God of War Ragnarok review of the friv game – Kratos is no longer a cake
Beautiful, expensive, licked to a shine, the action of God of War Ragnarök seems close to ideal, but still there is something in the game that does not allow calling it a masterpiece for all time. Although it all depends on the point of view and personal perception. We tell in the review where the authors online game from the developer Friv2Online of the project pierced.
Let's go over the basics first: God of War Ragnarök is an incredibly high quality friv game. These are the same "ten out of ten", this is an expensive blockbuster and this is one of the contenders for the "Game of the Year". Which was obvious long before the release, given the experience of the development team and the budget of the project. There were no doubts about the highest quality of the continuation of the saga for a second, and all expectations were justified.
The authors studied the criticism of the previous part and corrected all the errors: ordinary opponents and bosses became more diverse and received a rich set of attacks, the list of techniques expanded, pumping became more flexible, side quests capture no less than the main storyline, difficulty can be customized, even puzzles are now they don’t make you stagnate and blunt in one place for a long time: partners willingly suggest the right decision, sometimes right on the forehead.
At the same time, the gameplay has not undergone major changes, and if you start God of War Ragnarök after the original friv game, you will hardly feel the difference: your fingers will immediately fall on the right gamepad buttons , and enemies will lose limbs and shed blood on an industrial scale. There seems to be a reason to grumble, but this approach turned out to be the safest - the developers simply did not break what worked well anyway: after all, the combat in God of War in capable hands shows its best side, offering many opportunities to destroy monsters and gods.
The only big innovation in the sequel to the Norse saga of Kratos is the ability to play as his son Atreus in some episodes. The guy is more mobile than his father, and relies on long-range combat, although, if necessary, he can break the enemy who has crept close with his bow.
And, of course, God of War Ragnarök is flawlessly staged. Here again, the “continuous frame” is used, when the virtual cameraman continuously follows the characters throughout the story, here is a great friv game of actors, movements verified to the smallest detail and amazing detailing of cut scenes.
At the same time, the game is incredibly beautiful, even if this is achieved through corridor locations and limited interactivity of the environment. And Ragnarök sounds so good that, playing with good headphones , you will probably want to growl along with Kratos, bursting into the thick of the fight. And the friv game makers have not forgotten about the DualSense chips: the gamepad vibrates differently, reacting to events, and every time the ax returns to the hands of the god of war, you will be happy to feel a slight push somewhere inside the controller .
Summing up the intermediate result, the game is as good as a good AAA blockbuster with a big budget can be, a "showcase" of one of the main gaming platforms of our time. If you played God of War and liked it, then take Ragnarök without hesitation - you will get exactly what you expected from the sequel, and you will certainly be delighted.
But… what is wrong with God of War Ragnarök then?
The game has a very uneven pace. Okay, you can understand when battles alternate with puzzles - these are short gameplay segments that allow you to take a break from the battle or, on the contrary, add adrenaline, and this is normal, most adventure games are built according to this scheme . However, in an effort to tell an epic, grown-up story, Santa Monica went overboard with the length of the story-telling episodes.
There are often cases when you have to put the gamepad aside for a long time, watching the unhurried conversation of the characters. Or spend an hour walking around the location, soaking up tons of exposure that minor characters throw at us. Yes, it's beautiful and interesting, but damn it, are we here to fight or chat?
In addition, the speeches in the friv game are so pompous that you just don’t want to listen to them. All this talk about fate, duty, reconciliation, regrets about the past, thoughts about the future cause a headache. Only comical characters, like the dwarfs Sindri and Brock, feel alive, while the rest seemed to draw wisdom from "boys' publics", issuing one quote after another.
And it seems clear why this was done: the game shows that the industry has matured a long time ago, and is able to produce stories worthy of the best representatives of cinema. Yes, but an adult gamer already understands all these common truths that, they say, children grow up and they need to be let go, revenge will not bring satisfaction and will not return the loss, and so on. As a result, a person who enters Ragnarök to relax and slash monsters ( a slasher !), will spend time watching a movie with a lot of platitudes.
I want to clarify that adult games (in the context of the stories they tell) are good and welcome in every possible way. But this "adulthood" should be in moderation, and you should not get too carried away by focusing on such topics to the detriment of the gameplay and the pace of the story. Otherwise, the friv game begins to tire, and even funny fights with monsters cease to please the way they pleased before.
Add to the above the complex characters of the characters, which is not bad in itself, but again, for a slasher about the god of war, which in the previous parts somehow didn’t really reflect, preferring to cut everyone who is cut and tear off everything that comes off, somehow unnecessarily. Kratos was hurt the most: sorry, he stifles and reads morals, and follows Atreus as if through force, although he apparently wants to roam in his hut until Ragnarok itself.
If one god of war is not enough for you, who does not want to fight, then here is another one - Tyr, whom the heroes free from Odin's dungeon. Now this is a convinced pacifist who, together with Kratos, is trying to convince the player that war is bad, understand? That in war there is no right and wrong side, no winners and losers, understand? That you have to forgive your enemy and turn the other cheek, understand? The moral is correct, but not for the God of War series , where the god of war unleashed a war against a whole pantheon of gods.
And so the whole friv game is like this: the characters suffer and reflect through one, pathos overflows, and the protagonist, although he continues to crush skulls in battles, turns into a miserable likeness of his former self as soon as he hides the ax behind his back. And it seems that you come into the game to break away and yell at enemies like in the good old days, but in the end you almost fall into depression.
However, as mentioned in the introduction, it all depends on personal perception. Maybe God of War Ragnarök just didn't hit my mood at that particular time, and had I played a year earlier or a year later, the emotions would have been completely opposite. Maybe this game will be the best impression of recent years for you, because you have been looking for a title with an adult story and a simple but understandable moral for a long time. Who knows.
In any case, Ragnarök definitely deserves attention - at least due to its quality. There is no doubt about it: Santa Monica, as usual, did a great job and released an almost perfect product. Another item on the list of good reasons to buy a PlayStation console.
