‘Asgard’s Wrath 2’ Review (Meta Quest): The New Bar For VR

‘Asgard’s Wrath 2’ is a literal game-changer for VR, and enough reason to buy a Meta Quest 3. A great game can take over your life, but you’re rarely forced to stop playing it. This is the case with .

The Meta Quest 3 needs recharging every two hours. Within a day or two, you’ll consider buying the official $130 battery strap or considering homebrew solutions that involve long USB-C cables, external power banks, and pockets. Many people struggle to play VR games for long periods because their internal organs conspire against them, forcing them back into the real world.

This is not the case with . It has the options you need to make its first-person RPG experience genuinely comfortable–visually speaking, at least. Active VR experiences can see you wake up the next morning in agony, conjuring late-00s memories of all-night marathons that made you walk like a robot for days on end.

You don’t give your body time to recover when playing . You compartmentalize your soreness and jump back in repeatedly, knowing its pleasures far outweigh your pain. is a game-changer in the literal sense of the phrase.

It’s the best VR title of 2023 and one of the best VR games ever made. It doesn’t just make a business case for the Meta Quest 3–it deserves a place at the same table as , , and . You’ve probably never played the first –after all, it was an OG Oculus Rift exclusive–but Sanzaru Games clearly understands this by kicking off with a summary of earlier events in a matter of minutes.

You’re a fledgling god who was fooled into freeing the trickster god Loki, only to be rewarded with existential imprisonment. Then, a mysterious ankh breaks you free. From here, you must find Loki across many worlds and put an end to his evil ways.

Getting to grips with It doesn’t have the most mindblowing story, but plays a masterstroke by perfectly capturing the limitations and strengths of VR RPGs by casting you as a nameless, silent higher power. Throughout your escapade, you control the bodies and abilities of different champions, so you’re always fully aware you’re from the start; immersion is gleaned from your status as an outsider looking in. While the narrative pulls everything together nicely, Sanzaru’s clear focus is on letting you have fun on your terms.

However, it’s still an RPG; there’s a lot to learn, and the VR interface means that nothing comes particularly easily. Once you overcome early hurdles and embrace some odd quirks, sinks its claws into you and you never want to leave, even when your body and the Meta Quest 3 tell you otherwise. The Weavers of the fate in The Inbetween guide you on your quest to take down Loki.

puts itself on unsure footing by starting immediately with a jumpscare. After being told to “LOOK HERE” for calibration, a mummy jumps out of the darkness and screams at you. It’s a cheap trick, but mercifully not typical of the wider experience.

From here, you’re catapulted through the recap, thrust into a tavern, and you get to grips with the basic controls. is surprisingly good-looking with a peculiar but beautiful art style, supported by faultlessly smooth frame rates that never dip, even as the action gets hot and heavy. Its impressive visuals are all the more incredible given that clocks in at under 5GB.

, it seems impossible that so much can be crammed into such a small file size, but Sanzaru somehow nails it. Sure, you’re never getting a 4K raytraced visual masterpiece like , but to its credit, already feels like it’s pushing the limits of what the Meta Quest 3 can achieve. A lot of this is through clever design.

manages to make smaller areas seem markedly different despite reusing relatively limited assets, and while its more open areas are often bare, the narrative gently guides you on how to explore its open worlds in the most satisfying and rewarding way possible. ‘Asgard’s Wrath 2’ is still limited by hardware, but its visuals make the most of the all-new Meta Sure, you can still check out other places on foot, but you won’t get far without a future skill, companion, or mode of transport, or you’ll have your way blocked by overpowered enemies. Every step of the way, ’s staging feels intelligently designed, so by the time you need to head across a huge, open space, you’ll do it quickly and in a more exciting context, or you’ll finally be at the right level to take on a pack of baddies.

doesn’t allow you to teleport for general movement, which may be a red flag for many people–myself included–yet through its various options, you can get a good level of comfort, especially as you don’t move too quickly unless you use your limited dashing ability. Tunneling is a huge help for those prone to motion sickness, even if this vignetting effect can undermine the many huge, beautiful scenes on offer. You’ll regularly stop to regain your full vision and have a good old stare at your surroundings.

Most climbing sections that require full-motion movement also offer shortcuts–yellow ribbons you can grab for a quick teleport up or down ladders or ropes–but you can still climb them freely if you’d prefer. Brick walls sadly don’t offer this option, but it’s a small sacrifice in the grand scheme of things. Combat evolved Combat in starts both figuratively and literally with a trial by fire, as you’re forced to battle a huge, flying creature who wants the ankh that helped you escape.

It’s one of the better “OH SH–” opening moments in gaming as it balances the enormity of your task with established RPG tropes–attack patterns, timing, and patience. However, it’s over quickly: a taste of things to come, but a battle you feel underprepared for. Combat is fierce and forces you to be careful and patient.

