Valhalla Reintroduces God Of War's Combat In The Most Elegant Way (2024)

I almost didn’t bother with the Valhalla expansion for God of War Ragnarok, which would have been a huge mistake. I reviewed Ragnarok, which means I haven’t played it since a few days before it came out in November 2022. I’ve played close to 100 games since then, and I’m not ashamed to admit that by the time Valhalla came out more than a year later, I no longer remembered how to play God of War.

The basics aren’t a problem. I can throw the ax, call it back, switch weapons, and mash the attack buttons until everyone dies. Those things are like riding a bike, but it's all the techniques of combat - the little nuances in the controls, the combos, and the timings - that got erased from my brain the second the credits rolled. It would be one thing to start fresh with a new character in the DLC, but the idea of essentially picking up where I left off seemed far too intimidating.

I gave it a go anyway, and as soon as I opened up the character page I felt like all of my fears had been confirmed. When you start Valhalla, the entire skill tree for every weapon is filled in completely, with every single upgrade unlocked. I started reading through each one, trying to internalize their function, but I quickly gave up. These are tools you acquire slowly over a 30-hour campaign. You’re meant to learn these one at a time and incrementally expand your knowledge base as Kratos’ arsenal of battle techniques gradually expands. I used to know how to do all these things, but how can I be expected to learn all of them again, all at once?

Valhalla seems to throw you right into the deep end of combat as soon as you path through the gates to begin your first run, but after a couple of attempts, I realized that the developers were wise enough to account for my degradation of skill in a pretty thoughtful way. While you do indeed begin Valhalla with the full expression of Kratos’ combat prowess, you are highly incentivized through its progression system to focus on using a very limited pool of techniques.

While it never directly addresses through tutorials or tooltips, Valhalla actually does an excellent job of reteaching you how to play God of War. While it seems to have a typical roguelike progression system, which rewards you with new abilities and power ups at the end of each combat phase, Valhalla’s progression is designed to focus in and build on a fairly narrow playstyle. Not only does this make each run more consistent if there’s a certain way you like to play, but it also helps you start small and work your way back up to Kratos’ full power if you need a little help remembering how to play.

The first reward you get at the start of any run is a weapon upgrade. This dictates, largely, what upgrades you’ll get throughout the rest of the run, so right when you start you’re immediately limiting the amount of combat techniques you have to remember down to just one weapon. The upgrade also usually applies to a specific attack for that weapon. One choice might drastically increase the power of Gale Force skills for the spear, while the other increases Rising Chaos skills for the blades. Now you have somewhere to start. You don’t have to remember all of the spear combos, you just have to remember the Gale Force ones, because they’re your strongest moves.

As you progress through each run you’ll collect tons of different upgrades that will make each build feel unique (or kind of the same, if you prefer to play that way) and, by the end, you’ll have to utilize a broad spectrum of Kratos’ abilities in order to take down the game’s toughest challenges. But all you need to start with is one weapon and one attack. Just like the base game, the combat builds on itself as you progress, allowing you to learn at your own pace and incorporate new moves into your repertoire only when you’re ready.

This isn’t standard practice for DLC content. Burning Shores expects you to remember how to play Horizon Forbidden West and use Aloy’s arsenal of weapons. Phantom Liberty isn’t easy to jump into if it’s been awhile since you’ve played Cyberpunk 2077 either, especially with the skill tree overhaul that came with the 2.0 update. The way Valhalla eases players back into God of War’s gameplay should set an example for expansions moving forward. We’re all playing more games than ever before, and Valhalla proves that games can do more to help welcome us back after a long break.

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