Now available on PS4 and PS5, God of War Ragnarok is an adventure lasting several dozen hours that is very accessible, but which still requires you to deal with RPG elements that will stagger your progress. In this guide, we'll cover everything you need to know before diving into the adventure.
Choice of difficulty and accessibility options
First step before jumping into the deep end, the traditional passage in the menu of options and all the parameters made available to you to personalize your sessions. Like The Last of Us 2 and Horizon Forbidden West, this new first party production from Sony does the job completely on the accessibility side, with a range of dozens of options, which range from sound cues to automatic object pickup. Also, the game will ask you to choose between 5 difficulty modes: if you have already raked God of War (2018) and you enjoy the fights, we recommend that you go to difficult directly. Anyway, except in God of War, it is possible to change the mode along the way.
General progress
The structure of the game is almost identical to that of the previous episode, however you will not have a large central hub like Lake of Nine. Instead, the Santa Monica teams decided to opt for 9 worlds, some of which contain large open spaces most often dedicated to side quests. For the rest, the main frame is very linear with many arenas to empty, interspersed with environmental puzzles that will involve all the instruments of our two heroes. If you have chosen one of the higher difficulty levels, you will have to go through equipment improvement sessions if you want to empty the cards of their content, which is not necessarily necessary in normal or "for the game". 'story".
Gameplay and battles
When the time for the fight arrives, Kratos and Atreus take out their weapons together to flirt with the big bad guys. Always with this camera on the shoulder which can cause some inconvenience of visibility on occasion, the bearded man plays the same score with his ax and his blades, with a few small subtleties. Regarding the bulk of the fights, it will be a question of paying attention to the colored arrows all around the hero: in yellow the enemy is not far, in red he launches an attack which will hit you if you do nothing. The shield can parry all attacks, including those with yellow circles, but you'll need to dodge those with red circles. The game includes a new type of circle, colored blue, which requires pressing L1 twice to defuse it. Another notable difference: the arenas are now full of elements with which to interact and platforms from which to make death jump attacks, it will obviously be necessary to think about exploiting all this.
The power of the elements
If the elemental afflictions were already there in 2018, this time they are much more important. Each weapon of Kratos can be charged with its element in order to increase the penalty gauge of enemies at high speed. By holding triangle with the Leviathan Ax or by tapping the same key with the Blades of Chaos, you will have access to everything a new range of moves to improve in your skill trees. On higher difficulty levels, status damage is essential for survival, the sooner you get used to sticking with it the better.
Kratos Equipment
We find the system of sets already available in the first, but this time new elements are appearing in Kratos' equipment. Starting with the amulet to improve and which can contain up to 9 slots and which will also provide set bonuses. The number of different sets and equipment is much more limited than the game would let you imagine at first sight, which will push you to improve them at regular intervals. Here again, as in the 2018 game, the number of resources needed for crafting is defined and it will not be a question of farming this or that type of monster, but rather of exploring the right places or overcoming the right ones. boss. We will obviously have the opportunity to go into more detail on the best equipment in the game, since each major kingdom has its own unique set to find.
The importance of side quests
Even though the story has enough to keep you going for almost 30 hours straight, we highly recommend that you do all the side quests offered. They allow you to learn more about the world of the game, but also to participate in unique fights against more powerful than average bosses. Finally, if you intend to progress properly by collecting better sets than those that you can make at the base workshop of Brok and Sindri.
Backtracking and quest for 100%
Some progress items will only be distributed by progressing correctly in the main quest, which means that if you want to complete the game at 100%, you will necessarily have to go back to all its kingdoms to finish recovering the norn chests and the collectibles you had to leave out the first time. Note that the backtracking in Ragnarok is quite well managed, with new enemies and paths appearing as you explore. However, to hope to finish most of the kingdoms thoroughly, you will necessarily have to wait for the very last part of the game.
Don't neglect Atreus
The young man will have his say many times during your journey, so you would be ill-advised to neglect the progress of young Atreus. His sonic arrows are of crucial importance against the fastest enemies and, later, his runic invocations to be triggered by holding down the square button, could well get you out of dark hornet's nests. Without wanting to go too far in the revelations, it will not be the only sidekick alongside Kratos during this new episode, so it will be all the more important to go through the management box for equipment and accessories at regular intervals.
From Ryan Hurst to Josh Brolin via Richard Schiff, here are the voices the characters of this new God of War, with the cast of the original version and Christopher Judge as Kratos.
