God of War Norse Saga Review: Kratos, Atreus, and the Best Dad Story in Gaming

❄️ Boy. — A 9/10 Introduction

There is a specific kind of tired that every dad knows. It is the tired of carrying something heavy while a small person trails behind you asking questions you can’t answer, and you are trying to do the right thing despite having no idea what the right thing actually is. God of War put that feeling into a video game, handed it an axe, and made it one of the greatest stories the medium has ever told.

At Dadnology, we played both halves of the Norse saga back to back — God of War (2018) and God of War Ragnarök (2022) — the way they were meant to be experienced. Our verdict? This is a 9/10 masterpiece, and the missing point is one of the most honest, dad-specific gripes we’ve ever filed. More on that later. First, let’s talk about why this saga earns every bit of its reputation.

This isn’t the old Kratos. The PlayStation 2 Kratos was a screaming red rage-engine who tore gods apart and felt nothing. The Norse Kratos is older, quieter, and far more interesting. He has a son now. His name is Atreus. And the whole saga is built around a question every parent recognizes: how do you protect a child while also teaching them to survive a world that will try to break them?

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🪓 The Leviathan Axe — The Real Star of the Show

Let’s get the most important thing out of the way first, because it deserves top billing: the axe just rocks.

The Leviathan Axe is the best weapon in the history of action games, and it isn’t close. It is a frost-enchanted hand axe that Kratos can throw across the screen to freeze an enemy solid — and then, with a press of the trigger, recall it back into his hand, where it lands with a thwack you feel in your wrists. You will throw that axe ten thousand times across both games, and not one of those throws will get old.

🧊 Throw, Recall, Repeat

What makes it so good is the loop. You hurl the axe to freeze a distant archer, punch a nearby brute bare-fisted, then summon the axe back mid-combo so it flies past the brute and clatters home. On the PS5 , the DualSense haptics make the recall land in your palms — you feel the tension, the release, the impact. It’s the single best argument for the controller’s adaptive feedback that exists.

⚡ Two Weapons, One Saga

By the time you’re deep into the story, Kratos also reclaims the Blades of Chaos — his old chained blades from the Greek era — and the combat opens up into a dance between frost and fire. Freeze with the axe, immolate with the blades, recall, repeat. It is tactile, weighty, and deeply satisfying. There’s a reason “Boy” and “the axe” are the two things every God of War fan brings up first.

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God of War Ragnarök (PS5) (opens in a new tab)

The epic conclusion of the Norse saga. A bigger, deeper, more emotional sequel with nine realms to explore and the best axe in gaming, sharper than ever.

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👨‍👦 The Story — A God Learns to Be a Dad

Here is where the saga earns its place in our Living Novel Hall of Fame. The plot of both games can be summed up in one sentence: a grieving, emotionally walled-off father has to raise his son alone after his wife dies, in a world where everyone is trying to kill them both.

❄️ The 2018 Game: Spreading the Ashes

The first game is, on paper, a simple journey. Kratos and Atreus must carry the ashes of Faye — wife and mother — to the highest peak in all the realms, as was her dying wish. That’s it. That’s the quest. Everything else is the relationship.

And what a relationship it is. Early on, Kratos can barely look at the boy. He’s stiff, cold, terrified of passing his own monstrous nature down to his son. The famous “BOY.” — Kratos barking at Atreus to keep up — became a meme, but it’s also genuinely how a certain kind of overwhelmed father talks when he’s scared and doesn’t have the words. Over the journey, you watch that wall come down, brick by brick. It is one of the most carefully written arcs in gaming, and it earns its tears honestly.

🌍 Ragnarök: The World Closes In

The sequel raises the stakes to match its title. The prophecy of Ragnarök — the end of everything — is bearing down, and Atreus is no longer a wide-eyed kid. He’s a teenager now, which means he’s stubborn, secretive, and convinced his father doesn’t understand him. (Dads of teenagers: you will feel this.) Where the first game was about Kratos learning to be present, the second is about him learning to let go — to trust the boy to make his own choices, even dangerous ones.

The nine realms open up. There’s more variety, more spectacle, more side content, more characters to love — Mimir the severed talking head, the dwarves Brok and Sindri, the wolf-riding Angrboda. Ragnarök is bigger in every measurable way. And mostly, that bigness is glorious.

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📺 It Rocks the PlayStation — The Technical Showcase

If you want to show a skeptical friend why a modern console is worth the money, you put on God of War.

🎬 The “One-Shot” Camera

Both games are filmed as a single, unbroken camera shot. There are no hard cuts — the camera never leaves Kratos from the opening frame to the credits. Combat, cutscenes, quiet walks through the woods, brutal boss fights: it all flows as one continuous take. It’s a staggering technical and directorial achievement that makes the world feel utterly seamless and present.

🌨️ Next-Gen Fidelity

On PS5 , Ragnarök runs at a buttery 60fps with high-fidelity visuals — snow that deforms under your boots, fur that catches the firelight, water that looks genuinely cold. The realms range from the frozen wastes of Helheim to the golden grasslands of Vanaheim, and each one is a postcard. The 3D audio puts you inside the world: the creak of Kratos’s leather, the distant howl of wolves, the satisfying crunch of an axe finding bone.

