Menus

The First-Time Setup Process

When starting the game for the first time, you’ll be prompted to enable the game’s menu/UI narration, hereafter referred to as the screen reader, by pressing square on your controller. Moving left and right on this screen then gives you the option of Quick start (screen calibration only) or Guided set up (common settings, screen calibration, audio calibration and accessibility presets).

Picking the latter of these two options, you are presented with a vertical menu of settings, including things ranging from text and speech languages to settings for repeated button presses, lock-on camera and traversal assists. Though you can adjust these now to your liking and the options will stay as you’ve set them, we cover more specific suggestions below as well.

Scroll down to the Next Step (accessibility presets) setting, then select Vision accessibility.

Hitting this option, select full and should you wish, listen to the list of features that are enabled (some of which we’ll change shortly).

After the Preset applied pop-up appears, hit confirm to dismiss it, the move up or down the vertical menu to Next step (Image calibration. As a gamer without sight (having no sight whatsoever), I chose to leave these at their defaults and move to the Next Step (Audio calibration) setting.

Turning the audio balance setting to quiet might help you hear more subtle sounds like health stones as the setting levels out louder ones, though adjusting this during your playthrough to suit your tastes is always an option too of course.

After hitting Finish setup, the Sony Studios logo plays and you are presented with:

The main menu:

The main menu’s options are as follows:

• Continue (This menu item is dimmed if you haven’t started a new game yet and will not be able to be scrolled over or narrated before you do.)
• Load game
• New Game
• New game plus (The TTS will say nothing.), this option is only present after you’ve fully completed the main story at least once, otherwise you’ll automatically skip down to the next option in the menu
• Valhalla
• Settings
• Accessibility presets
• God of war recap.

Recommended Accessibility Settings.

Here are a few recommendations for accessibility settings, though of course feel free to adjust them to your preference as you play. Some of these are taken directly from our own settings, though we’ve had far more time with the game than most, including sighted assistance in places.

Accessibility Preset

As a starting point, in the main menu, you’ll find an option called accessibility presets. In this submenu, you can enable the vision accessibility preset option. This will turn on all the recommended settings for blind and visually impaired people, which are loosely described in the narrated tooltip for said option.

Please note That doing this will also enable high contrast UI and text elements, which might be confusing if you are streaming the game, or if sighted people watch you play, as it changes colours of elements significantly to make them stand out if you have usable and residual vision, as well as enlarging text.

Note that the below settings may already be set to the mentioned values, but I thought that referencing some of these settings could be useful anyway.

Gameplay

• Aim Assist: Classic Plus. Reason: logically, having aim assist working from anywhere on screen should make things easier.
• Mini-game style: Precision. Reason: the stick prompts for the mini-games I can think of throughout the experience are all voiced, so there would be no need to have this be automatically completed or via a single button press, at least in my personal view.
• Repeated button presses: Hold. Reason: Personally, when I started playing this game at launch, I found the speeds required to complete mashing sequences were personally too fast for my liking. Holding seemed to work far more consistently for me.
• Skills navigation: Directional Buttons. Reason: Free-cursor skill trees (that act like a mouse) are very difficult to navigate cleanly and consistently, even when narration works with them (which in this game is not the case, more on that later). Being able to navigate smoothly through skill trees with the DPad certainly makes things easier, even if you have to use OCR to work with them.
• Weapon Sheathing: Weapon Toggle. Reason: Once you are accustomed to the combat of this game, you’ll want to switch weapons on the fly. This setup allows you to switch weapons with a single directional button press, meaning that your foes have less opportunity to attack you whilst you’re switching between implements of war.
• Controller Visualisation: On. Reason: Having streamed the game, it’s always good to be able to show people what buttons I’m pressing at any one time, should they be interested in looking at it later.

Graphics and camera:

• Horizontal rotation speed: 0. Reason: You need to control the camera a few times throughout the game, particularly relevant for puzzles and this makes it easier to work with. Other similar settings listed below are adjusted to the values shown for the same reason.
• Vertical rotation speed: 0.
• Aim horizontal sensitivity: 0.
• Aim vertical sensitivity: 0.

