God of War Ragnarök: Valhalla

I get a lot of people like this game. And that's fair. If you like something - good for you, I guess.

But after being extremely disappointed by the decisions made for God of War Ragnarök, which I gave 1 star for, I have to give this 2 stars.

To be fair, this "DLC" which comes free of charge (which is one of its redeeming qualities) has another redeeming quality - it somehow manages to have more gameplay than the entire game.

But that is pretty much all you get from this DLC. And there are things I've read online about it that are true. Yes, the DLC is free if you have the original game, yes - there is no in-game currency, yes - cosmetics are addressed as just that - cosmetics. But if that is the bar you have for games, I'm sorry to say there are plenty of games free of charge out there that are way better than this.

And yes - it has a story, it has cutscenes, yay! We all know you can't have a game without cutscenes! Nowadays that is the most important thing about a game... not for the player to actually play it, but to sit and watch the characters talk to each other. Fun fun fun! But what bothers me is this add-on gets a lot of praise for "randomly generating" the same 10 levels which are not even fun to go through in this Groundhog Day scenario... If you want me to fight the same characters over and over again, let me do that, don't make me go through the same doors and jump over the same cliffs over and over and over and over again until the game gets interesting enough that God forbid I die and I have to do it all over again.

And yeah, sure... older games had less checkpoints so "skill issue", right? Yeah, but older games also had a much more interesting gameplay loop. I don't wanna die in "The Last Uncharted Kratos of Us" and think "oh no ... there goes another walking-through-doors extravaganza". If they didn't wanna bother with actual level design, why did they do it? And here's the twist - even if you don't die, you get to do it over and over and over and over again, because it's literally 10 small maps that are so poorly-designed I'm thinking maybe they just let ChatGPT program the levels.

I'm thinking the only reason this DLC is free is because the devs felt guilty about making a $70 game that felt more like an interactive movie. But another thing I'd agree with that comes from other reviews is this - if you already have the base game, just download this. (Sadly,) the Valhalla DLC is the most fun you can get out of this game. Otherwise it feels like Borderlands' infamous Moxxi DLC. And whereas Moxxi DLC was the worst thing about Borderlands, I really believe Valhalla is the best thing out of "God of War Ragnarök". I can't stress enough how sad saying this makes me feel for the future of video games. It somehow keeps getting worse and worse. And especially this year, seeing what these companies are doing, I feel ashamed for giving them my money.

This dlc has so much depth and if I had a nickel for every time a DLC for a hit game from this decade transformed said game into a rogue like, I'd have two nickels, which isn't a lot but it's weird that it happened twice, right. Being more serious though, the fact that they put a fully fleshed out story in a DLC that's FREE is just awe inspiring. The base game was already a 10/10, and this here expansion turned it into an 11/10. Basically how this is structured is that you start in the hub where you can upgrade yourself with permanent currency you get in your run which is free mind you, and then enter Valhalla where you go through areas of Kratos' past, fight enemies, and slowly go up Valhalla and through areas I can't disclose without spoiling. You slowly make your way up while being kicked out of your run at certain points in the story. Post story you can go through your run fully any time you want as well as having a few new things added to your arsenal. Overall this DLC is fantastic and if you have the base game there's no reason NOT to get it, it's free after all.