hard to be a secret agent when the enemy knows you're trying to enact an apocalypse specifically to kill them the stupidity of atreus's plans make all the arguments between him and Kratos feel like force drama the only counter argument in favor of atreus's dumb decision-making is that he is an immature teenager so he is very stupid and impulsive atreus is shown time and time again in Ragnarok to be stupid and impulsive so I can't say it's not consistent but I do have one other larger problem with this none of the smart characters like mimir ever walk atreus through the logic of his decisions when atreus says he's going to Asgard mimir just says look at us as proof that you don't want to be around Odin while the other characters yell at him why couldn't the Canon's smartest man alive mimir or any other character say that there's tactically no way atreus could gain anything from spying on the most cunning God who sacrificed his eye and hung himself to gain knowledge that no one else knows there's a zero percent chance atris would ever believably gain anything from spying on Odin but we all know Odin wants atreus to further his own goals which could help the enemy and guess what spoiler alert atreus's visits to Asgard culminate in him never gaining any knowledge on Odin's weaknesses while he completes the mask that can unlock a source of infinite knowledge for Odin so I guess the writers agree with me that atreus could never realistically gain anything from spying on someone like Odin to further prove that all the characters become stupid just to justify plot events happening later in the game mirror actually tells atreus to go back to Asgard this causes atreus to gain nothing and for Odin to complete his mask that was terrible advice bemir it isn't just atreus who is an idiot all of the characters act like idiots some of the time in order to justify cool story moments and there were some great moments with atreus in Asgard especially with Heimdall the writers made me hate this prick so much that I just wanted Ragnarok to start specifically to shut him up Heimdall has The Godly powers of narcissism and seeing into the future so he's able to dodge every one of a trace's attacks in a fight as he throws out insults at him while these moments in Asgard were cool and I did like talking to Thor's atreus I do wish that the developers were able to better justify The Reckless decisions atreus makes on the way to these destinations although atreus okay occasionally making a little sense was of law in 2018 that Ragnarok did not fix the three largest flaws with 2018 have been fixed if you're wondering why at the beginning of this video I said God of War 2018 isn't a masterpiece these flaws are the main reasons why the first flaw was how so much of the plot felt like sequel bait for a more interesting story they had planned and we didn't really get to meet any of the characters we kept hearing about of like tyr Odin Thor Etc Ragnarok fixes this flaw automatically by just being the baited sequel the second flaw was how runic attacks used to not always stun lock enemies which has also been fixed in Ragnarok since it has less bugs the final and possibly largest flaw that 2018 had was the lack of bosses and enemy variety 2018 repeated the same Troll Boss 10 times and only had about six major boss encounters furthermore the normal drawker enemies and dark elves were repeated quite a lot which made clearing normal enemies near the end of the game him feel very repetitive and boring Ragnarok fixes this problem by introducing a revolving door of both mini bosses and normal enemies it's a revolving door since the developers throw just about every enemy type and mini boss at the player once every 5 to 10 hour period and then repeat these encounters with slight alterations in case you don't understand the revolving door analogy here's another way to explain it imagine this revolving door has eight separate sections I spin the door once an enemy steps out I fight the enemy they go back into the revolving door after they're defeated and then eight spins later I end up right back at the same door fighting the same enemy again just getting to tear and rescuing him in the beginning of the game will have the player fight draggers human Raiders lizardmen and the Viking enemies the next Story Mission in alphheim immediately after introduces both light and dark elves at first I was completely blown away in just a 5-10 hour period God of War Ragnarok had better enemy variety than the entirety of its predecessor the revolving door of mini bosses is paced slower than the regular enemies as they appear less frequently although within the first five to eight hours I had found the huntress drucky and the hateful fight which are all repeated many many times over while I enjoyed this design approach it did have one issue by around 60 percent through the game I realized that I was rarely finding new challenging enemy types or mini bosses just the same ones again another 1v2 dreky fight another Huntress fight another hateful another Viking the revolving door of enemies improved the first 10 hours while taking away from the mid and late game since I'd already seen almost everything that there was to see now that's not to say that there weren't a few new Mini bosses and enemy types fit in near the end of the game because there were some but the vast majority of enemies and mini bosses found near the mid to end game had been repeated many times over this makes the beginning of the game a lot better and the late game slightly more repetitive it's not too big of a deal since the revolving door of different enemies and bosses revolves around so quickly that there's always something different around the corner to stop you from getting bored but eventually that different thing will be a mini boss I fought many times over exploring and doing side content increases this problem more since you're spinning the revolving door of enemies more and seeing the enemies again in a perfect world we could have a revolving door of enemy types and mini bosses in combination with more fully original enemy types added in the mid to late game but that wouldn't be an economically feasible approach since it would cost way too much money to craft all those enemies as it currently is I won't say that the revolving door of enemies is a good or a bad thing more that it's a trade-off with its own unique positives and negatives in comparison to the enemy placement of most normal RPGs though I will will say it is infinitely better than 2018's enemy variety that is for sure although the lack of new enemy types in the mid to end game is upsetting the