🎮 DualSense and Haptics

The controller is part of the experience. You feel the weight shift as Kratos hauls a chain, the rumble of a giant’s footsteps, and — best of all — that axe recall landing in your hands. This is a saga built to flex what the hardware can do, and it does it without ever feeling like a tech demo. The spectacle always serves the story.

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God of War (2018) (PS4/PS5) (opens in a new tab)

The reboot that started it all. The leaner, tighter, more focused half of the saga — and the essential starting point for the whole story.

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⚖️ Two Games, One Saga — How They Compare

Both halves are essential, but they have different strengths. The original is leaner and more focused; the sequel is grander and more varied. Here’s how they stack up.

The honest summary: if you want the purest version of the father-son story, the 2018 game is the tighter experience. If you want scope, spectacle, and a grand finale, Ragnarök delivers. Played together, they’re a complete and devastating arc — which is exactly how we recommend taking them.

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🤔 Why It’s a 9 and Not a 10 — The Honest Dad Gripe

Here’s the part that keeps this saga off the perfect-score podium, and it’s worth being honest about because it’s a real, considered opinion rather than nitpicking.

There is a tick too much hack-and-slash.

This saga is at its absolute best in its quiet moments — Kratos and Atreus rowing a boat while Mimir tells a story, a tense conversation by a campfire, the wordless grief of a father who can’t say “I love you” out loud. Those scenes are the masterpiece. They’re why this is one of the most Dadnology stories ever put in a game.

But every so often, the game corrals you into yet another circular combat arena, locks the doors, and throws three waves of draugr at you before it’ll let the story continue. The combat is excellent — that axe never stops being satisfying — but in the back third of Ragnarök especially, the ratio tips. You start to feel the seams of a big-budget action game that needs to justify its runtime with fights, when what you actually want is more of the slow, human, father-son drama that makes the saga special.

For our money, we’d happily trade a third of the wave-combat arenas for more quiet boat rides and difficult conversations. A bit more story, a bit less spectacle, and this would be a flat 10. As it stands, the combat padding is the one thing standing between a brilliant saga and a perfect one. It’s a small complaint about a genuinely great pair of games — but it’s an honest one, and it’s the reason for the score.

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👨‍👩‍👧 The Dadnology Perspective — Why This One Hits Different

Plenty of games have fathers in them. Very few games are actually about fatherhood, and fewer still understand it. God of War does.

Kratos is not a good communicator. He’s gruff, he over-protects, he struggles to say the warm things he clearly feels, and he’s terrified of passing his worst traits onto his kid. If you’ve ever lain awake worrying that your own flaws are quietly becoming your child’s, you will recognize this man completely. Watching him slowly, awkwardly learn to be a better dad — to listen, to trust, to let Atreus be his own person — is the emotional engine of the whole saga, and it lands harder the older you are.

💾 Why It Respects Your Time

This is a single-player story you can pause the instant Dad-duty calls. The chapter structure means you can play for 30 focused minutes and still feel like you moved the story forward. There’s no online pressure, no live-service treadmill, no FOMO — just a great story that waits patiently for you to come back to it after bedtime.

🎧 The Right Setup

Like all the best PlayStation showcases, this saga rewards a good screen and good audio. An HDR TV makes the snowscapes and fire effects sing, and a quality headset puts you inside Bear McCreary’s enormous score. If you’ve got a PS5 , play Ragnarök in 60fps performance mode — the combat feels even better, and the axe recall is even crisper.

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What’s Next for the Living Novel?

We’ve raised a son through the dying world of Norse myth and thrown an axe more times than we can count. The saga of Kratos and Atreus is one of the high points of our hall of fame.

Ready for more? Explore the rest of our Living Novel Hall of Fame to find your next great adventure.

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❓ FAQ: The God of War Questions

Do I need to play the 2018 game before Ragnarok?

Yes, strongly. Ragnarök opens assuming you already know Kratos, Atreus, and the death of Faye. Both games run on the same console family, the 2018 game is short and cheap now, and the emotional payoff of Ragnarök only lands if you have lived through the first game’s quiet, careful father-son journey first. Skipping it saves you a few hours and costs you the entire emotional foundation.

Is it ok for kids to watch?

It is rated M for Mature, with brutal combat, blood and gore, and strong language. It is not a kids’ game. That said, the story itself is genuinely about parenting, and many older teens get a lot from watching a parent play. Younger kids should be asleep before the axe comes out.

How long does each game take?

The 2018 game runs roughly 20-25 hours for the main story, or 35-40 to do most side content. Ragnarök is bigger at around 25-30 hours for the story and 50-plus for full completion. Across both you are looking at a comfortable 50-60 hours of main-story saga.

Which game is better, 2018 or Ragnarok?

It depends on what you want. The 2018 game is leaner and more focused, with a tighter father-son core. Ragnarök is bigger, more varied, and emotionally grander, but its scale also means more combat arenas. We give the original the edge on focus and the sequel the edge on spectacle — together they’re a complete saga.

Is the Leviathan Axe really that good?

Yes. The throw-and-recall mechanic — where you hurl the frozen axe and then call it thwacking back into your hand — is one of the most satisfying things in any action game. The DualSense haptics on PS5 make it land in your palms. The axe genuinely rocks, and it never gets old across both games.