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[Old_and_Slow]

Rock on OP I agree with you here. While Ragnarok is excellent so are the previous entries.

Proves the point (again) that well made games, with a satisfying loop and excellent pacing will stand the test of time.

 

[JerryinSoCal]

I think of the first trilogy of games god of war 3 was the weakest by far overall, yes it looked the best and had some cool moments but the constant backtracking and awful voice acting really brought me down. I loved the first 45 min or so, that first boss battle was great, but as time went on the game just went downhill.

 

[The artful mincer]

Its good. The boss battles specially are the highlight.

But the new games are just so much better. Both in story and in combat.

GOW3's whole Pandora plotline is so bad. While everything else is basic and one note. Kratos never has any character development throughout the original 6 games lol.

And the old games have such a basic combat. Its not really that satisfying to play in a technical level. The biggest criminal being that the dodge lacks iframes, and the camera being so far means that enemy attacks don't have good tells.
It was especially jarring when you come from games like devil may cry. And GOW3 bosses were just spectacle without substance.

Ragnarok's combat is definitely the best the series has done, and one of the best character action combat engine outside the big 3 (DMC,NG,Bayo)

No old GOW boss has been well done like Valkyrie queen or the beserker king. Those feel challenging while being extremely fun and fair. In the old games, anything that was challenging was often cheap.

And that's not taking into account the annoying easy fail QTEs that are everywhere in the old games.

Old games are good, but new games are better, both gameplay and story wise.

Tl;Dr: nostalgia is a hell of a drug

I even think there's some things modern god of war does better than the big 3.

The way it blends ranged combat with close quarters is basically second to none. Its crazy how many ranged attacks you have in the end game. If you removed all the melee attacks it would make an amazing third person shooter!

Certain bosses like the phantoms,dragons, drakes and soul devouers couldn't work in those games like they do in god of war

 

[Arsic]

I found Ragnarok a good game but a miss when compared to 2018.

The narrative they built up to was a horrible ending. Game shits the bed about 70% in.

God of war 3 delivered an epic conclusion and was a roller coaster of bad ass shit from start to end .

I was hoping that’d be the case with ragnarok but it totally fell flat IMO. They clearly had no clue how to end it and screamed cut content.

 

[Gaiff]

I think of the first trilogy of games god of war 3 was the weakest by far overall, yes it looked the best and had some cool moments but the constant backtracking, awful voice acting really brought me down. I loved the first 45 min or so, that first boss battle was great, but as time went on the game just went downhill.

Awful voice acting? Did we play the same games?

 

[Ronin_7]

God of War 3 was pure chaos & fun, so violent.

Absolutely top tier game imo

The new ones are absolutely amazing too.

 

[lillars]

I wanna play 3 (which I missed somehow) and Ascension. Right now I'm making my way through Ragnarok and really enjoying it early on.

 

[Lillie]

I would like a remaster of 1-2 and the PSP game for PS4/5 - that would be nice so I dont have to buy PSNOW, and also a release for PC gaming on steam with 3 as well.

 

[KuraiShidosha]

Old games were better simple as.

 

[OZ9000]

GoW3 has peaks and valleys. Has big highs, but also drags down in the middle, has average to terrible puzzles for the series (music puzzle, wtf), offensively bad Kratos and the entire arc with Pandora just NEVER worked, even back then.

2018 and Ragnarok crushes it in every department minus the bosses maybe.

I completely disagree.

Ragnarok is full of garbage segments eg a lot of Atreus moments, the scene with the girl in the forest, the perpetually slow pace.

GOW3 is a rollercoaster ride from start to finish.

 

[Thirty7ven]

Worst of the mainline GOW by a landslide.

 

[sloppyjoe_gamer]

Yeah, agree totally.

Ive completed ragnaroks story and im now in post game working on the plat since ive already put 49hrs into this bloated pig, but its the most tedious, and overall blah GOW ive played.

Did the berzerkers, berzerker king and the valkyrie queen and im like oh cool now i can just cruise and get the collectibles and be done. No....now the Muselpheim Crucible chore borefest shows up and i literally said out loud "Oh for fucks sake" lol

 

[remember_spinal]

Same people praising the original trilogy now would be absolutely shitting on the series if they had continued it in that style and the sales would reflect it lol

 

[.Pennywise]

The biggest difference is not in gameplay. Yeah it's totally different and you just get that even from a glimpse.