combat itself is so amazing that I never got truly bored it achieves something I've wanted to talk about ever since 2018 first came out which is how the new God of War Games combined two different genres into one those genres being character-oriented combat and enemy-oriented combat I call these genres character and enemy oriented combat respectively based on whether the player character or the enemies dictate the flow of combat a character-oriented combat system is all about learning strong combos to go on the offensive by keeping all the enemies stun locked as much as humanly possible to encourage an aggressive playstyle these games make the player attack faster than the enemies while throwing ridiculous waves of enemies at the player who has low health so the only solution to win is to go on the offensive this game genre can be very difficult to get into because it takes a lot of skill and confidence on the part of the player to become aggressive but it is extremely rewarding when done well an enemy-oriented combat system is another way for me to say dark souls in Disguise but I'm not allowed to talk about Dark Souls on a non-dark Souls video so you should be angry enemy-oriented combat is about memorizing how to avoid large enemy combos while finding tiny openings to safely sneak in a few hits of your own character-oriented combat forces a player into aggression as the game becomes harder through giant waves of enemies while enemy-oriented combat forces a player out of aggression through enemies that can't be stunned at all the combat system in the new God of War Games is an attempt at combining these two distinct combat systems into one large amounts of enemies are thrown at a player that are all potential sources of incoming damage so a player needs to stun lock them with combos like in a simple character-oriented combat game enemies that are not in a grounded date will occasionally turn on hyper armor which means they cannot be stunned unless they're hit by a light attack combo finisher or a heavy attack combo this forces the player to switch from aggression to reaction to make it more interesting enemies have four different types of hyper armor attacks that all require different inputs from the player to react correctly yellow attacks break a player's stance if they block so they must raise their Shield at the last second to Parry the attack or Dodge red attacks can't be parried or blocked so a player has to dodge blue attacks have a large AOE damage effect that usually can't be dodged at the player is close to the enemy as they begin the animation so Kratos needs to bash his shield into the enemy's face to stun them out of the attack and if there is no color around the enemy's attack then the attack can be parried or blocked this essentially means that the game's default state is as a simple character combat game where Kratos stun locks large groups of enemies broken up with yellow red and blue attacks that gives the enemies hyper armor and require specific inputs from the player to avoid damage to add a good bit of enemy-oriented combat to complete this combat system's successful Perry's not only stun all enemies nearby but they also don't stop the player's combo string this is an excellent way to mix up the two combat systems seamlessly it's an amazing High skill feeling where I overcome the enemies through perfectly reacting to enemy damage at the last second only to unleash a god-like combo that I had been preparing on everyone ragnarok's combat works so well since if a player focuses solely on one combat system they will not have fun if someone plays too reactive like in Dark Souls they will never sunlock enemies and will go for only a few hits and then Dodge will spam which will slow down gameplay and is not very fun and if a player isn't reactive then they'll die from all the special colored attacks and off-screen enemies it's a beautiful blend of both systems that combines aggression and reaction into one amazing amazing experience although I have a glowingly positive opinion of ragnarok's combat against normal enemies I feel much more conflicted about the boss battles normal enemies are challenging because they force a player to juggle between aggression and reaction while bosses take out aggression and add a little else just like with normal enemies beating a boss requires me to respond correctly to all colored attacks the only mechanic bosses have that normal enemies don't is memorizing if I'm supposed to dodge back or Dodge to the side from a red attack that's all of the mechanics and I can cancel my attacks so I don't really need to memorize boss openings while the bosses are fun they are also mechanically simple that they never become great I'm not going to break down specific mechanics on most of the game's bosses from here on out because there isn't much to say they're simple fun but they don't go beyond that similar to the revolving door of enemy types the zoomed in camera is less of a flaw and more of a trade-off the only difference is that while I felt neutral in the revolving door of enemy types trade off I do not agree that the benefits of the camera outweigh its issues in order to give the game a more grounded cinematic feel Santa Monica Studios decided to give the player a zoomed in third-person shooter camera in a melee action game the benefit of this camera is that it makes combat feel like you're an action hero in a movie who is saved by another character screaming enemy behind you the moment before they can attack you but in actuality this leads to the player spam rolling away from ranged enemies which totally breaks the flow of combat this sucks because God of War Ragnarok has an amazing combat system when I'm in a flow state but that state will get broken by the camera in defense of God of War I do believe that some people overstate their distaste of the camera a sense with proper positioning and game sense I'm still able to maintain a flow state in combat for the majority of most encounters but I must also state that if the camera was zoomed out even just a bit more I would have enjoyed combat a lot more although I don't love the camera my main issue with the camera isn't that it made combat bad because I don't think the combat's bad but that it prevents the developers from being able to make more complex and difficult encounters a perfect example of the camera holding back in counter design is the Noken the healing Noken makes nearby enemies invincible so a player needs to kill them before being able to fight the other enemies the problem is that in order for a player to search for the Noken they need to turn the camera away from the