God of War Ragnarok for PC review

I played God of War Ragnarok when it first came out on the PlayStation, and within minutes, any doubts I had about whether they could make the magic happen a second time were felled like a Draugr under Kratos’ axe. I got rid of my PlayStation soon after. Since then, I have been keenly awaiting a PC port of God of War Ragnarok, so when the opportunity to review it arose, I jumped at it immediately.

Hours in the oven and somehow undercooked

Two long years have passed since God of War Ragnarok was released, and I am sure that the team at Santa Monica has been working on the port since then. However, it has been released as a half-baked and almost unplayable port for anyone running anything but some of the top-of-the-line hardware.

Kratos’ big package

Before I was even able to step into the game, I had to download an unbelievable 175GB file to my PC. As a game reviewer, I often have a number of games in storage, but this ensured I cleared out everything but the indie titles. I have never seen a game take so much space. God save anyone with a slow connection or a full hard drive.

Home of the gods

Besides this, God of War Ragnarok PC also requires an SSD to be played, which is becoming the norm these days. Most modern titles need the SSD speeds to run smoothly, so that can be forgiven. But I know the game was released on the PlayStation 4, which didn’t have an SSD until the Pro was released. Why can’t it run on a regular HDD?

Playing Loki with my hardware

However, my hardware woes had only just begun. As I finally tried to boot up God of War Ragnarok after hours of download time, I was met with a message telling me that my integrated PC GPU was not up to playing the game. This was no surprise, as I wouldn’t trust an integrated graphics card to run anything more than mine sweeper.

Regardless, I booted up the game, thinking I could head into GoW Ragnaroks settings and change what GPU it was choosing to run with. However, upon opening the settings menu, my GPU wasn’t even displayed, so into my NVIDIA settings I went.

Everything was in order there, so I had to put on my snorkel and trawl through the cesspit of Reddit, looking for an answer. Amongst the snarky comments and self-righteous rhetoric, I found a solution. A mod was released back when God of War 2018 came out that could trick the game into believing that the hardware it was dealing with was something else entirely.

God of War Ragnarok PC requires 6GM of VRAM to even recognize a graphics card, despite being advertised as being able to run on both the GTX 1060 and RX 5500 XT. Both were released with versions with less. Thankfully, with this workaround, I could boot into the game and start my PC review of God of War Ragnarok.

I know I need to update my hardware, and I am getting around to it, but this is the first time a game wouldn’t even let me in. I play plenty of modern AAA games, and this was a first. If you’re looking to buy God of War Ragnarok for PC, heed my review.

A tale for the ages

As soon as the game booted in and the opening cinematics started to play, I was transported back to my playthrough of Ragnarok and the first game. All those emotions, journeys, puzzles, and developments that the immaculate writing and silky smooth voice acting came rushing back to me.

Hearing the ‘Lamborghini wheels over diamond gravel’ tones of Kratos and the mocking yet ever-wise interjections of Mimir made me forget my struggle getting into the game. The sudden appearance of the absolute wardrobe of a Thor still had me pumped to cave his head in. Every perfectly annunciated grunt and harumph from Kratos still carried the world of emotion it once did.

The writing for the game is magnificent, and the storyline is gripping. The set pieces are just as varied and immersive as they are on PlayStation, and the feeling of excitement and discovery is still there. It is a masterpiece in modern storytelling and a worthy second entry into the modern reboot.

PC Master Race or poor port?

Getting into God of War Ragnarok PC for my review playthrough was a nightmare in itself, but I justified it by telling myself that I would be able to tweak the game the way I liked it. Unlike a console, there are sliders, knobs, and mods to play with. Surely, these would let me make the game my own.

However, after enabling my DLSS and other futuristic NVIDIA AI boosts and boons, I still had to run the game in performance mode, with a lot of the sliders turned down to low. As I mentioned earlier, I am in need of an upgrade, but I by no means have a completely out-of-date GPU; my RTX 3050 still stands proud.

I was getting around 30FPS in most open-world areas, with a noticeable slowing in some scenarios. The performance and ultra-performance modes helped to some extent, but they certainly took away from the grandeur of the masterfully designed levels and models. God of War Ragnarok is one of the more beautiful games out there, and it felt sacrilegious to play it with dropped graphics.

I didn’t feel like the port to PC translated well. It doesn’t look great; it’s beyond enormous, and the FPS is shoddy on any mid-range hardware. Of course, being a PlayStation game, it is also designed for a controller, which I thankfully have. If you want to try and struggle through a mouse and keyboard setup, you’re a braver man than me. Some tweaking will be needed if you don’t want to spend fifteen minutes untangling your fingers after a session.

To buy or not to buy

I expect this game to sell like hotcakes on PC, and it deserves to, simply for the support. Original and rich storytelling, hard work and dedication to world design and build, and truly breathtaking gameplay are too seldom seen in AAA games. God of War stands head and shoulders above the masses. However, the port is poor, in my opinion. It is brutally unoptimized and gargantuan. It’s a game that demands too much storage and hardware.

I expect mods to be released that will clean up the FPS and imaging, among many other things. No doubt, modders will already have them out at the time of writing. It just baffles me that within a few days, a group of people working for free will accomplish something that the studio should have done before release.