Audio and subtitles:

• Music: 5. Reason: as great as the soundtrack is, it can get a little loud at times, though again adjust to your preference as you play.
• Controller speaker volume: 0. Reason: As immersive as the controller speaker can be, given I play with headphones pretty much every time I play this game, I wouldn’t want to miss important cues that would otherwise be routed through the DualSense built-in speaker.
• Audio Description: on. Reason: Though it might be obvious to some as to why this secondary audio track that describes , in the feature’s own words, visual events during cinematics is on, this additional information makes for less confusion during key story beats, even if it is currently provided by text to speech which continues even if you skip cutscenes (only possible during subsequent replays). Having this information there as a first time player would definitely have helped me feel like I wasn’t guessing as to what was going on all the time.

Accessibility:

• Evade style: Default. Reason: This allows you to both sidestep with a single tap of the evade button and roll with a double-tap of that same button, both combined with a direction of course.
• Mini boss checkpoints: On. Reason: This could end up making some fights less frustrating as you won’t have to start at the beginning, though this only matters on most of the lower difficulties. It does not work with certain fights and is designed really as a last resort if you are struggling, I would suggest starting with this off and then turning it on if you feel you need it
• Climbing: Camera. Reason: This allows you to follow the way the camera is facing during climbing sequences, working hand-in-hand with the game’s navigation assist implementation. Though said navigation assist implementation isn’t perfect and does break on various occasions, having this setting adjusted to this value means that you should have less of a struggle during these sequences.
• Stun grab enemies: Hold interact button. Reason: This seemed to be the most consistent way to obtain stun finishers, whilst also giving you the choice of if you take them or not in the middle of battle.

Default Controls

You can refer to this list later during actual gameplay, though these inputs are also listed here for convenience.

• Move: Left stick.
• Sprint: L3.
• Camera: Right stick.
• Lock on: R3.
• Light attack: R1.
• Heavy attack: R2
• Companion -action button: Square.
• Aim: L2 button.
• Block/parry: L1 button.
• Arrow type: D Pad up.
• Primary weapon: D pad right.
• Secondary weapon: D pad left.
• Bare handed: D Pad down.
• Character/map: Touchpad.
• Options: Options button. (menu/start for those who prefer other terminology)
• Signature weapon Ability: Triangle.
• Interact: Circle.
• Evade: Cross/X.

Difficulty:

When starting a new game, the following difficulty options are presented, with the accompanying text:

• Give Me Story: Give Me Story is for players who want to experience the story with the least focus on combat.
• Give Me Grace: Give Me Grace is for players who want story-focused gameplay with some focus on combat.
• Give Me Balance: Give Me Balance is for players who want an adventure that’s equally focused on combat and gameplay.
• Give Me No mercy: Give Me No Mercy is for those who want a more demanding combat experience.
• Give Me God Of War: Give Me God Of War is for those who want the game as difficult as possible, requiring godlike reflexes and strategy. Give Me God Of War is only available from the start of a new game. This difficulty can be reduced mid-game but not re-selected.

For your first playthrough, I’d recommend either starting with Give Me story or Give Me Grace, the latter if you want a slightly tougher challenge.

Difficulty Update

During the original writing process for this guide, Give Me Story and Give Me Grace were the only two difficulties that were recommended. However, with subsequent revisions and additions, I am pleased to report that a balanced playthrough is indeed viable, even if the skill and relative patience required might not be everyone’s cup of tea.

The balanced run that I completed as a test of this theory also actually used a shield which I would have previously not recommended either, discussed later, bringing gamers without sight a little closer to that full experience that’s been much sought after for years.

All this to say that you can play on Give Me Balance, but we wouldn’t advise it for complete newcomers for a first run, unless you’re feeling particularly brave.

Other Menus

Unfortunately, as of the time of writing the screen reader doesn’t cover everything outside of the main menu. This includes the shop, skill trees and map, to name a few. Therefore, I have written a menu guide for these where possible, explaining how they work so you can do the most important things in the game without sighted help. You can find further information in the below sections.

Quests And Side Quests

In God Of War Ragnarok, (just Ragnarok hereafter), there are two types of quests: The Path which is the main story and various side quests (favours, listed under the second item in the goals tab, as it’s termed by the screen reader).

These favours are completed through interacting with NPCs via conversation prompts, picking up items in the world or completing various tasks.

Note: Side quests/favours are not to be confused with labours, various tasks throughout the game that can be completed to gain additional benefits, anything from armour as part of a quest to additional experience points (XP) that you can use to purchase skills and other upgrades when using certain attacks. You can find more information on labours at this God Of War wiki (external link).