enemies and run at the Noken certain nokins also spam Dodge away from ranged attacks and melee attacks just to make the process more frustrating this encounter led to me getting hit from behind a bunch while spam dodging away from the sensible enemies to kill the one enemy I needed to kill it was not at all enjoyable if I could zoom out the camera to see the Noken and the attacking enemies at the same time then the encounter would start to become fair but as it currently stands every time I saw a Noke and I just thought welp time to not have any fun until that thing's dead the issue with the camera isn't that it makes combat bad but that it holds back the combat system from what it could be more creative encounters like the Noken as well as fights against a greater number of ranged and melee enemies could exist if the camera was zoomed out more the developers are holding back what their combat system could be in the name of making the game feel more cinematic and grounded and I do not think that the benefits outweigh the negatives in this trade-off before talking about the trade-offs this game has for exploration I just need to vent about how the overly constrictive level design makes no damn sense certain puzzles can be solved by throwing my ax from my boat but Kratos doesn't want to who knows maybe he'd tip the boat other puzzles could be solved if Kratos jumped out of his boat into a rock nearby but he can't exit the boat unless he's at a specific area as I mentioned in the intro the worst example has to be the Dwarven gate Kratos can't climb atreus makes the remark that kratos's knees hurt in old age which makes me think that every puzzle is being solved because Kratos wants to use the least amount of effort possible when traveling probably because he has osteoarthritis in his old age so Kratos only uses his full strength when fighting gods and dragons and we can all agree that climbing over a tiny gate is harder on the knees than jumping to a pole to swing off of it and land on the other side like an acrobat wait that's not true and it makes absolutely no sense it's obvious that the developers don't want me to think about if the justification for doing the puzzles makes any sense in this game's world and just to ignore how stupid it is but I must also state that I prefer one game like The Legend of Zelda as a character with consistently limited abilities that make sense over Kratos being as powerful as a God in one encounter and then as weak as an elderly patient in the next puzzle in addition to the puzzles not making any sense the majority of them aren't very good it's time to introduce everyone to the non-puzzle in order to understand a non-puzzle we have to ask what is a puzzle in order for something to be a puzzle the player needs to either think through how multiple Mechanics Work to solve a problem or they need to find a specific tool through context clues that best solves the problem a non-puzzle is generally when the solution is as simple as use the tool the one way we taught you to use it to reach the solution there is no thinking no moment of Illumination just using the ability on the thing to continue a Surefire way to know if something is a non-puzzle is if it has the same exact solution as a previous puzzle since repeat puzzles inherently require no original thought or problem solving in order to illustrate the difference between puzzles and non-puzzles we'll look at the game for examples Freya tells me she has the ability to shoot an arrow that leaves a purple sigil this sigil spreads my weapon's Elemental effect through AOE damage and she can shoot the same spot multiple times to make it grow whenever I do this I am not solving a puzzle I'm just using the abilities as they were prescribed to continue this non-puzzle is repeated many times throughout the game in one part of the game in Hell hi matreius is summed by a puzzle and says there is no way across the solution is to throw a spear into the marked location on the wall as it is with every other Spear non-puzzle and to make matters worse atreus literally said the solution earlier to another spear non-puzzle when I took too long to find the correct angle and then he says he stumped and there's no way to continue what the [ __ ] atreus I guess atreus really is consistently stupid okay I I guess sure although I'm not going to count every puzzle in the game game I can assure you that the majority of them are non-puzzles with a solution based in perspective and the weird thing about a lot of these perspective-based non-puzzles is that they did feel like Puzzles but only in the worst ways I often got stuck and had to wander around a long time for a solution but I never had to think the solution is always to wander around the level looking for the three switches from different perspectives and then hitting them most of the real puzzles are so easy I can't say I enjoyed solving them either usually the non-puzzles take longer to solve than the real puzzles since it would usually take a long time to find all three things I need to hit to progress this process of looking through a level feels a bit like a puzzle because I get stuck just without the Euphoria of the aha I get it now moment because I knew the solution from the start one counter argument in favor of perspective based puzzles is that the euphoric aha moment comes from finding the final switch in the last place you think it would be hidden even if you enjoy enjoy this I still wouldn't call it a puzzle more just a game of hide and seek it's not problem solving more just checking every part of the surrounding area until you use the process of elimination to find the one angle you missed which is the solution there's so little depth I'd consider it not to puzzle but that's the weird thing about the puzzle design of God of War Ragnarok it is stuffed full of non-puzzles and while they are poorly designed this is actually an intentional trade-off by the development team to improve the pacing the non-puzzles and real puzzles need to be easy because they aren't supposed to be the focus of the game The Game's focus is on combat with puzzles created to Pace out the combat encounters so that they don't become boring or tiring to the player whether or not a player is intelligent enough to solve the puzzle is irrelevant to the game designers since the challenge of the puzzle only exists for the purpose of pacing if someone takes too long to solve the puzzle then the pacing will become boring and ruin the point of the puzzle in the first place which is why the game tells the player the solution to a puzzle if they take too long to progress and I'm not the first