God of War Ragnarok: PC Release, Performance & Review

Coming to PC brings God of War Ragnarök, a deeply emotional narrative that mirrors the mythology of Ragnarök while mapping out the relationship between Kratos and Atreus. The combat is fierce, the visuals are stunning, and there's so much to explore. It's no wonder why the PC version gets a solid 10/10.

But we have to mention there were some performance issues certain players faced; especially on PlayStation. We're going to just discuss it and more detail in our review starting with visuals and experience in gameplay, followed by specific PC features and downsides including PS requirements and performance.

In terms of story, God of War 2018 was actually very great in terms of character development as well as emotional depth. The story within Ragnarök is very good, but if I had to choose, the 2018 story felt more focused on the journey of Kratos and Atreus-two strangers forming a deep bond over time. In the story of Ragnarök, things are rather more complex and the focus has shifted slightly away from the relationship building between Kratos and Atreus, but both games are incredible, by any standard.

While it's amazing on the PS5, it really does shine on PC. Better hardware means superior graphics card selections, resolution settings, latency reduction, frame generation, and Nvidia DLSS upscaling technologies give visuals a boost to the next level. Latency reduction and frame generation give it that responsiveness and the super ultrawide support gives you this breathtaking panoramic view.

The game visuals truly stand out, eliminating screen tearing, and adding reflex support when playing with the PS5 controller—making reactions quick and enhancing combat fluidity. Overall, the PC experience enhances character movement, responsiveness, and the intensity of combat sequences. Add in 3D audio and haptic feedback, and the experience becomes all the more immersive, whether it’s the sound of Kratos’ axe or the subtle footsteps of Atreus.

Playing the game on a PC allows for a more customized experience. Unlike the PS5, where puzzle hints are automatically provided (breaking the immersion), PC players can reduce the frequency of these hints. There’s also a cinematography audio description mode that narrates visual events, a great accessibility feature. There is unconfirmed news about its PS5 Pro enhancements which may bring these options to PS5 also.

Plus, Santa Monica has included the free DLC, Rogue Light, from the outset on PC—though it’s recommended to play this mode only after completing the main campaign.

We do, however, have to discuss the PSN account requirement for the pc players who have to create and link it in order to play a single-player game. That, in itself, is a pain, and whilst it doesn't look like much, it's certainly a nuisance. There's also this annoying shader compilation issue that happens when restarting. We first thought it was only applicable to our configuration, but several threads on Reddit and Steam revealed that others were having similar complaints. However, we have not experienced any crash issues or considerable stability issues, and considering the requirements from Nvidia, performance has been great, with stable FPS and no memory leak issues.