How To Check The Current Quest.

Though you don’t get narrated quest updates, you can, however, read the current quest information and start side quests directly from the activities area on the ps5. You can do this one of two ways:

1. 1. Press the PS button, use the left and right arrows to select either game help or view your objectives. That text changes for some reason. When you open that, you can both read your current quest and objectives, and you can also read the available side quests.
2. 2. Alternatively, you can hold down the PS button to go to the PlayStation 5’s home screen. Then, when focusing on the game, press Down on the DPad, and you can find the same information under the option labelled activities.

It seems that the first way of retrieving this information is the most consistent, though you may find your own preference.

Unfortunately, if you’re playing on a PS4, you cannot read this information because of the lack of activities area. You can still track side quests if you wish via an in-game method, by pressing the up arrow on the DPad when a specific sound cue plays; this is also possible on the PS5 build of the game as well.

Sadly, not all of God Of War Ragnarok’s side quests are able to be completed without sighted assistance. If you decide to experiment, then do yourself a favour and use the Manual save feature before doing so. There have been instances of an odd bug in the game where the navigation assist would get stuck if you are tracking a side quest, when playing a character that cannot undertake said quest. If that happens and you don’t have a manual save before the side quest began tracking, you may either need sighted help or in some circumstances, may be forced to start from scratch.

To cancel a side quest, you can open the map with the touchpad and press L3 to centre the cursor where you are currently located, then press Triangle to track from your current position, thereby removing the side quest as your current objective and resetting it back to The Path. However, this does not always work and you may have to use the favours menu (down once and right once from the top of the Goals menu) to cancel any active side quests.

The skill tree:

Skills can be a crucial part of your gameplay in Ragnarok. As you journey onward, you’ll earn XP for both yourself and your companion which you can use to purchase anything from the ability to use weapon-specific combos, to attacks whilst evading, to ones that inflict specific status effects, to name just a few.

The skills tab, accessed by pressing r2 or L2 (depending on which way you prefer to go) presents you with a vertical menu, with three categories:

• Axe
• Blades
• companion

Keep in mind that Later on in the game, one more weapon will be unlocked. When that happens, it will be added to the categories, above your companion’s skill tree.

Pressing the right arrow on one of the categories opens the skill tree itself, a grid (thankfully navigable via the DPad rather than a cursor) with all the available skills listed, with the navigation mode selectable in the accessibility menu.

Given it doesn’t narrate via the game’s screen reader functionality, this screen might seem confusing, especially given the skills all start out as locked. As a blind gamer or gamer without sight, without Optical Character Recognition (OCR), you don’t know what skills you’re actually unlocking.

If you’re playing on lower difficulties it may not matter as much, but if you want to customise things to your liking as you play and given you won’t be doing as many side quests (resulting in less gear options being available to you), having a way to reliably choose your skills can be very helpful, as they allow you to utilise a greater range of options in combat.

A way to deal with this screen is to arrow around while pressing square. When a press of your square button plays a sound, that means that skill is available, and you can hold down square to purchase the chosen skill using your XP.

There are skills that utilise existing attacks and upgrade them, but there are also ones that directly contribute to how buttons act during your time with the game.

To keep all the menu-related elements in 1 place, let’s take note of some other aspects of the game that won’t become relevant until later:

Shops And Customisation

As previously stated, as much as God Of War Ragnarok does come with menu narration, unfortunately it does not cover anywhere near enough to make the game fully accessible in terms of things like upgrades, shops etc.

However, here, SLJ and I attempt to take you through a couple of areas of importance in the game’s interface.

Optical Character Recognition (OCR)

By way of a quick, if somewhat obvious note, Optical Character Recognition (OCR) which attempts to extrapolate text from an image (including if there’s none present) is the best solution for working with non-narrated parts of the game, as well as of course having sighted assistance if you feel you need or want it.

If there is enough interest or requests for more information on how I use OCR with this and other titles, it could be added in as an additional section here.

Using OCR, once you’re familiar with the screens we cover here, you can probably get the information you want like what item you’re on, but keep in mind it can take you a lot of patience to move, then read what item you’re on, just as an example.

Shop

The shop menu is split into different tabs. Press L2 for previous tab and R2 for next tab.

When opening a shop, you always start on the first tab which is your Weapons tab.

