What happens when you get together an angry deity-destroying daddy against a mute and equally angry power-armoured marine who’s single-handedly been fending off the forces of hell against each other? Sparks will fly, planets will split like Terry’s Chocolate Oranges, while celestial and demonic beings will flee in terror.
Or maybe God of War’s Kratos and Doom’s Doom Slayer would get on great, hanging out in a biker bar and gloomily drinking themselves into oblivion while grumbling about the price of craft beers and asking what’s wrong with good old-fashioned brewskis.
But let’s dabble with the hypothetical here, and try to answer the ahem eternal question of who’d win in a fight between Kratos and Doom Slayer. It’s science (sorta).
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Accomplishments
Both Kratos and the Doom Slayer have quite the CV when it comes to the ol’ rip-and-tear. Kratos’ achievements are perhaps more obvious, given the high-profile names of his conquests. In his early years, he tore through the pantheon of Greek Gods, picking up the scalps of Zeus, Ares, Poseidon, and Hades along the way, before setting off on his Norse adventure, where he took out myriad Valkyries, Trolls, and the seemingly invincible God Baldur. But the manner of some of these victories suggests that the now-bearded Kratos has slowed down a bit since his Olympian days.
For a start, Kratos has canonically been killed on a good couple of occasions—he’s far from unstoppable. Beyond his death as a mortal (which we’ll discount from the discussion, because he was obviously far from full power then), Kratos gets tricked and killed by Zeus in God of War 2, before getting bailed out by the Titan Gaia. He also gets killed by the Norse God of Thunder Thor in the early parts of God of War Ragnarok, before his killer resurrects him. Even in defeating mighty foes like Baldur and Odin, Kratos needed a little outside intervention from the young’uns to get the job done.
It’s also pretty clear that ‘daddy’ Kratos isn’t quite the force he was in God of War 3, when his younger, more explosive self set out on his warpath against the Gods. Every great warrior has a ‘prime’, and even though daddy Kratos is older and wiser in GoW 2018 and Ragnarok, that can’t outweigh the passage of time.
Doom Slayer, on the other hand, mounts demons’ heads in his wood cabin as if they were elk (probably). The official amount of time he’s been fighting for is “aeons,” in hell and on different versions of Earth across different dimensions;one of the better fan theoriesplaces Kratos’ age around the 1000-year mark, which is still probably dwarfed by how long Doomy’s been going at it. During those aeons, Doom Slayer’s defeated powerful multidimensional beings like the Icon of Sin, the Seraphim, the Titan Champion, and Khan Maykr.
Most impressive of all, Doom Slayer ultimately defeats Davoth, a Thanos-like figure who’s capable of destroying the universe across multiple dimensions). On a dimensional scale, Davoth is certainly more powerful than any of the gods Kratos defeats (all of whom preside over relatively limited, and certainly not multiversal, realms).
Winner: Doom Slayer
Physical strength is an interesting one, and Kratos is definitely more proven in this area. Flipping Tyr’s Temple in God of War (2018), somehow stopping the Earth-carrying Titan Kronos from crushing him between his fingertips, sealing Realm Tears with brute strength, Kratos may just be the physically strongest video game character of all time. He’s a bit slower and beardier from 2018 onwards, but has that whole ‘dad strength’ thing going on. Up to God of War 3, he’s fiendishly agile too, like a spider-monkey, as he swings around the heads of Titans and Colossus statues with preternatural grace.
Doom Guy is no slouch either, rip-and-tearing through demons like a puppy through Christmas presents, but did you ever think that the demons he shreds up look a little, dunno, squishy? Is itreallythat hard to tear the eye out of a Cacodemon, or tear a fleshy imp in two? Don’t know, never tried it, but the point is that Doom Slayer relies so much on hardware that he rarely gets to show off his strength like the old-school Kratos. Agility-wise, he doesn’t seem quite as speedy as Kratos, and relies a lot on jump pads to hop around combat arenas.
So based on what we’ve seen, there can be only one winner.
