By Connor Gray, Senior Reporter
“Ragnarök” is here. The final battle between Asgard and the other realms is ending.
The journey of father and son continues in the latest installment of the God of War series.
“God of War: Ragnarök” picks up three years after fimblewinter began. Kratos and Atreus during that time have been training to prepare for what is coming.
They also have been trying to avoid conflict with Freya, who has spent those three years hunting them after Kratos killed her son Baldur.
The game continues the exploration of the bond between father and son, as both Kratos and Atreus try to figure out if their fate is set in stone or if they can prevent prophecy from taking place.
After what has happened in Kratos’ past, he would rather avoid conflict if possible.
But if necessary he would fight all of Norse mythology to keep his son safe.
Atreus wants answers for what his destiny is and what the prophecy of “Loki” is, as the giants referred to him by that name.
Players also get to meet Thor and Odin within the first hour of the game.
During the interaction, Thor comes off as a broken man. However, he becomes a brutal warrior during the boss fight with him.
Odin is a brilliant main antagonist. He is manipulative and will use any tactic to get what he needs from anyone.
He also views his family as tools rather than people.
To him they are just a means to an end, but he manipulates them to think otherwise.
The game also reveals more information on Kratos’ wife, Faye, throughout the game and we actually see her through Kratos’ dreams.
The first game players got little information about her, but only enough to care about what she meant to our main characters.
In this game, players actually see what type of person she was to Kratos and how other characters looked at her.
The dwarfs Brok and Sindri make a new way possible to travel to other realms by using the tree of Yggdrasil, but in order to travel to other realms players need a seed of Yggdrasil to that realm.
Fimblewinter has affected the nine realms in various ways as winter doesn’t mean the same thing for every realm.
Midgard deals with severe snow and cold weather, Svartalfheim deals with earthquakes, Vanaheim is more humid than normal, Niflheim is completely frozen over and Alfheim has sandstorms.
Players don’t exclusively play as Kratos. Atreus becomes playable multiple times during the game with his own sections.
His combat is simpler than Kratos, but is still a capable fighter and is very important to the story.
Combat mechanics this go around are almost identical to the previous title, but are more refined with few new moves.
The game also runs and the graphics are a beauty to look at. Environments in this game have never looked better.
Enemy types have a larger variety than they did previously, but that was more of a time issue.
This time however, designers added more to spice up combat and boss battles.
A major gripe from the previous title was a lack of diverse boss battles like big monsters, high ranking elves and more gods to fight.
The acting is the best from top to bottom.
Christopher Judge as Kratos is the best he’s ever been.
Sunny Suljic as Atreus and Danielle Bisutti as Freya are also major standouts as they are both also knock it out the park with their performances.
The music by Bear McCreary is as perfect as the last time.
The main theme is more epic, Atreus has own theme this time and it is chef’s kiss good.
The choir and Icelandic singer Eivør Pálsdóttir add so much emotion to an already thrilling story.
Sometime during the spring an update for Ragnarök will have the highly anticipated new game plus for players along with better upgrades to armor and enemies will start out harder to fight rather than be cannon fodder.
From top to bottom, “God of War: Ragnarök” is a masterpiece in storytelling, gameplay, acting and music.
It was my game of the year for 2022 and I can’t wait to see where the next installment will take place.