God of War: Ragnarok

I recently beat the story mode and unfortunately have seen some reviews so my "review" will not be purely mine as I'm surely influenced by the reviews I read. In the future I will write these things raw.

Music

The 2018 God of War had an amazing soundtrack and this one builds on it . The music is never in your face and always perfectly compliments whatever it is you are doing, whether that be exploring, fighting, or just enjoying the view.

A standout moment is the music they play to harken back to Kratos' past in the greek pantheon. I think the first time we heard this is when Kratos took up the Blades of Chaos in GoW 2018 to save Atreus. It is chilling and so fucking awesome. It is used a few times in this game but thankfully not overused.

Combat

Combat is an improvement over 2018. That one was super fun and this one is more so. I'm a sucker for a parry in a game and this one is extremely satisfying, especially with a shield that rewards the tighter parry timing. I do wish they had fleshed out unarmed combat more though - Lundas chestplate makes unarmed combat really good but the lack of animations made it a little boring. They could have just recycled the moveset from 2018 and I would have been happy. The spear pretty much replaced the "stun" weapon but it doesn't feel quite as meaty.

Storytelling

Off the bat, I love the exposition on the boats and sleds. It is always interesting enough that I will often wait in a spot to listen to the rest of the story before leaving the boat or sled so I don't interrupt the speaker. But I wish they had programmed it better so getting off the boat wouldn't interrupt the stories, it was super annoying when getting off the sled for two seconds to get a chest would force me to wait a while for the character to resume the story.

I think overall the story of 2018 was much better. It tore more at the heartstrings because of Kratos having to deal with guilt and uncertainty while trying to raise his son to be a better man than he was when the guy clearly doesn't know how to deal with children. 2018 took that story 70% of the way and here we got the final 30% is what it felt like. In Ragnarok, Atreus is an edgy teenager and a lot of the characters fall into what I think are tired tropes. I do love the fleshing out of Brok and Sindri. Some other favorites are Ratatoskr, Jormungandr, and Thor. The first two were fun and epic characters (in that order) but Thor I think was a really interesting one given his relationship with his father - Odin. And speaking of Odin he was kind of bullshit. How are you going to tell me all these clown ass Aesir thought he was a saint when they also apparently all knew of all the people and beings he was oppressing and/or killing in the pursuit of knowledge. Thor especially knew the cost of Odin's quest so it is strange to me his daughter still loved Odin so much when Thor seemed to have confided in her a lot. 

Freya was annoying and her character was all over the place.

All in all thought the story was enjoyable and even pretty good, but nowhere close to 2018

Verdict

8.8/10

Game is great but a lot of my enjoyment of it was solely because of how good 2018 was. I was already invested in the world and characters but I think this game could have done a little better with the story - particularly in the conclusions to some characters' arcs.