Are you Kratos, the God of axes?

After 50 more hours of following Kratos and Atreus across the realms, meeting new mythic figures - including Freya's hard-partying brother Freyr, and an endearingly-sarcastic Odin (bless you Richard Schiff) - defeating more fantastic monsters, fulfilling more dramatic prophecies, and watching father and son (and dwarf friends! and severed-head counsel!) develop more character through emotional conflicts, I wouldn't say that God of War Ragnarök is "better" or "worse" than its 2018 predecessor.

Ragnarok is the same kind of game, but its strengths and weaknesses are a little different.

It's bigger, covering more ground and involving more personalities than the journey to Jotunheim -- and though some of Ragnarok's locations and characters are still minor (see: Helheim, Fey), most of them are really significant and meaningful, with copious amounts of environment traversal and collectible objectives and voice-acted dialog.

This amount of written narrative prevents the story from having a focused, emotional poignancy like Kratos and Atreus's earlier tale. Ragnarok has heartstring-tugging story beats, and it succeeds in showing characters' personal struggles and growth; the ending even provides them with satisfying closure (bittersweet, in some cases). But its cast is just too big, and those character arcs too numerous, for any one of them to be "the" story ultimately tying the game together.

Occasionally those individual arcs also disrupt the game's pacing, by spending too much time stuck in one place. Ragnarok's main story quest has many sequences which "railroad" you into a linear series of objectives, without a free-roam break, while one NPC or another tags along as a temporary companion. And although the new companions are refreshing at first, some of those mission sequences go on way too long and wear out their location's welcome.

On the other hand: the glut of optional content in Ragnarok's wide and varied worlds is a lot of fun to play in. The last game's Lake of Nine was a contained, but rich and enjoyable area to explore -- this time there are more, and they're still great. Vanaheim's jungle and "crater" regions, Alfheim's desert barrens, Svartalfheim's claustrophobic dwarf mines and industrialized bay, plus Midgard's now-frozen-over lake ... are all chock-full of high-quality side-stories and puzzles and collectibles.

On top of which, Ragnarok's post-game quests avoid the extended grindiness of last time, what I recently called "multiple tedious runs through Muspelheim and Niflheim." Well... this Muspelheim is still a little repetitive, but I got all the equipment-upgrade materials I needed much more quickly than before.

(I haven't tried the post-launch Valhalla mode yet, though; maybe that's where the grind is.)

As before, there's probably more combat than a narrative-motivated player like me really wants. And the complexity of this game's equipment customization is no better -- Ragnarok smartly eliminates per-armor enchantments, but foolishly adds more armor slots as well as more customizations for Atreus (and his occasional Freya stand-in). But playing on "Give Me A Story" difficulty saved me from having to worry too much about either of those gripes.

In the end, I may not remember Ragnarok's story as fondly as the previous game's, but it was still a thrilling adventure and the amount and quality of sidequests definitely make up for it. As far as world-ending prophecies go, this was a pretty good one.

Better than: Middle-earth: Shadow of War
Not as good as: Horizon Forbidden West
Most of all, I'll miss: Brok's irreverent name-calling, especially as a temporary combat buddy.

Progress: Finished on "Give Me A Story" (easiest), all map objectives and all Favors.