3.5/5 ★ – JonFrost's review of God of War: Ragnarök.

I wanted this game to be better than the original, but sadly I don't think it was. On the one hand, the story was absolutely fantastic as usual. I really liked seeing Atreus grow into his own person and Kratos learning to come to terms with it. Their dynamic maintained the same energy while feeling like a natural progression of their arcs so that it isn't playing the same notes again. From smaller moments like Kratos being more open about his softer side and his love for his son along with Atreus' actions being more about the benefit of his father rather than himself to much larger, overarching factors like their actions following their knowledge of the prophecy depicting Kratos' death. The other characters had some good moments, too. It was nice to see Brok and Sindri getting more fleshed out. I already liked them in the previous game, but now they have more going on and it's genuinely compelling stuff. I also really liked how Freya was handled, beginning as an enemy then transitioning to a reluctant ally and then pretty much being Kratos' new partner alongside Mimir (who's always a joy to listen to). The game also has more Norse gods involved in the story and they're all pretty great. However, my disappointments with the game are involved with the gameplay, specifically the lack of evolution or advancements for most of the game. For starters, unarmed combat is just completely neutered for what feels like for no reason. There's no way to customize it and it feels clunkier because of it. I'm aware that the rage modes were meant to have different variants, but that doesn't excuse how few attacks you have access to in the game. Also, for the most part there are no new runic attacks for the axe or blades, which was a disappointment. The spear definitely makes up for some of these issues, and I especially love how it's used for exploration in tandem with the axe, arrows, and now blades. But this doesn't compensate for my biggest problem with the game: Constant. Enemy. Encounters. It feels like every few seconds, a small group of enemies pop up in front of you. They don't add anything to the story; they don't make the gameplay more engaging; they do nothing but waste time and pad the game. To put this into perspective, Ragnarok is around double the length of 2018, but that's not because the story itself is that long. It's because it constantly pads itself with enemy encounters. I often have to deal with a minimum of three or four separate enemy encounters, even in moments where there are minimal stakes happening in the story at the time. I also played this game on the hardest difficulty, so it was especially frustrating. Special shoutouts to a sidequest I went on where I had to deal with one annoying enemy encounter that took me another one, then fight another battle just before reaching the sidequest's next objective, and then backtrack to the same area to reach the next objective marker.......only to fight yet another enemy encounter in the same area where I already fought a bunch of enemies. Lest we forget how my biggest problems with the combat (the bad camera, the tiny ui) did not get fixed (or even acknowledged in the camera's case). The camera has the exact same perspective as last time, so that naturally means more off-screen dogpiling and constant awkward turns to fight your next enemy. To be fair, there's at least a proper lock-on feature that works better than 2018's, and given that you place as Atreus, who fights with a bow and arrow, it's a welcome addition, but because the lock-on marker is so small it's hard to see what enemy you're locked onto next. And of course, none of the side characters ever feel the need to shut up about how to solve the puzzles or where to go. Always tutorial speak all the time, and this is yet another aspect that made the game worse. Like last time, it does mitigate around the end, but the beginning was especially getting on my nerves since Freya's voice actress, as great as she is, sounds incredibly jarring and lifeless when talking in tutorial speak. No joke, you can physically feel the differences in tone and that's a bad thing. It's sad that I couldn't like the game that much more than 2018, but I at least acknowledge that the story was really good and had more powerful emotional moments that felt stronger than 2018 (and the endgame was honestly fantastic and I didn't mind the constant enemy encounters because lol no duh).