But the worst about newest GoW games it's the entirely different tone. Everything became politically correct and in doing so they've massacred Kratos attitude along the way and the series absolutely lost its character.

 

[Dynasty8]

I appreciate Mimir's commentary and humor here and there but I absolutely do not miss the little shit that is Atreus. I go through levels and no one tells me a damn thing on how to solve the puzzles. The camera zooms in on important elements, then it's up to the player to figure out the rest. Granted, this is a double-edged sword because some puzzles are incredibly ambiguous while others are oddly specific. The dev at least respects its audience enough to let them think for themselves and not give hints that no one asked for.

Gameplay, story, visuals and story...I prefer the new style of GoW way more than the old, but I have to 1000% agree with your above statement. I'm surprised more people weren't bothered by this. It was SO constant that it ruined the game for me. What the hell were SSM thinking...

 

[The artful mincer]

Yeah, agree totally.

Ive completed ragnaroks story and im now in post game working on the plat since ive already put 49hrs into this bloated pig, but its the most tedious, and overall blah GOW ive played.

Did the berzerkers, berzerker king and the valkyrie queen and im like oh cool now i can just cruise and get the collectibles and be done. No....now the Muselpheim Crucible chore borefest shows up and i literally said out loud "Oh for fucks sake" lol

Dude if you're feeling that way why don't you just stop playing??

 

[PlayofSparta]

Nah I prefer Kratos as daddy.

 

[TikiLagoonSam]

GOW 3 is one of those games I replay all the time. When God Of War 2018 came out , I was upset at the changes. Old Kratos, little kid supervision etc. When I played it, I enjoyed it but my reaction was “where was the epic boss battles?? The enjoyable gruesome ways of killing the tons of diverse enemies??“ And I do miss the greek mythology, its much more elegant and pleasing.

Seeing a ton of snow for not 1 but 2 games, and Kratos being a one word grunter to an annoying kid was exhausting. Now Im about 2 hours into Ragnarok and still, enjoying it, but classic God Of War is really where its at.

The argument for the new GOW though is, it was time for a change , and the sales speak for themselves. However, I would argue if you took classic GOW with the PS5 power, and gave Kratos some new abilities, you'd have just as much sales as the new versions.

 

[Corpsepyre]

I completely disagree.

Ragnarok is full of garbage segments eg a lot of Atreus moments, the scene with the girl in the forest, the perpetually slow pace.

GOW3 is a rollercoaster ride from start to finish.

None of those segments were a con, in my opinion. Ragnarok wasn't meant to be a rollercoaster from 'start to finish' either, as there was a much bigger story they were focusing on in there with Kratos and Atreus.

3 is a character-action hack n' slash title, like the previous 2, and you can't expect it to have such pacing compared to Sony's newer titles anyway.

 

[thefool]

I like Gow/Ragnarok mechanics, I just wish they were more action focused like the previous ones (and with better crowd control). The gameplay is there but its not properly explored in-game.

 

[JerryinSoCal]

Awful voice acting? Did we play the same games?

Yes, Kratos just screamed, Cronos sounded like he was special needs and the woman who played Athena totally sounded like she was faking it, nothing natural about her performance. It didn't help that they overwrote the part, she was only ever talking to Kratos but she kept saying his name every other sentence, when you are talking to just one person you don't keep saying their name over and over lol. It also sucked that Gaia went from using the narrators voice to sounding like a cartoon witch from the 60's.

 

[Team Andromeda]

I prefer the Greek mythology setting a lot more than Norse mythology.

Me too and I much rather the faster combat in the old games too. Norse mythology I just find more boring

 

[Dr. Suchong]

I could definitely understand someone enjoying the simplicity of old school God of War games, over the bloat of New God of war's pseudo open world, stat tinkering, and side quests.
Straight to the point, balls out of the bath action.

 

[McGILLAZ]

Decided to give the remastered version a spin on the good ol' PS4 Pro and damn does it hold up well.