to say that the fact that at release we cannot turn off puzzle hints is really stupid I guess this confirms that the developers really don't care if we enjoy solving the puzzles or not because they know they're not well made although the developers traded interesting puzzle design for pacing they end up not even obtaining the benefits of their own trade this is because if you don't want to set the difficulty to game journalist mode you have to get health and rage upgrades all of these upgrades are locked behind hide and seek non-puzzles the issue is that they hit a lot of these way too well so I'd end up wandering around the level for many minutes trying to find the third switch if you do a decent amount of these hide and seek puzzles in combination with the many puzzles seen in the main story quests and the many side quests quests then you're left doing a lot of boring non-puzzles ragnarok's three-part gameplay Loop of story combat and puzzles is dominated by the worst design part of the loop if the developers simply took out a third or more of the puzzles and replaced them just with combat the pacing would be so much better another trade-off that hinders exploration is the lack of a jump button in order to give the game a more grounded realistic feel the developers don't allow the player to jump except when at specific locations this makes all the level design feel extremely constricted and in my opinion boring to explore and God of War every area a player can climb swing or drop down is marked by The Game and done automatically any legit player shouldn't be able to fall from is an invisible wall this means that every interaction with the level design is animated well and keeps a realistic movie like non-videogamy feel but in exchange we give up freedom in the level design this makes me look at the levels less as part of a greater world and more as two-dimensional tiles connected to one another through button prompts in addition to making exploring levels more fun if a jump button was added then platforming could have been introduced into the gameplay Loop right now the game is chock full of easy puzzles and non-puzzles that slow down the pacing in a boring way for the sake of breaking up the combat encounters if platforming was added to the gameplay Loop in tandem with puzzles and combat then the pacing problem would be solved we could remove half of the perspective-based hide and seek non-puzzles and then put in some platforming to break up the combat the only issue with platforming is that with kratos's current tank controls and Camera it would feel stiff and awkward of course I would enjoy the game more of Kratos controlled less like a tank and the camera was zoomed out more so these changes would only make the game more what I would want it to be if platforming sections were added and there were less puzzles than perhaps the developers could focus more on quality over quantity in their puzzle design but we got the exact opposite God of War traded player freedom and expression in Exploration for maintaining the high quality movie-like appearance of the animations and I disagree with this trade-off I would prefer it if the player could jump and zoom out the camera while exploring the levels with jumping being disabled and the camera zoomed in for character-driven cinematic moments unfortunately the God of War developers wanted every moment of this game to feel like a movie and shows against this compromise none of these trade-offs make me hate the game by any means but they do make the experience lesser than what it could be as mentioned earlier there are so many non-interactive climbing and shimmying through hallways scenes that are now Hallmarks of the movie like genre which I find more boring in every new game they appear in there's literally no player choice in where to go and no Challenge and how difficult it is to climb I may as well just watch a video of a guy rock climbing while I hold the left stick down in my controller and I'd get the same experience every once in a while this is fine but like many other movie-like games God of War Ragnarok has far more of these non-interactive scenes than I'd like and that's interesting because there was a time many years ago when I did enjoy the movie-like genre but over time the spectacle has fully worn off for me every single design decision in God of War Ragnarok trades in gameplay for the sake of a cinematic experience and I now only feel the negatives of all these trade-offs all right the ghost of Sparta Burrows his brow menacingly he resists the urge to grunt as I mentioned before atreus went to Asgard as a non-secret agent who's already been discovered by the enemy this rightfully makes Kratos worried so he and Freya make a trip to the Norse fortune tellers the norns to prevent atreus from dying to his stupid decisions unsurprisingly Heimdall is planning to murder atreus and the norns informed Kratos that if he kills Heimdall then he will die at Ragnarok the norns are also able to predict everything Kratos says which is funny since it highlights how Kratos talks and Grunts and speak plainly although I could probably predict some of the things that Kratos says the norns also predict most of the things mamir and Freya say this means that they must be pretty good at predicting what people do and say Kratos is put between a rock and a hard place either he can go back to his old ways of killing powerful Gods when they piss him off which will cause him to die or Kratos can do nothing and let his son die furthermore the Giants prophecy says that Kratos will die and atreus will become Odin's Champion with this setup Kratos needs to find some way of defeating the gods without killing them in order to avoid the terrible Fates prophesized by the norns and the Giants Kratos needs to break the cycle of God killing this is by far the most interesting part of the plot as we see the inner turmoil between the old Kratos who solves problems through violence and the new Kratos who doesn't know how to solve anything of course he'll still need at least to be able to defend himself and atreus which is a bit of a problem when his enemy Heimdall is unkillable due to his ability to see into the future so Kratos and Brock head out in search of a new legendary weapon the infinitely respawning drop near Spear and like the ax and Blades of chaos this new weapon is animated spectacularly and is a blast to use in combat after getting this new weapon Kratos is confronted by Odin in one of the best scenes in the game odid wants to use atreus's special gifts to unlock the Truths Behind creation Odin has done many terrible things all in an effort