i have just finished the main story literally seconds ago.
clocked it in around 33 hours with most of the important side stories complete. still needs to clear out some of the berserkers but coming from the rush of the ending i have to take some time off to return. sommerville has came out at the perfect time. it will help me get my mind off from ragnarök for a while.
i know this will be long and most of you skip this over but none the less, here i go.
ok first, i have to say it was my mistake to play and finish the first one again 2 days before the ragnarök launch. in the begining, it felt like shifting from gear 5 to gear 1 since i had maxed out abilities and armors in the gow '18.
with that i can start by praising the good/great parts.
chris raygun of sacred symbols said that this game feels like rest of the 2018 game rather than a sequel and he is right on point. and that is a good thing. first game was amazing anyways right?
combat in this game is like math. it is so precise it is so tight and polished that honestly i have never play something like it before. it is like what platforming is to mario. only sharp edges and straight lines. its geometry. i played this on whatever the hard mode is and never felt an unfairness. it never feels sloppy. i do not know if they nerf the axe or utilise the other weapons better but i found myself using every weapon and shield i had based on whatever i was facing. even new spartan powers add a new dynamic though i wish i could change them with out going through the character screen.
this game looks and plays perfect. i played it on 60 fps mode and i dont think i have ever encountered any dip in frame rate. there are some minor bugs (kratos holding nothing in character screen) but nothing game breaking.
they improved immensly on what the first game was lacking. enemy and enviorment variety. places look georgous. i believe everyone's favorite is svartelfheim which kinda suprieses me because vanaheim offers much more enemy and terrain veriaty with not only one but two optional explorable area, with the lake and the river canyon including a day and night cycle.
side missions. oh the side missons. if you like playing games while listening to podcasts, you are going to love the side missions. first of they are a %100 optional. you do not have to grind these to level up in order to progress since i ended up being kinda op for the late game. side missions offer the best looking envoirment, great enemy and creature desing and engaging puzzles. some of the best part in the story trailers are from the side missions.
odin. for me the part where you play atreus and interact with odin are the highlight of this game. he is such a cool character, possibly the only complex one in the franchise while every one is either good or evil, odin is kinda neither. he is more evil than good but in thisgame he kinda i dont know, convinced me? i though he was kinda right and what he was after was divine. i too wanted to know what was in that crack and shared his dissapointment when everything went to shit.
writing in this game is also very good. not narative but the dialog. there are some part that really moved me. one specifaclly between kratos and odin, it was in the trailer but the mundane way of how it happens, i really like. " What do you even know of godhood? In your life time has anyone ever worshiped you, ever prayed to you? Can you even imagine that kind of love? NO!" Different perspective on what its like to be a god and you see Kratos really feels bad after hearing this which makes the last mural reveal much more meaningful.
this back forth between mimir and kratos made me chuckled. mimir find it suprising that kratos likes poetry. and kratos says, why are you suprised? my people are known for being cultured. i mean we've seen kratos in a lot of emotions but never offended until that moment.
one dialog that reall awful is heimdall calling kratos a monster as kratos killing him. dude, you just told the guy that you will gutt his teenage son. like, where do you come off?
now, the bad.
unlike the first game, ragnarök does not have "a main goal". in the 2018th one your main goal is to spread fey's ashes and no matter what happens this does not change. there is no clearity with this one. is it to protect atreus? save kratos? avoid certain fate? know the infinite knowledge? stop ragnarök? bring ragnarök? kill odin? neither? or all? i dont know but the overall narrative does not allowed ragnarök to have a forward momentum.
if naughty dog games have simple stories with complex characters, ragnarök has simple characters with complex stories. every character you meet is either too good or too bad. a lot of family dramas that doesnt help the narrative or not concern kratos and atreus. i dont personally care about brok and sindri's back story. i like them to an extend that they help my guys and their our friends. same goes for freya, freyr, thor, thor's daughter, sif, mimir etc.
the game is a bit bloated, not because of the side missions but because of the main ones. entire mid game is just fetch quests. sad that, it is so obvious they were put in to make the game longer. you have the get the ring, find the forge and get the spear and find the mask and the the other part of the mask, ups, wrong place try another place. ay ay ay. move along already.
end game is both epic and not. i find some parts of it overemotional and a bit too gen-z but it may depend on the player i guess. a lot more than the saving ellie decision, i wish i got to choose whether to put on the mask or not. because i was conflicted. i wanted to save kratos but know the infinite truth aswell. but, oh well.
i enjoyed the tyr - odin twist. i think it works. odin did told us that tyr was dead in the begining. and he was pushing atreus to go to asgard by calling him champion etc.
all and all. great follow up to a great game. not mind blowing, genre defining but great.
and after 80 hours of gow in three weeks, i am ready to get away from gaming for awhile.
anyway, go ahead with your tl;dr comments.