God Of War Ragnarök’s PC Port Is A Worse Version Of An Excellent Game [Update]

In This Story

I’ve only put a few hours into God of War: Ragnarök’s PC port. I was hoping this would be a chance for me to reassess a game I probably played under the wrong circumstances (rushing to the end because I had to know what happened). Unfortunately, after playing a bit of the PlayStation powerhouse on my gaming PC, I’d rather boot Kratos and Atreus’ latest adventure up on my PS5. And no, it’s not because of the PlayStation Network sign-in requirement.

Ragnarök is the latest PlayStation port to bring a game once defined by incredible polish to a new platform with some questionable technical performance. Though it’s nothing close to what The Last of Us Part I dealt with last year, I repeatedly encountered issues with slowdown that I never once experienced on console. From the sound of it, I’m not the only one. I went looking to see if my technical problems were a result of my (reasonably beefy) PC having finally aged out of peak performance. Turns out, issues with gradual framerate drops are a common problem with seemingly no permanent fix. Some folks have had success by disconnecting Bluetooth devices, meanwhile, I don’t have any Bluetooth devices connected to my PC, and the only time I get a brief reprieve from the game dropping to choppy, stuttery performance was to back out of it entirely. When I jumped back in, things would be fine at first, only for Kratos’ axe swings and chain slings to quickly lose that smoothness over time.

Playing Ragnarök on my PC is a vicious cycle of bursts of exhilarating, best-in-its-class combat, eventually leading to quick dips in performance that make it nearly impossible to play with any degree of finesse. Action games like God of War are easily among the most affected by poor performance, and if the only way for me to get even a momentary reprieve from the game chugging while I’m trying to fight the Norse god pantheon is to stop playing it, what am I even doing here? 

Screenshot: Santa Monica Studio / Kotaku

It’s a bummer, because, despite my feelings that Ragnarök is a bloated game that should have been split into two to fit in all its plot threads and setpieces at a reasonable pace as opposed to rushing through plotlines at breakneck speed, I’ve come to view the God of War reboots as a kind of comfort food. I felt a warmth booting up Ragnarök again after having not seen Kratos since I played the excellent roguelike Valhalla DLC last year, much like I did when I played the God of War level in Astro Bot earlier this month. I was briefly reminded that I do love these games and this version of one of video games’ most divisive protagonists. I enjoyed the 2022 PC port of 2018’s God of War and was happy for that game to find a new audience, but I never suffered the technical issues I’ve been dealing with in Ragnarök.

PlayStation’s PC ports have been one pillar of the ubiquitous endgame Sony has been pushing for as of late. It wants its games to become worldwide brands that expand beyond the PlayStation box you’ve played them on in the past. This means putting the games on new platforms, along with releasing movies and shows based on them in theaters and on streaming services. Sony has been building to this for years, creating an entire branch of its company dedicated to creating film and TV adaptations of its games and acquiring studios like mobile dev Neon Kai and PC pub Nixxess Software which specialize in platforms that aren’t the PlayStation 5. Sony’s brand of big-budget, award-winning prestige games is well-established on consoles, but its track record everywhere else is spotty. God of War Ragnarök is one of the company’s most decorated games of the past decade, and to see it come to PC as anything less than the best version of itself is a real shame.

Update: 9/23/24, 4:55 p.m. ET: Sony released the following statement to Kotaku regarding reports of dropping framerate and VRAM leaking.

“We are investigating reports of VRAM leaking but have not yet reproduced scenarios in which this can happen. However, we are continuing to look into the reports and want to make sure everyone has a great experience.”