The thing that struck me the most after a few hours is that there are no companions. It's just Kratos. I'll be the first to say that I appreciate Mimir's commentary and humor here and there but I absolutely do not miss the little shit that is Atreus. I go through levels and no one tells me a damn thing on how to solve the puzzles. The camera zooms in on important elements, then it's up to the player to figure out the rest. Granted, this is a double-edged sword because some puzzles are incredibly ambiguous while others are oddly specific. The dev at least respects its audience enough to let them think for themselves and not give hints that no one asked for.

The pacing is great and there isn't a dull moment. Between traversing gorgeous environments, you're met with combat encounters, puzzles, platforming, and traversal. The latter two are kind of missing from the modern games with the only traversal you do being "push direction to climb mountain". The platforming also isn't perfect by any means and the camera is sometimes questionable, leading to sections being harder than they should be but I appreciate the variety. Ragnarok basically boils down to; clear room, solve puzzle, repeat, which wears thin quickly for a game that is 30-hours long.

The bosses of epic scales are also kind of missing in the newer entries but this might be due to a camera limitation more than anything else. Can't have 300m long monsters and see them in all their splendor when the camera is this close to the player. It would still be neat to see a boss of the scale and epicenes of Poseidon but admittedly, this fight is lacking in terms of depth and is really just a visual spectacle to get the player pumped more than the game flexing its combat mechanics. Still, it's a nice way to end a level on a high and memorable note.

Despite the flaws, I'm still thoroughly enjoying my time with the game, perhaps even more than back in 2010 because AAA games like this just don't exist anymore. No long and slow walking sections, no 10-minutes-long cutscenes. The game seldom wrestles the control away from the player and there is almost no padding. It doesn't overstay its welcome. It's action-packed, well-paced, and delivers what the player wants in spades.

I know this might not be the most popular take as Ragnarok is beloved and still fresh. I'm also no fan of it but I was surprised at how enjoyable GOWIII is to this day regardless of my conflicted opinion on the latest entry. I had 2018 firmly at number 1 in the series but this might change after I beat this one again.

tl;dr GOWIII is still great, maybe even better than at the time of its release.

Interesting perspective - I thought GOW was excellent & Ragnarok was very good (albeit overlong), but I can't shake the fact that they are essentially molded after TLOU. The original titles are very, Very different.

 

[Jesb]

I agree. I finished all the gow games before but couldn’t bring myself to finish the first new one.

 

[Melfice7]

GoW 3 was an epic adventure and peak God of War but the formula was getting old at the time with Ascension and all the psp games and needed a shake up

They changed it to God of Us and was good but it already got old with Ragnarok

Also one more chance to share this video

 

[Oberstein]

Barlog intellectualized the series because he had a kid in the meantime and Western devs only swear by TLOU now.

Except that GoW is basically a blender where Greek mythology was thrown in. It's gory, visceral, sometimes touching, but above all it's fun based on clichés. GoW 3 has reached a point of saturation of the genre, but it still does it well. However GoW 2 is and will remain the best episode of the series.

It's been said before, but making a 30/40 hour action/adventure game (which is the length of an average RPG at the time) with a fake open world and a gameplay that gets exhausted quickly, well, it's not ideal. In Ragnarok, we've already reached the TLOU-like saturation point. The narrative side reaches its limits when there's already nothing left to tell about Kratos. That's it, kill him! Not even the courage to go through with the idea. The problem is that Atreus is the worst possible choice for a successor...

 

[Dr. Claus]

Barlog intellectualized the series because he had a kid in the meantime and Western devs only swear by TLOU now.

Except that GoW is basically a blender where Greek mythology was thrown in. It's gory, visceral, sometimes touching, but above all it's fun based on clichés. GoW 3 has reached a point of saturation of the genre, but it still does it well. However GoW 2 is and will remain the best episode of the series.

It's been said before, but making a 30/40 hour action/adventure game (which is the length of an average RPG at the time) with a fake open world and a gameplay that gets exhausted quickly, well, it's not ideal. In Ragnarok, we've already reached the TLOU-like saturation point. The narrative side reaches its limits when there's already nothing left to tell about Kratos. That's it, kill him! Not even the courage to go through with the idea. The problem is that Atreus is the worst possible choice for a successor...

How do you mean, "Intellectualized"? If anything, the series is still less intellectual than the original release which was a perfect combination of classical greek myth structure and gameplay systems that can only be done in this medium. Nothing in 2018, despite my enjoyment of the product, requires it to be a video game. Nor is its story something that can only be done in the medium.