In the shop, you can purchase upgrades for your weapons and shields, as well as purchase armour and accessories, all based around resources that you either find in the world or, sometimes, loot from bosses.

When choosing a tab, you’ll be on a list of categories, which are listed as a vertical menu.
When you have selected a category, press the right arrow to enter its submenu. These submenus are also vertical. This menu lists all the available items in the chosen category.

All the menus in a shop wrap (i.e. scroll from top to bottom if you continuously press the down arrow on the Dpad), but if you hold it instead, the cursor will stop moving when it gets to the very bottom of the menu.

The same is true for moving upwards in a vertical menu such as this one.

The following is a list of all tabs and categories:

Weapons Tab

Weapons tab: (Only used to upgrade your weapons and shields.) Use Square to upgrade.
Axe
blades
shield
Please note: When you unlock an additional weapon later in the game, that weapon will appear above the shield.
The menu items play the sound of the selected item when arrowing through them. For example, if you move from the axe to the blades item, you’ll hear Kratos sheathe the axe and draw the iconic chain blades.

Armour Tab

Armour tab: Used to upgrade and purchase new armour.
Chest
Arms
Wrist
Amulet

Special Items Tab

Special items tab: Used to buy special items. I will recommend using OCR for this tab. the game can be played perfectly without buying anything from this tab, but feel free to experiment with this if you want to.
ENCHANTMENTS
Runic
Accessory
Resources

Sell tab.

Artefacts. Hold Triangle to sell all your artefacts. If you have no artefacts, nothing happens when pressing Triangle. If you press the Right Arrow, the controller will give a longer vibration.
Gear
Resources

Character Screens

These screens are invoked by pressing the touch pad on your controller during gameplay and navigated between once again with R2 and L2. They are similar to the shop equivalents.

The next menu item on the Armour tab is like the Weapons tab, where you can equip gear to your armour, in this case, amulet enchantments (which unlock later.

Auto-equipping

If you’re someone who doesn’t have access to OCR or just wants to equip the best gear, you can press L3 whilst in the weapons or armour screens, select a stat to base your gear on (such as strength or vitality) with left or right on the DPad, and then press X to confirm.

Note that this may not work when playing as characters other than Kratos.

Weapons menu.

Similar to the shop version, the items here are listed as follows:

LEVIATHAN AXE
BLADES OF CHAOS
Shield
SPARTAN RAGE
Relic

These last two items won’t become relevant until later in the game and, as before, there will be a third weapon added in above the shield once you’ve unlocked it as well.

Pressing the Right arrow on one of these main items opens up a sub menu. In these, you can select to view and equip a weapon-specific handle/grip (which can change its stats) or change the runic attacks available to you when using that specific weapon as well.

For the record, the first item in these sub menus is attachment/handle/grip, the second is light runic and the third is heavy runic.

If you have a companion in battle and wish to change their fighting implements (as some have differing stats), you can do so by pressing R1 and entering their individual sub menus to adjust these.

Note that these are not currently covered, but could be documented in a future revision of the guide.

Armour Tab

On this screen you can change the armour you’re currently wearing, some of which impacts your stats or has certain properties depending on the armour set. If you equip all of a set of armour (i.e. chest, waist and wrists) you’ll sometimes get additional bonuses too.

Go into one of the following sub menus, choose an armour piece and press X to equip it. Please note: You should automatically have the currently equipped armour piece highlighted when entering the submenu, though again we’d recommend OCR to make sure you’re selecting the desired piece.

The main items here are as follows:
Chest
Wrist
Waist
Amulet

If you wish to change your companion’s armour and accessories, press R1 whilst on this main screen, much like you would with the weapons screen above.

Also worthy of note, if you use OCR and you want to double check what armour you’ve chosen, you can press Triangle to show the stats. Press Triangle to hide the stats again.

Companion Accessories

Throughout the course of your journey, you will sometimes have companions who can have accessories enhance their abilities. Equipping these is achieved through the armour menu, after switching to your companion with R1.

Then press down once to get to accessories. Look through the list, choose the one you want then the slot you want it to go in, though as you might expect you’ll need OCR for this. It can be a little convoluted to figure out but I managed to get all 3 slots filled with a little patience and OCR effort.

With all that preamble out of the way, grab your axe, sharpen those blades and ready your shield as we journey back into Norse mythology as Kratos!