Kratos and son’s second lap around the realms isn’t as special as the first, but absolutely worth the trip.
Four years into Sony’s big PlayStation PC initiative, you’d think the novelty of launching one of its huge tentpole action games from my Steam library would’ve worn off by now, but I still get a kick out watching the publisher’s once-closely guarded exclusives emerge from their walled garden. Something about seeing Xbox button prompts on Kratos’ axe or fiddling with a full suite of graphical settings before I even select “New Game” brings Ragnarök down to earth, shedding a layer of artificial importance that platform owners like to muster.
Sometimes that works against Ragnarök, as playing it on the same platform where the most ambitious and unconventional videogames regularly blossom can highlight how safe and conventional the Sony blueprint has become. It also highlights how rarely we get accessible action games produced at such a high level of craft, scale, and beauty. Kratos and Atreus’ second lap around the realms isn’t as special or clean as the first, but Ragnarök is the kind of sequel that goes down smooth.
As does this PC port, for the most part. Jetpack Interactive, the same outfit that handled the great 2022 God of War port, is back for the sequel with more solid (but not flawless) work.Dreaming in 1080p
Considering Ragnarök also came out on PS4 and looked pretty close to its predecessor when I played it two years ago, I’m not too surprised that this port flies on my aging RTX 2080 Super. At 1080p, I’m consistently reaching 80-100 fps (depending on the size of the area) with everything set to High and DLSS on Quality.
In a lot of ways, Ragnarök is a dream game for the PC gaming majority that’s still rocking older hardware. That PS4 baseline means that you won’t find technical wizardry on the level of Black Myth: Wukong’s cloud effects, Alan Wake 2’s photoreal forests, or Star Wars Outlaws’ forcibly-raytraced lighting, but Ragnarök’s flexibility, otherworldly vistas, and detailed characters are their own showpieces.
This is the 1080p gamer’s sweet spot where reasonable hardware requirements meet art direction so strong that this two-year-old game that runs on 2013 hardware is more attractive on my machine than more technically sophisticated games. Still have a card that starts with “20” or ends with “60”? This one’s for you. For the first time in too long, I’m cranking every graphics setting up on a big-budget action game without sweating the frame rate. Sometimes an old game juiced to Ultra is just better than the latest hotness on an inconsistent Medium.
I’ve hit some annoying snags, though. Not every realm runs as effortlessly as the central region of Midgard. My framerate dipped significantly in the early trip to Svartalfheim, for instance, but things have been smoother in the other realms I’ve visited since.
One major pain point is the “Realm Between Realms”, that donut-shaped tree platform that Kratos jogs around every time you fast travel. Performance consistently tanks to 20-30 fps every single time I go here.
