J. S.

Stunning visuals. Story pacing is absolutely slothful, and tension between characters is contrived and unnatural. The story itself, which is supposed to unfold with character dialogue as you go, can quickly be interrupted as you’re walking along, bc the characters will stop mid-sentence to change the subject about what you’re heading towards… and then never repeat the line that was crucial to the story. The characters are very uncharacteristic, as compared previous game (Kratos is overly empathetic to the point of mushiness) and per the lore (Tyr is a pacifist god of war. Thor is a heartless murderer… I could work with some “creative sway” but these are outright betrayals to the lore that created these characters). As for gameplay, there seems to be an influence here of “difficulty for the sake of difficulty,” rather than challenging gameplay. I feel this is due to a lot of devs trying to jump on the train started by FromSoftware. If you’re going to make a game hard, devs, then it also needs to be smooth, and rewarding, with a sense of accomplishment based on great execution. I think many devs miss the true heart of From’s gameplay style and just go for hard AF, instead of challenging with a serious sense of reward. GOW Ragnarok achieves the first very effectively with all of its clunk getting in the way of the potential for amazing combos and more. It’s a cash grab. I had gotten comfortable and preordered, but this reminded me that option is just too risky these days. Save your money, wait till it goes in sale.