How Long Is God of War Ragnarok? Completion Time - Game Scout

The main story of God of War Ragnarök is a mostly linear march through the Nine Realms, and the number moves for two reasons. The first is difficulty. Ragnarök ships with settings from Give Me Story up to the punishing Give Me God of War, and the reviews are clear that the harder tiers turn optional bosses into multi-attempt walls, which lands squarely in your completion time. The second is exploration. Skip the boats, the side realms and the favors and the story closes near 21 hours; stop to clear what the map keeps flagging and a first run drifts toward 38.

What inflates the middle is the stuff most players do without meaning to: the favors, which are this game's side quests, plus the raven hunts, the Nornir chest puzzles and the Draugr Holes. Some of that is genuine extra content with a real payoff, an upgrade, a lore beat, a new stretch of a realm. Some of it is padding, the fetch-and-backtrack kind, and I will separate the two rather than call the whole pile "lots to do."

This is the question a raw hour count cannot answer, and it is where Game-Scout's 196,025 player ratings earn their keep. Ragnarök sits at 4.78 and the aggregated sentiment reads "good" rather than "great," a notch under the 2018 game, and the reviews keep circling the same word: pacing. The specific complaints are consistent. Overly long cutscenes and heavy exposition. Forced walk-and-talk stretches where Kratos squeezes through a gap while a character explains the plot. Long sections played as Atreus that pull you away from the combat most players came for.

None of that changes the number on the clock, but it changes how the hours feel. Players who love the story treat the slow stretches as breathing room; players who came for the fighting call the same stretches busywork between good boss encounters. If you bounced off the mid-game drag in the 2018 game, the reviews suggest Ragnarök leans into it harder, not less. That is the honest read on the length: it is not that Ragnarök is bloated with content, it is that the pacing spends your time unevenly.

For completion hours, the platinum trophy is the real finish line, and the good news for anyone chasing it is that it is not missable and nothing is difficulty-gated. Every trophy unlocks on the easiest setting, Give Me Story, and each area tied to one stays open after the credits, so you can finish the story and mop up later without worrying about a point of no return. Trophy guides from PowerPyx and Push Square put the full platinum around 40 to 50 hours.

The hardest and most time-consuming piece is the Berserker Gravestones: ten optional summoning stones that unlock some of the toughest fights in the game, ending with King Hrólf Kraki. Those are genuine extra content, not padding. The encounters test everything the combat system teaches, and most players are told to wait until they have upgraded their armor and finished the story before attempting them. The Muspelheim and Niflheim trials sit in the same bracket. Set against the fetch-style favors, this is where the completion time actually earns itself. If you liked the combat, the platinum is worth the grind; if the pacing already wore you down by the credits, the cleanup will not win you back.

Ragnarök is the longer of the two. God of War (2018) runs about 32 hours for a story-plus-extras run and near 48 for a full clear on Game-Scout's tracking, where Ragnarök lands closer to 38 and 55 to 60. The 2018 game rates 4.75 from 301,055 players with a "great" sentiment, a hair above Ragnarök's "good," and part of that gap is exactly the pacing: the older game's reviews flag excessive collectibles, but not the cutscene-heavy, walk-and-talk drag that Ragnarök's reviews return to.

If you are deciding where to start, play the 2018 game first anyway. It is shorter, it is the setup Ragnarök assumes you know, and the reviews of the sequel lean on that emotional groundwork. Our God of War versus God of War Ragnarök comparison breaks down the rest of the differences.