“Loki will go… Atreus remains.”

At that moment, my tears just wouldn’t stop. The story of Kratos and his son Atreus touched my heart so deeply.

Kratos’ story had always been one of revenge — revenge against Ares for killing Kratos' family, revenge against the gods for his broken fate. But in 2018, Santa Monica completely changed the direction of the series, eight years after God of War III. They gave Kratos depth. Emotion. Humanity. They showed us a different side of him — and that struck me, and millions of players around the world.

Epic scale, powerful drama, the breathtaking world of Norse mythology, the story of Freya and Baldur, that brutal ending where there is no room for a happy outcome — all of this made God of War 2018 a legendary game for me.

With God of War Ragnarök, Santa Monica made all of it even stronger — an even more beautiful world, even more refined gameplay (especially with the use of runic magic, and the powers of fire, ice, and wind), even heavier emotional drama, and an even more intriguing story — the kind that forces you to run to YouTube afterwards to search for lore breakdowns and fan theories.

The ending left me completely drained — but also filled with hope. And the phenomenal soundtrack amplified those emotions even more. That music inspires. It leaves no one indifferent.

The God of War series is a legend. And I’m grateful Santa Monica chose this path — creating games that truly touch the heart and will be remembered forever.

absolute cinema 10/10

This game is good if you like combat over story. Not to say story was bad, it ♥♥♥♥♥ on 99% of games, but pacing is an issue and the plot is just to do stuff aimlessly walking towards the goal of Ragnarok. In 2018 u had one goal start to end. In Ragnarok u go around search for stuff, do stuff for people that u barely know because they had to rush the story and had no time to develop the relations of these characters. If they only made it into a trilogy aka: GoW 2018, GoW Fimblewinter and GoW Ragnarok, it would be soooo much better. Atreus sections is an obvious problem so I'm not going to mention it. Improved graphics and combat, worse story in the sense of pacing and plot, decent characters and character devlopement. DLC is a masterpiece, for a free DLC its amazing. I wouldn't mind it if they made it a payed DLC and added more greek stuff like levels, characters, enemies and memories. Imagine a Hades level, or Pandora's temple level instead of the base greek level, oh well cant complain for a free DLC. Didn't like the romance between Kratos and Freya tho. The game should have definitely have had more Gods like Bragi, Vili, Ve, Njord, Forsetti and even some giants that didn't have their soul in a marble, maybe Hel. Hraesvelgr should have definitely been a boss fight like how it was intended in GoW 2018. The realms were good looking, but didn't fix the issues that 2018 had in terms of how some were tedious. For example in 2018 Alfheim was like hell for me, in this game Vanaheim had that feel, but this could just be me. The Norns were weir to me because they were too easy to find (I know the map is small and there is only so much they could do, but still). The plot twist was insanely well done and unpredictable. I though that Kratos and Atreus didn't have any more room for character development, but I was so wrong. Freya's redemption was rushed. Odin and Thor were done well and their characters were a different take on the classic Marvel ones, which is something that they did that I liked soooooo much. The war didn't feel like a war enough, it should have been bigger, like Cronos from GoW III type of level. Side missions in this game were good, but felt out of place in a story about the urgency of the "Twilight of the Gods". Overall, where this game shines it is the best thing you will experience, but where it doesn't you will have your head in your hands wondering why they would do something like that. Final rating 8.8/10 (A flawed masterpiece)