to figure out what the gods of the gods are and he will not let Credo stand in his way to stop Kratos Odin tries what he always does which is diplomacy I know you're not the god you once were and now is your chance to prove it it's hurt my son or you may meet God I once was and what kind of God is that great toes what do you even know of godhood in your lifetimes has anyone ever worshiped you ever prayed to you can you even imagine that kind of love no you don't care about Mortals you don't care about anything beyond yourself beyond the monster who kills without cause you'll fear what you can never even hope to understand what do you even know of godhood this is such a great line kratos's only desire ever has been to live a simple life with his family and every time his desire is trampled on by the forces of evil Gods Kratos doesn't desire to be a hero and this scene is where he starts wondering if that is for the worse Kratos is selfish and he never goes out of his way to help anyone accept himself and his direct family and this is the scene where the most despicable psychopath in the game Odin is telling Kratos that his selfishness is part of the reason why he cannot live a good life and the shocking part about all of this is that the villain is correct Kratos does need to be more than a killer he needs to be better and this game is all about the journey towards becoming just that towards Kratos using his powers for good so naturally Kratos goes out to kill another God with the cool new weapon he just got now I do have some some questions with this boss Heimdall can see into the future so Kratos needs to trick him into getting hit we do this by throwing a spear at him and then exploding it after doing this Heimdall still Dodges all of kratos's attacks so we need to trick him again by throwing a spear in the ground and exploding that one so if Heimdall can still Dodge our attacks and he knows that the spears can explode why doesn't he just avoid them after the first one explodes on him maybe the spears are invisible to anyone who isn't Kratos but Heimdall should still see the explosion happening in the future so that doesn't make sense either are both the spears invisible and able to evade heimdall's foresight honestly I don't even think Kratos knows how you won this fight Brock and's injury were basically guessing that the spear might work if anything I wish this was better explained as I don't think Kratos should have won this fight and I guess that Heimdall didn't think Kratos could win either since he brought the only key into Asgard the gala horn with him to bat battle this essentially means that the entire plot of the game hinges on Heimdall being the most stupid arrogant man in existence I'm going to talk about this in more depth when I'm discussing my problems with the plot at the end of the critique but for now just know that Heimdall is an idiot in an attempt to revert the prophecy Kratos tries to spare Heimdall which just makes him more Angry so Kratos does what he does best and kills the [ __ ] whether Justified or not Kratos has not stopped his old ways and everything is set up for him to die just as the norns predicted After heimdall's Death atreus Wants To Be A discovered undercover agent again this time Amir thinks that atreus is being smart and I'm sorry but no we have the horn that will get us into Asgard the smart thing to do would be to assemble the troops for Ragnarok unless a Tris wants Odin to get his hands on the mask and to uncover whatever power lies in the rift in the basement they should just start Ragnarok one possible reason for a is going back to Asgard is that he wants to use the mask to unlock information in the rift that could avert Ragnarok this is a terrible plan what if the truth given by the rift doesn't even Grant power and even if it does how does atreus plan on using it the rift is literally in Odin's basement does he think Odin isn't always watching his every move carefully with Ravens when he stays in Asgard does atreus truly think that he'll just get the mask and sneak into the basement alone to uncover the truth without Odin atreus also says that the mask is leverage but to what end to make more deals with the psychopath you will kill anyone and anything in his path of divine knowledge Kratos knows that a promise to Odin is worthless that's why he said no to the truce in the opening cut scene but the writers want another cool Asgard scene before the game ends so let's make the characters dumb I guess I get it I'll be smart and just like before we do get some more Great Moments in Asgard Thor's depressed after heimdall's death and starts drinking again there is an interesting contrast between how thorax around his daughter threwed and atreus Thor wants to be a better dad for through than he was for his dead Sons the same way Kratos wants to be a better dad for atreus than he was for his dead daughter Calliope Thor tries to be that better person for through and fails constantly and the pain of his failure is turned into hatred directed towards atreus this hatred stems from Thor's life of Destruction and failure caused by Odin but Thor is a weak man who can't stand up to his father so he pushes the blame onto atreus instead Thor's unstable mental state culminates in him trying to murder atreus only for atreus to use syndry's crystal to escape after we retrieve the mask tear the pacifist starts spewing some bolt about how he should use the mask in the rift to save the world and prevent Ragnarok the biggest issue you with tears crackhead plan is that the only way into Asgard is by blowing the gala horn which Odin will hear and perceive as the beginning of a war tyr says that he has been hiding knowledge of a secret entryway into Asgard this whole time if this is true then it makes a little sense that he wasn't able to beat Odin in the previous war when he United all the Realms previously Barack is the smartest character in the room and he speaks plain and starts pointing out how ridiculous it is that tear was hiding a secret entryway into Asgard the whole time none of Tears rebuttals make any sense and after Brock points out that tear called the treas Loki tear stabbed him through the chest the major plot twist of the game has been revealed which is that tear was owed in in Disguise the whole time in a great moment of characterization Odin says that if he kills atreus then they'd be square for heimdall's death and that this deal is a bargain this shows how Odin is a psychopath who treats all people who are not himself as chess pieces that he can trade and murder without care to achieve his own goals after are getting the mask back