From here, ’s excellent pacing pitches you against ever-evolving enemies. Unintelligent creatures give you a chance to learn the basics of throwing and swinging before unarmored foot soldiers teach you how to parry. Cleverer enemies then enter the fray, underlining how you can’t spam them with attacks.

Armor and shields then appear, with the odd mini-boss thrown in for good measure. For a while, you’ll flail–as enemies get up in your grill, your movement gets wobbly, your strikes get more desperate, and owing to the low-sitting health and armor bar, you can quickly lose track of your vitals. Your belt, on which you can carry five items including health potions, is accessible by pressing and holding the left stick down, but finding time to retrieve them can be tricky; the fact your belt is bound to the same stick as movement means you’ll often press it accidentally.

However, you begin to appreciate ’s focus on preparation, strategy, and patience. , you’re encouraged to take stock of what’s to come and plan accordingly. Multi-enemy environments may present numerous threats, but the game mostly sends adversaries after you on a one-at-a-time basis while you fend off ranged threats, using your limited dodges and timing your parries correctly to uncover those all-important shiny crystal weak points.

Companions eventually appear, and soon become friends with surprising benefits. Threats do get greater and more overwhelming, but this tends to trend with gaining followers, who you can send to take out certain enemy types, especially those who may need a distraction to access their fleshy, unprotected body parts. All the while, the little details make battles more immersive; shaking blood off your sword, activating a trap, using dangling or explosive items to your advantage, or retrieving a thrown weapon only for it to return to your hand with a massive hornet’s head stuck on it–gruesome and hilarious in equal measure.

God mode enabled While problem-solving is a mortal ability, also offers marvelous god-mode sections, where you’re transported into the skies to play with large areas of maps, deciphering puzzles and opening new paths for your warrior to navigate. Orbs can be harvested from living creatures on the map–an uncomfortable act that sees you crush them to death in your hands for their life force–but you can’t be a benevolent god all the time. Fundamentally, these puzzle areas, both in and out of god mode, never punch down.

, never makes its quiz areas overbearingly huge or convoluted. There are only a handful of moving parts, and the focus remains on straightforward logic, timing your (consistently gratifying) skills, or trial and error. You’re regularly rewarded with chests for thinking outside the box, and solutions are consistently fun and tactile.

God mode gives you a whole new perspective, figuratively and literally. Like ’s combat and player abilities, these puzzle sections get more and more inventive–you constantly find yourself grinning or openly laughing when you realize what you have to do. feels like it wants to entertain you, and few games deliver such regular and consistent feelings of satisfaction.

Always something else does everything you want an RPG to do. Skill trees, inventories, crafting, side missions, and collectibles are all here, underpinned by a stellar acting cast (especially Bes), a gorgeous soundtrack, atmospheric sound design, ever-evolving enemies, new weapons and the tricks they regularly surprise you with, and its delightful rogue-lite Uncharted Rifts dungeon mode. Most importantly, over its 65-hour base campaign–the full experience takes well over 200 hours, according to its creators–there’s always the promise of something new around every corner.

These ideas never feel forced; it’s a testament to Sanzaru Games’ ingenuity, seizing on small innovations and consistently elevating them when you least expect it. Keeping a lid on these while writing this review proved supremely difficult, but it must be said that the best way to enjoy is to completely avoid spoilers, as even its tiniest mechanics are a dream to stumble upon. If anything, biggest problem is that it’s so much more overwhelming than a traditional first-person RPG precisely because it’s in VR.

First-person RPGs are my bag, but the game is a much more intimidating prospect because even its menus look and feel overbearing, never mind its close-quarters, high-adrenalin fighting. It doesn’t help that its core interfaces and UI need some fine-tuning if the deeper experience is to feel as effortless as its approaches to action, exploration, and puzzle-solving. Moving between worlds and fast-travel points feels like a chore, as does inventory management.

Even the help sections are a struggle–something not helped by in-game pop-up tips, which need to be responded to in under a second if you’re to learn more. The perfect end to a great year for VR VR isn’t for everyone, and every year, headsets are bought, played with for a few weeks, then consigned to a dusty corner. However, 2023 feels like the beginning of a golden era for the platform, proving what’s possible with better tech and developers’ greater willingness to take risks–something proved by Vertigo Games alone, with the aforementioned , as well as .

However, is on a completely new level–a game that doesn’t just hit the same heights as , but one that finally replaces it as the gold standard in VR gaming. Sure, $500 is a lot to spend on a top-level VR headset, but that’s been the case for years–and no VR adventure has delivered near-guaranteed $2/hr returns; has cracked it. .