God of War Ragnarök: what makes it worth revisiting

God of War Ragnarök arrived in November 2022 and immediately became one of the most discussed action-adventure games in years. Developed by Santa Monica Studio and published by Sony Interactive Entertainment, the game picks up roughly three years after the events of the 2018 reboot, plunging Kratos and Atreus straight into the Norse apocalypse that the first game kept at a slow, deliberate boil. It's a bigger game in almost every measurable way: more realms, more combat tools, more story threads, and a considerably heavier emotional load. Whether bigger is better depends on what you brought to the first game.

The combat system, refined and expanded

Ragnarök keeps the core combat loop that made the 2018 entry click. Kratos still wields the Leviathan Axe and the Blades of Chaos, and both feel as satisfying as ever to throw, recall, and chain into brutal combinations. What Santa Monica Studio added on top is meaningful. The Draupnir Spear arrives roughly halfway through the campaign and introduces a genuinely different combat rhythm: you plant spears in enemies and terrain, then detonate them for wind-based damage. It's a clever third option that stops the late-game feeling stale.

Atreus also gets expanded combat sequences. Some players find his sections drag. The pacing inside those stretches is slower, the stakes feel lower, and the game leans hard on environmental puzzles that prioritise Atreus's abilities rather than raw combat. Whether that's a complaint or a welcome change depends entirely on how invested you are in his arc.

The story: ambition and a little sprawl

The narrative in Ragnarök carries genuine emotional weight. The relationship between Kratos and Atreus is the heart of both games, and this entry pushes it further by forcing each character toward separate paths. Kratos, voiced with controlled intensity by Christopher Judge, spends much of the game wrestling with whether fate is fixed or defied. Atreus spends much of the game proving he's ready to act without his father. Both threads land. The supporting cast is also notably strong: Mimir remains one of gaming's better sidekick characters, and Freya's arc from grief-stricken antagonist to reluctant ally earns its resolution.

Where the story stumbles is in scope. Ragnarök visits all nine Norse realms, and not every one justifies its inclusion at that length. Vanaheim is rich and layered. Svartalfheim is packed with mechanical ingenuity. A couple of the shorter realm visits feel like obligation rather than craft. The game runs between 20 and 40 hours depending on how thoroughly you explore, and some of that range is filler.

The finale is also worth discussing plainly: it's spectacular in execution but slightly deflating in concept. "Ragnarök" as a cultural touchstone promises a kind of cosmic inevitability. The game's version reframes that idea deliberately, which is a defensible creative choice, but some players finish it wanting something larger in scale. That's not quite a flaw. It's a mismatch of expectation.

Visuals, performance, and the PS5 version

Ragnarök launched on both PlayStation 4 and PlayStation 5 in 2022. The PS5 version runs at 60 frames per second in performance mode and uses the DualSense controller's haptic feedback and adaptive triggers to meaningful effect: the Leviathan Axe's chill and the Blades of Chaos's heat register differently in your hands. It's one of the better implementations of the DualSense's feature set in a first-party title.

Visually the game holds up well into 2026. The character work is extraordinary at close range, the environmental art in Vanaheim in particular is lush and detailed, and the lighting during major story sequences is cinematic in the best sense. The PC port, released in September 2024, added ultrawide support and additional graphical options for players who prefer that platform.

For anyone who hasn't played the best action games from the past decade in that genre-defining run of mid-to-late 2010s and early 2020s releases, Ragnarök sits comfortably among the top tier alongside titles that similarly used mainstream genres as vehicles for serious storytelling.

The Valhalla DLC: a smart addition

Santa Monica Studio released the Valhalla DLC as a free addition in December 2023. It shifts the formula considerably, introducing a roguelite structure where Kratos works through Norse afterlife arenas in runs that reset on death. Each loop adds new dialogue, new combat modifiers, and new story beats focused squarely on Kratos's psychological history across all three eras of the franchise.

Valhalla is the best post-launch content the series has produced. It's tight, focused, and does more for Kratos's character in six hours than many full games manage across twenty. Players who finished the main campaign and want more without replaying the whole story should start there.

Is it worth picking up now?

Yes, with a clear understanding of what you're getting. God of War Ragnarök is a long, polished, emotionally committed action-adventure game built on one of the better combat foundations in the genre. It's not a perfect game. The pacing inside certain Atreus sections drags, some realm visits don't earn their runtime, and the ending splits opinion. But those are complaints you can only make about a game that was ambitious enough to attempt something substantial.

If you haven't played the 2018 God of War, start there first. Ragnarök assumes familiarity with those characters and events and doesn't spend time recapping them. The 2018 entry is shorter, tighter, and arguably cleaner in structure. Ragnarök is the payoff for that investment.

For players who enjoy deep single-player action-adventure games, the combination of Ragnarök and its Valhalla DLC represents around 30 to 50 hours of high-quality content depending on playstyle. That's solid value at any price point the game currently sits at. Fans of genre-bending single-player experiences, including those who've explored how Pokémon Legends: Arceus stripped back decades of formula and rebuilt something fresher, will recognise the same appetite for reinvention that drives Ragnarök's best moments.

The official PlayStation listing for God of War Ragnarök has current pricing and platform details for Australian players.