‘God Of War Ragnarok’ First Impressions (PS5): More Of A Good Thing

Games ‘God Of War Ragnarok’ First Impressions (PS5): More Of A Good Thing Paul Tassi Senior Contributor Opinions expressed by Forbes Contributors are their own. News and opinion about video games, television, movies and the internet. Following New! Follow this author to stay notified about their latest stories.

Got it! Oct 21, 2022, 09:00am EDT | New! Click on the conversation bubble to join the conversation Got it! Share to Facebook Share to Twitter Share to Linkedin God of War Ragnarok Sony While an avalanche of games have been delayed out of 2022, a few titans still remain. And the showdown everyone wants to see is if God of War can return with Ragnarok to take on Elden Ring for the GOTY crown, along with a few darker horse candidates in the wings. The last God of War was not just my Game of the Year in 2018, but I’d consider it my Game of the Generation in many ways, a powerful, fun, moving epic that transformed the series in ways I don’t think anyone could have predicted.

Now, Ragnarok has come to try and make lightning strike twice. Today marks the veil dropping on the “early impressions” embargo, where those of us with review copies can share our thoughts up to a certain point in the story, dodging spoilers but documenting our first impressions. The content we’re covering here today is maybe the first 4-5 hours or so, depending on how much you explore, and I combed over every inch of the first two maps, Midguard and Svartalfheim, the latter of which is the new swampy dwarven realm riddled with deep mines.

The death of Baldur in the last game has brought upon a winter of legendary proportions that seems to affect different realms in different ways. In the sequel here, rather than Kratos leading Atreus around, he’s leading us around, and has crafted his own quest to discover the meaning of his true identity, find missing gods and hopefully prevent Ragnarok, the war to end all wars. He’s a teenager now, with a deeper voice but still a quiver full of stun arrows that prove useful in combat.

And there are indications he’ll get some more interesting mechanics as time goes on. God of War Ragnarok Sony MORE FOR YOU Livestream Shopping Stays Hot As Whatnot Valuation More Than Doubles To $3. 7 Billion What’s Next For Intuitive Surgical Stock After Upbeat Q3? Trailblazing With Canyon’s Electric Mountain Bike Kratos, thankfully, has not lost his Blades of Chaos in some underwater sea cavern that requires a quest to go find.

After a brief run with your Leviathan Axe, you’ll find them hung up back at home. You will have access to both weapons right away as well as a fairly decent set of abilities, though obviously more will become unlocked over time. It’s too early to tell how significantly the movesets may have changed, because I’m only a short way down the skill tree and have only unlocked a hand full of bits and pieces of gear to alter my build.

My favorite thing I’ve gotten so far is an armor set I crafted after a specific sidequest that gives burst healing on finishers, where you’re doing finishers all the time. Very useful. These early sections are a bit puzzle heavy.

It’s a lot more freezing gears and pivoting cranes than it is actual fighting, but as the events of the second realm ended, I encountered an entirely new enemy type, Odin’s elite warriors who are now doing something called “Bifrost damage” which packs a punch with delayed health explosions. Even playing on normal I’ve died a few times already, and my friends attempting max difficulty are finding combat pretty brutal indeed. I haven’t quite gotten back into the parry/dodge rhythm yet, something which is altered a little bit with the arrival of new shield types, one that parries better, one that absorbs huge damage, and I’m not sure what future options may hold.

If I have a complaint about early gameplay it’s that things may be starting to feel a bit…claustrophobic with the current style of level design. This is true of the first game, sure, but Kratos is constantly herded into extremely narrow pathways with hyper specific jump and grapple points and it just does not feel like very much freedom at all compared to most other games in the adventure genre. While I’m not asking for a full open world perhaps, I do think other games like Horizon Forbidden West may have gotten a better blend of a large map to adventure in, combined with more static dungeon/puzzle sections.

The linearity here can be touch grinding, and few games are structured like this anymore. Still, gameplay itself remains compelling, so I’m still having a lot of fun with it all the same. It just feels more noticeable four years and a bunch of killer open world PS5 games later.

God of War Ragnarok Sony As for the story, there’s so little I’m supposed to touch on, I’m going to skim very lightly. Easily the most impressed I’ve been is with Ryan Hurst’s performance as Thor, who is about as far away from Chris Hemsworth’s now famous MCU version as you could possibly imagine, and I cannot wait to see more from him. I am similarly intrigued by what I would call “Crime Boss Odin,” who sounds like he’s running his family like a godly mob.

Here, the voicework from Richard Schiff is great, though it is a little hard to extract Schiff from his West Wing character, Toby Ziegler, when you first hear him. I’ve also liked what I’ve heard from Tyr so far, and Christopher Judge’s delivery as Kratos remains subtle and stellar. I think I’m a little over Mimir at this point, who is still tagging along with us everywhere we go.

I know a common fear is that God of War Ragnarok was going to be “DLC” for the last game, but it’s already clear the size of the game isn’t going anything remotely close to that. And yes, sure, it is going to look and feel a whole lot like the last God of War as A) you aren’t going to have a second leap from the original Greek games to this format again, so it was literally impossible for it to be that transformative a second time. And B) God of War was incredible, so a sequel that does all the things the last game did with new maps, upgraded features and a new story should likely prove to be…also incredible.

But yes, it’s early, and I can’t yet say where things go from here. I’m not sure if I’ve necessarily been surprised by anything yet here, but I’m certainly enjoying my time a great deal. Now if you’ll excuse me, I have to go open up another realm I can’t pronounce.

A review code was provided by Sony for the purposes of this preview. Follow me on Twitter , YouTube , Facebook and Instagram . Subscribe to my free weekly content round-up newsletter, God Rolls .

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