Odin teleports away only for Kratos to knock it out of his hands the moment before he can disappear wouldn't it be great if atreus never chose to complete the mask in the first place Brock proceeds to die in syndra's Arms from the Stab Wound I always found Brock to be the funniest character in these games so I was very sad by his death but I also think that it was necessary atreus was told that there are consequences to killing a God as well as a cost for war so if some major characters didn't start dying around Ragnarok then the foreshadowing wouldn't be justified with the Brock dead and nothing accomplished from atreus's second outing in Asgard we can finally stop stalling the plot and begin Ragnarok in order to begin Ragnarok our friends set out to assemble armies from all over the nine Realms while Kratos and atreus go to Moose philheim to ask two fire Giants to combine into one Searcher won't let his wife die but he does have his wife's heart which we can use to fulfill the prophecy we see another amazing space environment here at the beginning of the Norse creation before stabbing cerder through the chest to turn him into Ragnarok itself in preparation for Ragnarok General Kratos gives a speech to his army of like six people I'd prefer it if we actually got to rally the troops before a war but that would have cost a lot of money so they didn't want to add that scene the Ragnarok set piece itself is pretty cool the Eldon Army swarming overhead combined with the battles in the background helped sell the illusion that Ragnarok is a war when in actuality it's just a fairly normal level with no Puzzles and extra combat overall I do feel a bit conflicted on this Ragnarok ending I enjoy how it looks like the MCU War at the end of The Avengers end game due to the always impressive environmental design the combat is fun and well suited to the war theme and the two Final Bosses of the game are well designed with a bunch of expensive attack animations although I enjoyed playing through Ragnarok for such a hyped up moment I can't help but say it left me feeling a bit disappointed Ragnarok Iraq The Apocalypse of the god that every prophecy has been warning us of the entire game and it's just a short level followed up by two bosses maybe there could have been one of those classic god of war fights I've heard so much about where Kratos fights a Titan or maybe we could have fought Thor on the back of the world serpent to up the Epic Factor since the world Serpent and Thor are Rivals so this would make sense it would also be a Twist on the big boss formula as Kratos usually kills the giant but here he'd be helping the world serpent fight Thor there was another opportunity for a giant boss fight when the characters were trying to escape Ragnarok I was hoping Kratos would save the day by running up ragnarok's leg and killing him just like a classic God of War Game to end out Ragnarok on a bang but instead we just teleport away I think that Santa Monica only had the budget for one big boss creature in this game and they spent that on garm I'd have preferred it if they either upped the budget and made a second big boss enemy or gotten rid of garm entirely to put more money into a Ragnarok giant boss although Ragnarok is lacking a giant boss the bosses we do have are pretty good Kratos begins his fight with Thor over a misunderstanding after being convinced that Odin is evil thru joins Kratos in fighting the Vikings or whatever the enemy type is called Thor sees Kratos next to thrude and assumes they are fighting so he snatches Kratos from the sky after defeating Thor Kratos clears up the misunderstanding there is a moment where Thor still wants to fight because he can't escape the idea Odin implanted in him that he's a destroyer and nothing else after Kratos reminds Thor that he needs to be better for the sake of their children Thor is convinced to stop I enjoyed this moment as Kratos showing restraint and trying to come to an understanding with his enemy fully completes his character Arc that started in 2018 of learning how to be better unfortunately for Thor he doesn't want to just stop fighting Kratos but throws down his hammer entirely which causes Odin to murder him mechanically Odin is a fun fight Odin's moveset is like a compilation of attacks from every boss we fought so far with some AOE meteor spell attacks thrown in to spice it all up while I enjoyed fighting this boss his combos are so consistently predictable like every other boss in the game that he didn't challenge me and I only died once I would have preferred it if the strongest Norse God was actually hard to beat but the framework that all of these bosses were created in is too simple to achieve this goal my only issue is that after beating Odin's first phase he uses his blue eyes white dragon trap card to paralyze Kratos and atreus at the same time somehow and Freya has to come and save them with Odin's noose I'm just not a big fan of secret magic attacks that only work in cutscenes and are conveniently solved by some seemingly unrelated object we picked up earlier that means that if Freya never took Odin's noose on a whim I guess Kratos and atreus would die here because of cutscene magic after we defeat Odin atreus places his four Soul Parts into a little ball although Freya was trying to learn how to forgive syndrie doesn't give a crap so he teleports in and kills Odin for us afterwards the main characters are about to die to Ragnarok but are saved at the last second by anger boda's that's not how you say her name anger bodas anger bodas the woman's giant stuff there's one more noteworthy scene in the epilogue where we go to Brock's Funeral the Riddle That Brock asked mimir earlier in the game was what gets bigger the more you take away from it the entire game the smartest man alive couldn't answer the riddle until now a hole that line has a brilliant double meaning as Kratos took everything away from syndria and now the whole inside of his heart has only grown Ragnarok is over Odin's dead atreus is no one's champion and Kratos is alive and then I remembered what about the prophecy what about the entire plot no no it's not right that can't be what happens [Music] my favorite plot thread spread over so many main story missions was the prophecy the central tension of the game was that Kratos was fated to die but he didn't why two separate prophecies from both the norns and the Giants say that Kratos would die if he killed Heimdall and started Ragnarok Kratos does everything the prophet said would lead to his demise but he did not die hell at Ragnarok Kratos goes out of his way to take the most dangerous route possible