Winner: Kratos
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On the one hand, this seems like a bit of an unfair contest. Kratos’ weaponry may be imbued with all kinds of magic, but for the most part he’s largely restricted to melee combat, while Doom Slayer has an arsenal of futuristic hardware to rely on. You’ve got a good few thousand years between the respective settings in which we play God of War and Doom, and that’s a big technological gap to overcome.
Yes, Kratos has a few long-range bits to harry Doom Slayer with, like the Draupnir Spear and his boomeranging Leviathan Axe, but his best chance would be in closing the distance so he can start getting off those melee combos. Would Kratos be able to close the distance on a Doomguy packing heat like plasma cannons, rocket launchers, and Super Shotguns? It wouldn’t be easy, but at least he wouldn’t have to contend with the iconic BFG-9000, as canonically it only works on creatures that have Argent in them (i.e. demons)
If Kratos does get up close, he’d have a whole roster of lethal weapons at his disposal—the Leviathan Axe, Blades of Chaos, the Blade of Olympus, Hercules’ Nemean Cestus’ (a pair of giant lion-headed gauntlets, essentially). Meanwhile, Doom Slayer’s got his fisticuffs, his chainsaw, and the very limited-used Crucible Sword. If—and that’s a bigif—Kratos could get all up in Doom Slayer’s grill, things could get very interesting, but he’d need to dodge or block a fair few bullets along the way.
How would Kratos deal with bullets? Well, at that point we’d just be making stuff up… OK, let’s make some stuff up: sure, Kratos can deflect and dodge bullets, but it wouldn’t be trivially easy. How’s that?
Winner: Tie
What’s more frightening? A man with absolutely nothing to lose, or a man willing to do anything to protect his sole purpose in life: his son?
Is there anything more badass than fighting the forces of hell foreternity?
That’s the Doom Slayer/Kratos dichotomy we’ve got to work with here. God of War 3 Kratos was an absolute force of nature, but as covered earlier, there are little hints that older, wiser Kratos is a tad softer and slower off the mark than he used to be. Yes, we can be all romantic and sentimental and say that through Atreus, ol’ Dad of War taps into a deeper source of strength, but is there really anything more badass than committing yourself to fighting the forces of hell foreternity? Kratos has made mistakes, he’s let hubris (and anger) get the better of him, he’s an emotional guy beneath that ashen veneer. Doom Slayer is a total enigma.
Look at their respective relationships with Hell (or Hades). Kratos may have fought his way out of hell on a couple of occasions, but Doom Slayer voluntarily throws himself in there, then sticks around fighting for as long as it takes. Whether it’s bad-boy young Kratos or wise old Kratos, the Spartan is fundamentally driven by human feelings and emotions, while Doom Slayer seems to have transcended all that stuff, and exists unquestioningly to keep Hell’s forces at bay for all eternity. He’s unreadable, beyond human fallibility, and that makes Doom Slayer one terrifying guy.
Final Thoughts
Where Kratos is a demigod, and still technically mortal, the Khan Maykr in Doom Eternal states that the Doom Slayer was once a mortal, which suggests that he’s now immortal, unageing despite having been stomping around hell in different dimensions for hundreds or even thousands of years.
Pit a fully equipped Doom Slayer in against post-2018 Kratos, and it seems like a no-contest. Bolstered by his Praetor Armor, which absorbs Argent Energy making him even stronger, immortality, and a futuristic arsenal of weapons, you’ve gotta think that Doom Slayer blasts old-man Kratos out of there fast.
Things could be more interesting in Kratos’ arena though. Amphitheater, no weapons, the God of War 3 version of Kratos vs a Doom Slayer stripped of his armour and gadgetry; how much man really is there beneath all those hell-slaying layers? Who knows, but you can be sure that a prime young Kratos would put him to the test.
OVERALL WINNER: Doom Slayer
Demi-god vs immortal, future tech vs ancient magicky weaponry, young body vs old body (assuming Norse Kratos), fighting hell’s minions for eternity vs. killing some old gods. Doom Slayer has just too many advantages, and probably more combat experience, than an ageing Kratos, and it’s hard to see the Spartan overcoming them.
But enough pitting these two icons against each other. Let’s instead work on making them the grumpy drinking buddies they’re clearly meant to be.
