God of War Ragnarok: Valhalla is a Tremendous Piece of Free Content
One more time, but with feeling? Sure thing Santa Monica, why not?
2022’s God of War Ragnarok was a stunning sequel to 2018’s brilliant reboot for Kratos, and probably sits as my favourite single player experience… maybe ever? When I was helping run an actual website — instead of unloading my words onto Medium — Ragnarok was the only perfect score I provided in over two years of reviewing games.
So a free DLC for one of my favourite games ever made seems like an easy win, regardless of however that manifests. When it was pitched as a roguelike and an epilogue to the main game, I won’t lie, I expected a fairly cut back gameplay experience with a few lines of dialogue and perhaps a closing cutscene. Perhaps a few hours at most, with some reskinned content from the main game.
Given that Valhalla is free, I actually would’ve been happy with this to be honest. People may immediately point to things like presentation, character writing, voice acting, and overall narrative when discussing the Norse God of War games, but they often brush over one important aspect — the combat. 2018 and Ragnarok are both incredibly underrated character action games that take something like Devil May Cry and make it accessible and approachable, without forgetting that it’s supposed to be fun. You are a god, after all.
A DLC where I get to smash Kratos into a variety of enemies for a few hours would’ve been a good time and, considering I never expected this game to get DLC, more than enough for zero entry fee.
Instead, Santa Monica have almost re-contextualised what free DLC for a AAA game can look like. I have no idea how they justified charging nothing for Valhalla, if I’m being honest, but I’m incredibly impressed that they have. Not only is the DLC home to a brand new story — set a certain amount of time after the events of Ragnarok — it also features brand new boss fights, cutscenes, entirely fresh dialogue between Mimir and Kratos, and interactions between other characters that I shan’t spoil here.
I don’t want to downplay it; there’s a truly surprising amount of new stuff here. The boss fights alone are worth the time it takes to reach them, with some reappearances from familiar foes turning up, only with reworked move sets to make their presence worthwhile. The final boss of Valhalla — that you’ll have to get through a handful of times in order to see the ending — is arguably one of the finest that Santa Monica has ever produced, generating challenge and fun in equal amounts.
While we’re on the topic of challenge and fun, how is Valhalla as a roguelike? After all, that’s the primary pitch of the DLC — it’s a chance to experience God of War’s fantastic combat in a more restricted, replayable environment.
The best way to describe it is that Valhalla is pretty much just Hades in a God of War skin. Don’t get me wrong, it’s not quite as feature complete or impressive as Supergiant’s indie, but for a bolt-on mode to an already incredible AAA game, Valhalla is an impressive imitation. You’ll be controlling a fully upgraded Kratos — that is to say, all weapons and skills maxed out — but without the armour and talisman perks that you might have picked up throughout the campaign, and without the related buffs to Strength, Defense, Luck, etc.
Instead, these upgrades are distributed to chests that you’ll find playing through Valhalla as either temporary or permanent buffs. Temporary in this case means they’ll be lost after death, and permanent means they’ll persist after death. So far, so familiar. Santa Monica have also designed Valhalla to follow your chosen weapon for a run — the first chest you open will always offer buffs to one of your three weapons, and whichever you pick will be the target of most future upgrades of that run.
One example is that I picked a damage buff to the sprinting attacks with the Draupnir spear at the start, and then over the course of that run I was offered upgrades to the spear’s ranged attacks, stun damage, and combos, amongst other things. In my time with Valhalla — somewhere around 8–10 hours — I found that I rarely used more than the weapon I chose to buff at the start. I wager this will change on higher difficulties though, as more enemy resistances come into play.
Talismans, Runic Attacks, and passive buffs (such as dodge distance for example) are restricted to the chests both rewarded and hidden throughout Valhalla, and are generally lost on death. Talismans can be unlocked permanently, but this will take some time. There are gameplay challenges for extra currency, unlockable cosmetics, and even optional forfeits that make the game temporarily harder for a reward. There are encounters that I still haven’t found, and a surprising amount of potential build paths that can be locked together for truly devastating builds that simply don’t exist in the main game.
I’m… shocked at how much stuff there is, if I’m being frank. Take all of this, and then factor in the brand new narrative elements that — without spoiling anything — celebrate Kratos’ legacy, the multiple difficulties, and Santa Monica’s signature production quality, and you’ve got something I’d happily have paid for. £20, maybe even £25 wouldn’t have been too much to ask for this. Hell, even the gameplay areas aren’t reskinned campaign areas, instead created in a bespoke fashion for the roguelike experience.
It also functions incredibly well as a victory lap of God of War’s legacy, and as an epilogue to Ragnarok — perhaps the last game we’ll see in the series for many years, if Santa Monica even decide to continue making God of War games. Remember, they opted out of making it a trilogy because they didn’t want to spend 15 years on the same thing. There’s no (current) reason to believe that another God of War game is coming at all, outside of the obvious commercial and critical success of the series.
Contextualising Valhalla like that — the final note in a franchise, if you will — it feels like a love letter to fans in a way. Avoiding spoilers of course, it provides an actual ‘end’ (of sorts) to Kratos’ story that Ragnarok’s base game didn’t, at least not in the same way. Where I thought it might provide hints as to the next game’s setting or plot, I’m instead grateful that it didn’t, and instead gave Kratos some kind of narrative resolution.
More than anything, I was glad to have a reason to revisit this game. I was kind of God of War’d out by the time I finished Ragnarok last year — my own fault, after pushing for the platinum in God of War 2018 last year — so I haven’t touched the series at all in 2023. Valhalla is an incredibly surprising return to a game that I love, and it went far and beyond what I expect of most paid DLCs, let alone free.
