Part 1 - God of War: Ragnarök - 1st Playthrough

I've managed to buy a used copy of God of War: Ragnarök from someone on Facebook Marketplace for a good price. It's not that I couldn't afford a new copy but with the current energy and food prices, I decided I should save some money this way. After playing the 2018 God of War game, I know this type of games are too difficult for me, so I started on the lowest of the five difficulty levels. However, that one was so easy it was boring. After I got to Niðavellir, I started a new game from the beginning on the second lowest difficulty. It didn't seem any more challenging than the lowest difficulty - i.e. so easy it was boring - up until I had to fight Thor. There I could feel it was a bit more difficult than the easiest mode, however, regular enemies were still boring after that. So I cranked it up to medium difficulty, the one that is said to be ideal for most gamers. It was ideal for me as well until I found my first Draugr Hole... I decided I wanted to enjoy this game and not get frustrated by it so after dying to those damn draugrs five times or so, I lowered the difficulty to the second lowest, defeated them, then turned the difficulty back up to medium. The next time I had to touch the difficulty again was at the next boss, the Dreki. Did I mention I still suck at video games? :) I defeated the Dreki on the easiest mode, and now I'm fighting regular enemies on Give me Balance, bosses on Give Me Story, and I give the damn Draugr Holes their own difficulty setting, Give me Grace. :)

There's one more thing I want to mention regarding this game today. It made us think our TV that just turned 2 years old last month was broken. :/ Last Friday, after I'd played the game for one hour, I turned off the PS5 and my girlfriend started watching TV. She noticed the compass bar from the game was still faintly visible at the top of the screen as if it was burned into the screen. As far as we know, image burn-in doesn't happen on NanoCell TVs, so we were equally surprised and annoyed. I wrote to LG customer service but then also googled the problem searching for this issue with this specific game. To my surprise, it turned out that this game can cause a ghost image to stay on the screen if used with VRR turned on! I didn't immediately test if turning VRR off would help, as it was late at night. The next morning, LG customer service called to look into the issue. They used my phone's camera to see the ghost image which was still visible on the screen. The guy who called also mentioned this was unusual with NanoCell TVs, and I said I knew, and that it may actually have been an issue with the game we had been playing. The guy suggested unplugging the TV for a few minutes to see if that would help. The ghost image was still there. We agreed I would receive a quote for repair on the next workday which happens to be tomorrow. After we hung up the phone, I decided to test turning VRR off. But the ghost image was still there. Feeling sad and angry about the issue, we decided to try one more thing, unplugging the TV for several hours while we went out shopping. Lo and behold, when we turned the TV back on that afternoon, the ghost image was gone! Since then, I've been playing with VRR turned off, and the issue hasn't returned. When LG calls me tomorrow I will make sure to tell them this whole story as it may help someone else playing the same game on their LG TV thinking it's broken when in fact it's something the game's developers should fix. I'm thinking about informing them as well, though I may not have the time.