Senua's Saga: Hellblade II Review

Hellblade: Senua’s Sacrifice was a particularly harrowing, eye-opening visual and auditory experience when it launched back in 2017, one that tackled mental health and psychosis like no other game really has before. In it, you played Senua, an outcast who attempted to battle her demons and deal with trauma and grief, all while trying to pull herself out of her alternate reality and deal with the voices in her head. Senua’s psychosis was obsessive, self-consuming and her journey was all about discovering and understanding these experiences and coming to terms with loss. Senua’s Saga: Hellblade 2 is a very different game in that respect.

Hellblade 2 is essentially a coming of age story, wherein Senua has come to terms with her demons, battled the deepest aspects of her darkness, and accepted that the internal voices that torment her, the Furies, are a part of her now. Senua’s Saga might seem like a revenge story, as the eponymous heroine heads off to 9th century Finland to put an end to the Northmen who brutally murdered the love of her life, Dillion, and raided her village. But in truth, Senua’s Saga: Hellblade 2 is about a young girl still troubled by her past, while still coming to terms with her alternate realities and attempting to keep her head above the darkness. Senua has a new inspiration in Senua’s Saga. Now, all she really wants to do is help her people, by cutting the head off the snake who desecrated her entire village. She has battled against her darkness, embraced her empathy, and is now on a mission to snuff out the origin of that specific darkness - of course, all while still battling her psychosis, which is, at times, far more forgiving and supporting this time around.

As Senua's Sacrifice was, Senua's Saga is still a visceral and haunting visual-audio experience, with more emphasis on that aspect of the overall experience than the gameplay itself. Senua's Saga: Hellblade 2 is, then, all about the experience, but this time Ninja Theory has amped up the cinematography and turned up the dials to eleven. If you combine the disturbing binaural audio, epic original score and best-in-class acting, with the absolutely astonishing visuals, you've not only got one of the best-sounding games of the generation, but also one of the best-looking. In fact, I'd go so far as to say that Hellblade 2 is probably the best-looking game that I've ever played - it’s genuinely the first time this generation that I have been properly wowed.

At times the photorealistic aspect of Senua and her environment makes you forget you're actually playing a game. This is as close to playing a blockbuster action movie that you'll likely have ever experienced. What makes that all the more impressive is that not once did I experience ‘uncanny valley’ either, which is generally the case when it comes to photorealism in video games. That's in part thanks to the terrific art direction, but mostly down to the sublime animations, devilishly good transitions and absolutely phenomenal choreography.

As a game, Hellblade 2 does switch things up somewhat. If you're expecting Hellblade 2 to be more hands-on and to revolutionise the standards set in the original, though, then you're barking up the wrong tree. It's more of a refinement to the original formula than anything, but the hyper realism and audio-visual experience more than makes up for that.

Thankfully Ninja Theory has fixed the more formulaic tendencies of the original Hellblade, and there's thankfully far less backtracking. And while the Cambridge-based developer has opted to switch the puzzles up for the most part, we actually preferred those in the original in a lot of ways - we were sad to see the illusion gates have gone, for instance. For some bizarre reason, Ninja Theory has also removed the kick move - which was a popular skill to bust out against shield bearers in Senua's Sacrifice. We have no idea why it’s been nixed. 

That said, Ninja Theory has gone for a more cinematic feel to most of the fights this time around, and that honestly seems to suit the game more. Instead of having to fight multiple enemies at once using a fairly rudimentary lock-on system, you'll now fight enemies one-on-one and seamlessly transition from enemy to enemy with some beautifully choreographed animations and execution moves - of which there seems to be a fair few. The less said about the new fire-breathing enemies, though, the better! With the new tweaks to the combat, then, Hellblade 2 is effectively like playing an epic action-horror movie, and as such, is unlike anything else that exists in the genre.

While Hellblade 2 doesn't possess the most in-depth game mechanics of all time, the combat and its puzzles are still enjoyable and functional. What Hellblade 2 lacks in traditional gameplay mechanics, though, it certainly makes up for it across the board in the visual and audio department. Sure, the fundamental video game aspects might have made a sideways step compared to Senua's Sacrifice, but everything else has been raised to a new dimension. Hellblade 2 is jaw droppingly beautiful, incredibly harrowing, and frankly, a truly unique experience that will constantly wow you from start to finish.