to avoid killing the mid Guardians that another character says is suicide Kratos does everything the most dangerous way possible while murdering the Gods in the process so why is he alive to make this even more confusing both groups of prophets were set up to be amazing at predicting things the norns could predict every piece of character dialogue Kratos and his friends said and the Giants predicted all the battles we went on in the last game on the way to spreading freya's ashes I will say that the Giant's prophecy of atreus as Odin's Champion could have been intentionally wrong to cause atreus to make a bunch of dangerous decisions they predicted would have had the best outcome basically like Doctor Strange in the MCU I've also read online that apparently in Phase original destroyed prophecy Odin was dead in atreus's arms and Kratos ruled I'm not entirely sure how these online people are getting this information these people might just be assuming that the broken Prophecy from 2018 is owed and dying in atreus's arms but the dying figure has the body type and clothing of Kratos so this isn't a satisfactory answer either way for the sake of plot holes I'm willing to believe that the Giant's prophecy was intentionally false to send Kratos and Odin down a path where Odin dies even if this is true I'm still not a fan of the ending because the prophecy that was the main tension throughout the entire game simply just not being correct is almost like when a story ends with antagonist waking up oh you know that tense plot point that you were expecting a good resolution to it doesn't exist moreover it's still nonsensical because unlike the Giants the norns had no bias in favor of helping Kratos and said that he would die if the norns and the Giants both predicted the same event of Kratos dying despite having different biases then it's more likely that the prediction is true because of this there still needs to be a grand moment of defying Destiny where Kratos does something that the norns did not predict but this moment is not very clear one theory is that it's when Kratos tells atreus to open up his heart to the people's suffering but that logically makes no sense if Kratos didn't say this would atreyas then betray him and become Odin's Champion there's no way in hell atreus would hate Odin more for putting the mid Guardians by the wall to die and if Kratos closed his heart and let some people die he would have taken a safer path into Asgard and been more likely to continue living the best theory I've read is that the prophets predicted that Kratos would go back to his old ways when fighting Thor and kill him this would result in through seeing her dad killed by Kratos causing her to avenge her father's death and to team up with Odin to kill Kratos with Kratos dead atreus could be forced under the threat of death to become Odin's Champion or maybe the Giant's prophecy was always BS who knows my only issue with this being the moment that Kratos defines Destiny is that it doesn't seem out of character Kratos and Thor have a misunderstanding since Thor thought Kratos was attacking his daughter if Kratos would spare a man who was literally trying to kill his son then wouldn't he also at least try to spare a man he has a misunderstanding with and it wasn't even like Kratos tried to spare Thor and failed like he did with Heimdall after Thor's defeated kratos's first attempt at talking to Thor to get him to calm down works how did none of the norns predict he would try talking once so the prophecy defying moment that not a single of the previously amazing prophets could predict was that Kratos would explain his misunderstanding to Thor and get him to calm down this doesn't seem like a very difficult out of character moral choice that would be so hard to predict as to defy prophecy more just the most obvious thing we all expected Kratos to do the prophecy plot Falls flat because defying fate needs to be more difficult Kratos should have been put in an incredibly difficult moral choice where he chooses peace Against All Odds to justify all of the prophets thinking that he would go back to his old ways Kratos needs to do something very extreme and out of character to justify the prophecy being wrong as it currently plays out Kratos just does what we all think he would do as it naturally fits his character Arc maybe the dorns are just as especially that at predicting people but that contradicts how they are set up and how they're always right about everything else except for one kratosis plot armor once I realized that the prophecy plot fell flat it did weaken the entire plot kratos's Fate To Death was the main tension of the entire game which is circumvented by not murdering someone he has a misunderstanding with and talking it out was this story created for people who get into bar fights too much in addition to this prophecy not meaning much after beating the game I started to realize how so many of the main story quests were just padding to stall before Ragnarok this padding is the result of two things Kratos not wanting Ragnarok to occur and atreus being dumb while Kratos not wanting Ragnarok to start is a believable character decision The Writer's insistence on keeping Kratos in the mindset of no Ragnarok starts to wear thin once I realize that the writers only did this to stall the plot as atreus carries out his own completely illogical plans atreus finds the prophecy of Kratos dying in yotenheim which causes him to flee to Asgard only two plot relevant events occur from this stupidity the first event is atreus helping Odin complete the mask pieces which a doesn't help the main characters get to Ragnarok and B has no payoff in the end other than giving atreus the chance to become Odin's champion and the game pauses here like atreus is actually considering doing it why atreus has only ever been characterized to care about his friends and family not knowledge he only cared about the mask because it is a logical planning he thought that it would give him some way of defeating Odin in a peaceful way to avert Ragnarok but since Ragnarok already occurred there is no reason atreus would consider helping Odin and putting on the mask to uncover the rift it just it just wouldn't happen been the second plot event is Heimdall leaving Asgard to die to Kratos and unlike the mask this actually needs to happen for Ragnarok to occur now let me ask you this if Heimdall knows that he has the only Keys into Asgard in the form of the gala horn why would he bring that with him when he leaves to go fight atreus Heimdall knows full well that he might run into a trace his father who's killed more Gods than