WARNING: CONTAINS SPOILER FOR GOD OF WAR RAGNAROK.

God of War Ragnarok arrived on PC on 18th September and, if you have a calendar, you’ll know that it is now November. The truth is that given that the title arrived on PC two years after release, and performance was great, we figured we’d savour this release like a fine wine, sipping rather than shooting it in one go.

Despite the time gap, having now rolled credits on God of War Ragnarok, I wanted to take a beat to dissect that I witnessed and why you should absolutely pick this game up if you’re a PC player.

Scene kid

God of War Ragnarok picks up years after Kratos and Atreus set Ragnarok into motion by offing Baldur. Atreus’ voice has broken, Kratos is wiser and Mimir is still just a rotting head with a great sense of humour.

Atreus is the star of this game though. You will be playing as Kratos for the majority of the game but it becomes clear very early on that the story here is of Atreus, his fate and how his responses to destiny affects everybody around him. Santa Monica Studios’ writers do a fantastic job of portraying a teen who has yet to discover that the road to Helheim is paved with good intentions. At the same time though we get the sense that in the time between God of War 2018 and Ragnarok, Atreus has listened and learned from his father. We get to peek at Atreus as a person in more detail when we play as him throughout the game.

As with the 2018 game, Santa Monica Studio wanted Ragnarok to play out in one continous camera shot. That becomes difficult when there are now two characters to play as. This switch is covered behind cutscenes and camera movements in those cutscenes. The problem here is that there are a lot of cutscenes. In fact, for the first hour of the game you are just watching cutscenes with two combat sections and a quicktime event thrown in to break them but it’s only once you reach Yggdrasil that the game gives you some agency.

The game then becomes something of a “one for me, one for you” style narrative where players alternate between playing as Kratos and Atreus in scripted events. There are still sections where the pair are together but players will have other companions on their journey when playing as Kratos and Boy respectively.

The great part of this is that we as the player get to see that Kratos and Atreus are both trying to avoid the same thing, aside from Ragnarok. Kratos is trying to avoid the history of Gods and their sons killing each other, Atreus meanwhile is trying to stop his father from being killed. It’s a great use of irony as a story telling device in a game and it does eventually help to create a believable connection between Kratos and his son who eventually realise they’re chasing the same thing.

This sense of combined purpose comes at the best point in the game as it encourages you to explore the world. Like 2018, Ragnarok is “open world” in that you can travel a wide terrain but you can only explore pre-determined areas. In these areas are upgrades and collectibles that fuel your progression through the game.

Eventually Kratos adds a new weapon to his arsenal in Draupnir. It’s a truly brilliant use of the Norse myth of Odin’s self-replicating ring and a clever weapon design. Unfortunately it not only changes the gameplay up substantially, it’s the best weapon of the two games by far. I used it until I needed to use the Leviathan Axe and the Blades of Chaos which eventually was only used for puzzles and some enemies.

An aging machine

I played Ragnarok on an Acer Predator Triton 300 which is – to be kind – ancient, compared to modern PCs. That having been said, it does boast an Intel Core i7 10750H, Nvidia RTX 2060 and 24GB of memory so its no slouch.

However, Ragnarok was rather demanding so I deployed DLSS to alleviate the performance strain and it worked a treated. With DLSS on I was able to run the game at medium-to-high settings and still achieve frame rates of between 52 and 60fps the majority of the time. However, there were moments where the game slowed down drastically and performance pushes the frame rate into the single digits. These moments are thankfully few and far between and patches have addressed most of these issues particular in Alfheim and Vanaheim. The only time I experienced a crash was when I force quit the game and tried to fire it up again but that’s a me error and not a game error.

Jetpack Interactive was responsible for porting God of War Ragnarok to PC and compared to the travesty that was The Last of Us Part 1 on PC, we’re thankful that we could at least play through the game without major issues.

The game looks gorgeous and while it suffered from technical problems at launch, each patch helped improve the experience a little bit more and I noticed fewer performance issues. Going through New Game+ now I haven’t noticed slow downs or hitches at all but I’m still stuck in the early game.

Aesir hole

Having had the time to sip this story there is something that keeps me up at night – Kratos.

Throughout Ragnarok, and the 2018 game, we’re fed this idea that Kratos wants to change and that he doesn’t want to annihilate the Norse Pantheon but I didn’t get that impression at all.

The first time we met Baldur, we fought.

The first time we meet Thor’s sons, we fight.

The first time we meet Thor, we fight.

The first encounter with Freya in Ragnarok, is a fight.

Even the first time we’re alone with Odin, we threaten him.

Not very peaceful, not very mindful, not at all demure.

In fact, once Kratos gets some direction as to where and what he needs to do, that goal hinges on him killing an Aesir God. It’s just hard to marry this idea that Kratos wants to change with the actions he takes over and over again.

It’s only right at the end of the game that we see a Kratos that wants to be loved and wants to truly do good and by then, Asgard is gone and the Pantheon of Gods along with it. However, compared to when Kratos decimated Olympus, he isn’t running away at the end of the game and we hear talk of him wanting to help rebuild Midgard and the Nine Realms so, maybe there is a deeper play here.

This is one critique in an otherwise fantastic evolution of Kratos as a character. Never in a million years did I think I’d be crying at something Kratos says but that happened three times in the final act of the game.

Top Tyr

God of War Ragnarok is not a perfect game but it comes close. The Nine Realms are very well imagined and packed to the rafters with activities to complete. Exploration is fun but you can easily complete the game by just focussing on the main story if that’s your jam.

For those who do explore there are unique armour sets, weapon upgrades and collectibles to uncover as well as interesting side stories to find. The main story is addictive in that you will be chasing the next chapter with fervour. This can work against the story as it detracts from exploration but as we mentioned, exploration is optional. In fact, it may be best to leave exploration to the end of the game as you get opportunity to complete tasks once Ragnarok has come and gone.

Performance on PC was a miss at launch but it has improved and its playable, more than we could say for The Last of Us Part 1’s port.

After 37 hours in the game, it’s fairly easy to recommend this title. Even with the price of entry sitting at R1 149 on Steam. What is difficult is saying this game is a must play. To be frank, God of War 2018 is a must play in my books and Ragnarok is the follow up you want to play just to get answers to the 5 000 questions the first game posed.

Now is also the best time to pick the game up considering all the patches that have come down the line that improve performance. There may still be some bugs lurking around but the experience will be just fine and the game looks delectable as well.

To conclude, we need to augment our praise with a warning. If Santa Monica wants to turn this into a trilogy it’s going to have to bring some new tricks along with it. Kratos has matured, his ambitions have grown beyond murderous intent and we’d love to see this character without the blood lust.