God of War Ragnarök (2022)

Few thoughts after beating the main game on Give Me No Mercy.

• Feels less award baity than 2018 ever was, though it still feels like it's meant to appeal a mass audience.
• A lot of my criticisms of 2018 still remain like a bad camera, no point in the one take direction, no margin of error in climbing and jumping, lack of jump button, the lamest handling of QTE's, lame puzzles, but it feels more gamey, even if some of the gamier parts that were trying to be a ride were too simplistic. I have grown more tolerant of this stuff throughout the game. Not really liking the decisions, just tolerating it.
• I liked the story a lot more than the 2018 in spite of it being very all over the place. It's less so God of The Last of Us and while there are gamey fetch quests, they don't feel like obnoxious roadblocks.
• I didn't tear up nor cry, but my heart was pounding
• So much unsubtle exposition in its writing. Atreus, when you're by yourself just shut up.
• I would have liked to see more between Kratos and Thor. Because what's here isn't much aside from a cool fight at the start and the one towards the end. While I kinda get why the way Thor was handled towards the end was what it was, there was no proper send off to Thor after the main ending.
• The way the Thor's family was resolved was so rushed during Ragnarök. More time coming to this realization could have made this feel less rushed.
• I enjoyed the combat more despite problens with this game's combat framework. I felt more engaged at getting good at it. Mainly due to how elemental attacks were handled this time. Burnt enemies take more damage from frost attacks, I used the Rage of Valor and it made me use a lpt of bare handed attacks in order to build up rage. So there's some good resource management there. Health stones are mostly miniscule which I like. Boss fights were good, good boss and enemy variety this time around. Some encounters have the 3 same types of enemies through out sections. There were times where I was so tired of wretches, wisps.

All in all, so far, s'ok. Though if you want a sequel to a piece of media from 2018 about fate that is less tightly written than its predecessor yet still has fantastic writing, then go watch Across the Spider-Verse. :)

I couldn’t stop playing the game. Incredible masterpiece.

Unreal graphics and story is one of the best in history. I had to download a previous game in the series in an attempt to relieve the experience.

Combat was a bit difficult for me. I didn’t feel like I had mastered the three weapons in my first run, but I feel like recurring runs will train hands better.

I've played 11 hours on Give Me No Mercy.

To start, the amount of backseating for puzzles is all over the place. Sometimes, the answer is spoiled before you even start it. Other times such as the 2nd time you play as Atreus, I've barely had any backseating (though I think it may be due there being much less puzzles).

I think the 2nd Atreus section should have been cut down. I feel that the one take thing the GoW duology is going for is to the detriment of their pacing. Especially with Ragnarök. It does make for cooler transitions between areas though and how it switches between characters feels organic.

Although, Ragnarok does have better enemy and boss variety, there were so many times where wretches were involved in combat I just feel like I'm done with them at this point. I don't like them as enemies as they zip away from the lock on and bad camera and are feel like afterthoughts in the combat puzzle outside of their mother. Just pointless fodder. The fights where it's just them and not the Bergsra Mothers feel like pacebreakers.