The Best Possible “GoW” Game

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If you haven’t played 2018’s PlayStation 4 game God of War, go do that. We’ll wait… So, did you hate it? Then don’t worry about this review. But if you loved its deep combat system and its thoughtful depiction of a tenuous relationship between father and son, then boy, do I have some fantastic news about its sequel. God of War Ragnarök is what happens when a development team (Santa Monica Studio) looks at a hugely successful title and says, “What if we just made everything, you know, better?” — and actually pulls it off.

I spent more than 40 hours playing through Ragnarök, out now on PS4 and PS5, and here’s what you should know, spoiler-free.

The Plot

In 2018’s GoW, we saw a protagonist much mellowed from the seven earlier hack-and-slash GoW titles. A god-slayer named Kratos, himself a god, just wanted to settle down with a family! Have a kid! Live a quiet life in the woods in a world inspired by Norse mythology! But his wife died, leaving him with a son he couldn’t connect to and a quest to spread his spouse’s ashes from the highest peak in all the realms. That kicked off a reflective journey for both Kratos and his son, Atreus, that saw the old warrior struggling to learn how to let his child be close to him — while killing a god or two in the process.

In Ragnarök, we rejoin Kratos and Atreus three years later, training hard and surviving a harsh winter prophesied to precede, well, Ragnarök, or the end of the world. In an effort to stop doomsday, the pair travel — sometimes together, sometimes apart — to all nine realms (more than in the first game, where only a handful were accessible). The journey brings the pair together with friends old (like the talking head of Mímir) and new (the giant Angrboda). There are also a few complete assholes they have to deal with, including Odin, Thor, and the realm of Asgard’s three-time Most Punchable Face champion, Heimdall.