God of War: Ragnarok ( A Love Letter)
Retrospective
10/10. Masterpiece
Dear Sony Santa Monica Studio,
It’s Summer 2023, Fimbulwinter was only a few months ago. I started my playthrough of GOWR in December 2022 shortly after it launched with my best bud corgi of 13 years by my side. My corgi was old and very sick at this time. I knew this would be the last game I would play with my loyal friend next to me. I enjoyed the original game and was looking forward to playing this game like many people who had a PS5.
I’m writing this love letter now after recently finishing my playthrough of The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom on Nintendo Switch. I had been a lifelong Zelda Fan as well. I started with Link to the Past on the SNES and have played the Main Line 3D Zelda’s ever since. I thoroughly enjoyed Ocarina of Time, Wind Waker, Twilight Princess, and Breath of the Wild.
I am currently writing my review of Tears of the Kingdom as well for those that are interested. My play-through impressions were heavily influenced by GOWR. There were many elements in GOWR that I was wishing were in TOTK. I will go more in-depth on those things in that review, however.
In GOWR we continue Kratos and Atreus’ journey. To preface as I have mentioned in previous posts, I’m a dad and I have also lost my own father about 7 years ago. I often wish he was here like most of us who have lost parents maybe too soon. With that context, I loved this father and son story of their journey together where they both learn and grow individually and together. If that makes sense. Ironically in the 1st section of the GOWR story, we are at Kratos & Atreus’ home and see Fenrir, Atreus’ noble wolf very sick waiting for Atreus. Atreus runs over to Fenrir and holds his wolf torn to tears. He then sees Fenrir seemingly pass away and vanish. This hit me hard and I naturally stopped and laid next to my pup as well for a while dreading that day is coming soon as well.
Sometime later after getting myself back together and continuing the playthrough I hear the familiar dialogue between Atreus and Kratos that gives you so much information on their feelings and thoughts as they continue their adventure together, which is another thing I loved about this game. The combat was another bright spot of the series and is best in class in my eyes with how they executed movement, dodging on defense, and shield parries. Offensive options were robust and intuitive with bare hands and weapons with so many combo routes. Everything felt snappy and precise. you could confidently move and fight knowing the character would respond exaclty how you would expect. In GOWR that remained true in addition an extra layer of teamwork in combat with Atreus was incuded and even some sections where you were in control of Atreus. The Story was super solid. Interesting and well-developed, and last but not least, environments. The environments were gorgeous, especially on the PS5. The environments were rich with color and large in scale. I was playing in Performance mode 60FPS and playing on an LG OLED TV that crisped up the visuals and it was a great experience. I felt no compromise between graphics and performance.
I finished my playthrough at 80 hours and 70% completion and felt like it was a good amount of time. I finished the story and explored as much as I cared to. As a Father with a family and a full-time job, it’s definitely challenging to find time to get through bIg immersive story-driven games but I feel this struck the perfect balance. In comparison, I am sad to say that I had to force myself to finish TOTK. I did not enjoy the game as much as I would’ve hoped. I felt that Breath of the Wild was a great game in 2017 and I enjoyed that, it felt new because of course, it was. For TOTK my full playthrough was 120 hours finishing the story and exploring what I wanted to and at the end it all felt unsatisfying. A story ending where Link never says anything. Not how he feels about the journey, how hard it was, was he scared? did he feel like he would never see Zelda again? etc not even in journal entries. Playing through the game it felt lonely and it felt lonely for 120 hours! lol.
In conclusion, this game has become my favorite game of all time with Final Fantasy 7 Remake coming in 2nd and every game moving forward will have to compare in some way to the bar that you guys have set for quality, which is a good thing. I bought the limited edition controller and every time I look at the symbol of the bear and the wolf, I think of me as the bear and my corgi as the wolf. This game will always hold a special place in my heart.
Thank you to everyone at Sony Santa Monica Studio for creating such an amazing game with a lot of heart and passion.
Love,
Jay