any other God in existence and if Heimdall can't travel into an out of Asgard without the gala horn because he's sneaking behind Odin's back and not using the Ravens wouldn't it be the most too IQ move ever to leave Asgard at all atris going to Asgard was incredibly stupid and it only worked out in a plot relevant way because the writers also made Heimdall extremely stupid one justification for Heimdall being stupid is that his foresight makes him feel Invincible since no one can ever hit him even if you find this just justification reasonable what about Odin if Odin was tear the whole time then he heard the main characters talking about forging the drop near spear to kill Heimdall if that's the case shouldn't he have teleported to Heimdall and told him to get the [ __ ] out of Asgard or at the very least Odin could have tried to retrieve the gala horn from Heimdall because it could literally start his apocalypse or at the very very least Odin could spare a raven to spy on Heimdall and then uses Ravens that can teleport him to any realm to help get Heimdall out of trouble the writers bend the logic Until It Breaks to justify heimdall's death all quests resulting from atreus's first visit and Asgard are not solved by atreus's wit as a secret agent but by Heimdall being stupid and Odin being so idiotic that it's an actual plot hole and let me assure you there are a lot of quests resulting from atreus and Asgard out of the 17 main story requests that a player needs to complete to finish Ragnarok six of them take place in between atreus running away to Asgard and heimdall's death so 35 percent of the game is padding that's only resolved by Heimdall being more stupid than atreus all of this nonsense occurs because if atreus didn't run off like a prick then the entire game would be them sitting at home waiting for something to happen because Kratos doesn't want War I guess Kratos just wants to sit around until the known Psychopathic liar Odin murders one of his friends one way to have paced the plot better is if in the first half of the game it was about collecting pieces of a prophecy and Kratos coming to terms with having to go to war and then the second half of the game was about uniting the armies of the nine Realms to fight Odin I was really disappointed when the entire uniting the Army's quests were all done off screen after an entire game of padding that was something I actually wanted to see some may disagree because they think that Fredo spending the entire game not wanting to go to war and makes sense for his character my issue with this line of thinking is that even if Kratos not wanting to go to Wars believable that doesn't mean that the writers stalling the plot for the entire game is good one of the greatest challenges all writers face is to have well-written characters who make believable decisions while moving to plot forward when the writers of God of War Ragnarok only do one of these three things consistently well and ignore the other two I'm not going to say that it's masterful writing it doesn't matter whether Kratos stalls the plot in the believable way or atreus and mimir stall the plot in a nonsensical way it's clear that the writer's only goal was to use anything at their disposal to stall before Ragnarok one solution the writers could have gone with is to make a main character die around the Midway point to convince Kratos that he needs to go to war with Odin which would then cause the second half of the game to be gathering the army is the character who dies does not have to be Brock because as it is right now his death is the emotional impact leading to the finale maybe if we had more quests in Anaheim early it could have been freyr since he dies later anyways or maybe one of the people in his troop another solution would be if atreus wasn't an idiot and didn't keep running off to Asgard Odin or one of his goons would get desperate and attempt to kidnap him Kratos would save the day but realize that Odin is their enemy and then he'd unite the Realms to stop him the downsides of my proposed Solutions is that we'd get less screen time of atreus with throughden Thor and Heimdall wouldn't try to kill atreus we could solve the first problem by either having a mid-game fight where Kratos atreus Thor and through'd have a 2v2 boss fight or by having Thor be a playable character so that we can see things from his point of view solving the second problem wouldn't be too hard since Heimdall is a supreme idiot who never should have left Asgard in the first place with the guy horn because of this it shouldn't be too difficult to find another way to lure him out of Asgard that would be equally nonsensical to what already happens in the game instead of my proposed solutions to stop the story from being a stalling match we get an entire game of atreus acting like an idiot until Brock dies and then we get a rushed ending in addition to the writers stalling the plot the only thing moving the plot forward in many quests is that the characters get another piece of the prophecy welp the prophecy didn't amount to anything other than the norns thinking Kratos would murder Thor over a misunderstanding so I guess that doesn't really matter despite my many issues with the plot I'm not going to outright say that God of War Ragnarok has a bad story there were many Great Character moments executed with superb acting and high budget animations that were very emotionally captivating despite this the stalling did start to make the mid to end game feel tedious and when viewed in retrospect a lot of the lot we did get during the stalling had no payoff for example the mask in the prophecy because of this God of War ragnarok's story has far too many blemishes for me to consider it a masterpiece and it's so painful for me to not call God of War Ragnarok a masterpiece because so many elements of the game are masterfully done the combat system the environmental design the character moments and acting are all done fantastically well but all of this greatness is being held back from its true potential the combat system is held back by a zoomed in camera the beautiful worlds and exploration are held back by boring non-puzzles and restrictive grid-like level design that lacks a jump button and the amazing character moments and acting are held back by large amounts of padding in the plot and a prophecy plot line that doesn't really pay off if just a couple of these issues were fixed I would probably call God of War Ragnarok Masterpiece but as of right now it falls short

Channel: Feeble King

Views: 65,140

Keywords:

Id: MiWmf6liRMw

Length: 70min 28sec (4228 seconds)

Published: Sat Dec 03 2022