God of War Ragnarök review – walk among gods in a mythological epic

In 2018’s superb reboot of God of War, we followed retired Spartan god-killer Kratos and his son Atreus on an epic journey to the tallest peak in the nine realms of Norse mythology, on a quest to scatter the ashes of Kratos’s late wife. In doing so, they got caught up in the affairs of the capricious gods of the land, unwittingly kicking off Ragnarök – the end of the world. At the end, they find out that they have unwittingly been fulfilling a prophecy, all that time; their every step was foretold.

This sequel is a game about whether you can escape your fate, and also whether it’s possible for teenaged boys not to make decisions so incredibly poor and self-serving that you have no choice but to put your head in your hands and watch through parted fingers. It is also a game about putting an axe through the heads of as many breathtaking mythological beasts as you can fit into a 30-hour-plus runtime.

Ragnarök’s eye-catchingly violent combat is peerless – multilayered but not overcomplicated. It feels absurdly good to hurl that axe at a monstrous crocodile and summon it back into Kratos’s palm, and to send enemies flying backwards with a wide swing of his flaming flails, or bash them with a shield before ripping them apart. You do a lot of fighting here, and it is remarkable that it doesn’t start to feel stale and repetitive: the variety of enemies across the nine realms certainly helps, from flaming ogres to undead soldiers, dragons and Asgardian champions on their armoured mounts.

That said: can we have a permanent ban on enemies that explode when you kill them, please? There are few more annoying ways to lose a chunk of your health, and in Ragnarök you will need all the health you can get, as the fights are thrillingly challenging. I died frequently, and was thankful for the generous checkpointing.

God of War’s gods are the interesting, classical kind: volatile screw-ups sent mostly mad with boredom by immortality. They have that fascinating combination of human problems and inhuman abilities; Thor drowns himself in drink to numb himself, like many men, but he also enjoys sending his magic hammer through hordes of the undead to relieve stress.

Superhero fiction, too, enjoys humanising its subjects to enliven the old save-the-world narrative, but unlike superheroes, these gods are neither tediously moral nor massively concerned with the greater good. They are usually just trying to deal with their own issues, which have compounded over the course of hundreds or thousands of years. Freya is figuratively trapped by the lingering trauma of an abusive marriage, but also literally trapped in Midgard by a complex magic spell that you spend a significant portion of the game trying to undo.

It’s all unexpectedly relatable is what I’m saying – the absurdly violent action and monster-slaying and breathtaking fights are rooted in this story about a bunch of quasi-immortal misfits lashing out in all directions, trying to find themselves.

There are several interesting dynamics here between characters, but the central relationship of the game is still the one between Kratos and Atreus. Where 2018’s God of War was about them learning how to connect in the absence of Atreus’s mother, Ragnarök is about them learning how to break apart. They are not always side by side on this journey: Kratos is often accompanied by a different bow-wielding support character, and Atreus by other heavy-weapons beefcakes.

Atreus, here, is your classic wayward teenager, good-hearted but so tragically caught up in his own immediate interests and feelings that he struggles to act sensibly. His predictably idiotic actions in this game will elicit a groan from anyone who has ever lived with teenagers, even though Atreus is sneaking out at night to parley with exiled gods or look for lost mythical artefacts rather than smoke joints at the skate park.

Christopher Judge once again gives a superb performance as Kratos, the Spartan former god-slayer who cannot seem to escape the bloodshed of his old life. He is so gruff and reserved that it would be ripe for parody if there weren’t also such understated emotion in it at times. Richard Schiff is particularly great as the mercurial Odin, stealing every scene he’s in. I won’t call out other performances for fear of spoilers, but the entire cast is great; with so much complex mythological backstory going on here, it would be easy to just switch off when people are talking, but I was engaged throughout.

Atreus’s sections are slower and significantly less fun, and also more linear, than Kratos’; fighting with a bow and arrow just isn’t as snappy or exciting as up-close-and-personal weaponry. Pacing is the game’s only major problem, as it tries to fit in its story-heavy tranches while leaving you space to explore the realms. I very much wanted to explore, too, because they are awe-inspiring: run-down dwarven cities, elaborate elven palaces, Midgard’s frozen woods and the once-verdant, now-rotting Vanaheim.

These places are designed for discovery as much as fighting; temples stand out in the distance through blizzards, interesting structures beckon you towards them, and puzzles reward you with lost treasure. Adventuring with Atreus and long-imprisoned Norse war god Tyr in the early game, the two of them were continually making fun of my random detours. “Kratos, the way out is over … oh, a chest. I see.”

2018’s God of War’s most astonishing feat of technical wizardry was constructing the entire game as one continuous shot, with no loading screens and no interruptions, making you feel totally present in the journey. It did this by putting plenty of narrow passageways and low tunnels and other confined spaces in-between its areas, to disguise that the game was loading the next one. Ragnarök repeats this trick – even more impressively, this time, as we sometimes follow different characters and not just Kratos – but on the PlayStation 5 it’s all rather unnecessary, as that console is powerful enough to do away with loading times entirely. The forced moments of slowdown felt strangely ponderous and old-fashioned. I am looking forward to seeing what Santa Monica Studio will achieve without the almost 10-year-old PlayStation 4’s technical constraints to account for.

Ragnarök is an evolution, where its predecessor was a revelation. Some of its additions – such as magical sigil arrows, which must be placed very precisely to work and which make the puzzles that involve them arduously fiddly – do not quite justify themselves. But the sense of scale, the narrative ambition and the brilliance of the combat are undimmed, and it remains abundantly, jaw-droppingly beautiful.

There haven’t been many interpretations of ancient mythology as gripping, detailed and imaginative as this, in video games or any other medium. It brings the stories and characters of an ancient era to life in a way that only modern technology could realise.

• God of War: Ragnarök is out on 9 November; £69.99