Senua’s Saga: Hellblade II
Developer: Ninja Theory
Publisher: Xbox Game Studios
Platforms: Xbox Series X, Xbox One, PC (Reviewed)
Release Date: 21 May 2024
Price: $49.99 USD – Available Here $69.95 AUD – Available Here
Overview
You know what my guilty pleasure is? Games with “gimmicks”. Although that might sound like a condemning word, it isn’t if it’s being applied correctly to the gameplay. One such gimmick is the Nemesis system that first appeared in the Middle-earth: Shadow of Mordor or the zipline from the Just Cause series. And who could forget the Celestial Brush in Okami? But wait, what does this have to do with Senua’s Saga: Hellblade II?
Well, if you played the previous game you’ll know that Senua is not alone in her quest, it turns out she suffers from severe psychosis and she is accompanied by many voices throughout the journey. If you haven’t played the first game yet, you owe it to yourself. It is highly recommended to also get yourself a good pair of headphones and immerse yourself in the binaural sounds of the game. You’ll often feel like Senua’s voices are directly talking to you, giving you bad directions on purpose, making you doubt yourself, scolding you, and everything else that will make you feel nervous and constantly on the edge. Now I have a sequel to that game with far better graphics, a new story, and new characters so let’s see if anything new is on the table and if that audio gimmick perhaps overstayed its welcome.
Story
The story of Senua’s Saga: Hellblade II throws us right into the eye of the storm, in more ways than one. Senua is willingly captured by Northmen slavers and taken across the sea from Orkney to Iceland, hoping to free her enslaved people. The storm destroys the slave ships and Senua washes up on shore and as she navigates along the coast, Senua experiences vivid hallucinations and is haunted by voices. There she defeats the slave master of the ship, makes him her prisoner, and takes him along for the journey to defeat the new gods.
While the story in the previous game was left ambiguous for the most part, things are pretty straightforward over here. You’ll be face to face with mythological giants, see ghosts, magic, and the uninhabitable & ever-evolving landscape of Iceland.
Gameplay
The combat and gameplay in general didn’t get much upgrade when compared to Hellblade: Senua’s Sacrifice. Your most common enemies pretty early in the game will be draugrs, a tribe of feral and cannibalistic barbarians. You can evade attacks, counter, and wait for an opening to inflict damage before the takedown triggers. Some attacks cannot be blocked and only evaded. Although the odds are not working for you and enemies seem stronger and faster, soon you’ll acquire a magical mirror that can tip the scales in your favor. How the mirror works is that once you attack an enemy enough times, it will start glowing, after which you can activate the mirror and significantly slow time to inflict more damage. Senua also seems considerably faster as well.
Visuals
How can you tell when the game is proud of its visuals? Easy, they usually include the photo mode/photo editor with a gazillion options to tinker with. Senua’s Saga: Hellblade II is a sign of great things to come regarding visuals and just how much potential there still is in Unreal Engine 5. Don’t get me wrong, the game looks amazing. Senua is one of the most detailed player characters I have seen in games, and you will be honestly amazed once you open a photo mode and play with it to look for some low poly details. Let me tell you right away, there are none.
Not everything is sunshine and roses, though. Sometimes the game will get confused with the light & dark balance so the cave sections can be unnecessarily dark and the inclusion of forced letterbox, motion blur, and chromatic aberration by default can seriously dampen your gaming experience. This is why I’ll strongly recommend one of the popular Steam guides to turn all of that off, sit back, and enjoy the game with improved & better-edited visuals. Why were all those options added by default with no easy way to disable them is options is a pure mystery.
Audio
This is a mixed bag, to be honest. I mean, the audio design is great and it only enhances the psychosis in Senua when you often hear the voices bickering, insulting you, giving you false directions, guiding you, etc. At least that’s how it all worked in Hellblade: Senua’s Sacrifice. In this game, the voices are dangerously bordering on being annoying, overly talkative, and distracting. I’d often find them repeating and explaining something that just happened on screen or repeating Senua’s words just for the sake of it. It’s a formerly interesting gimmick that feels like it’s trying this time to overstay its welcome. One curveball in this front is the introduction of Hiddenfolk, hidden and supernatural beings from Icelandic folklore that live in a parallel world. They join Senua for one segment of the game as sort of guides for a test she needs to complete and I have to say they are far more interesting to listen to than Senua’s voices.
Overall
Senua’s Saga: Hellblade II does a lot of things right but it also follows a strict rulebook that the previous game established. Every aspect follows some kind of strict formula. The combat hasn’t changed much from the first game and the worst crime of all is that Senua’s voices pretty soon overstay their welcome. And let’s not forget my favorite thing where another character slowly walks in front of you giving you a bunch of story exposition and locking you in with a slow walk as well like you’re their prisoner.
For what it’s worth, the final boss fight feels pretty cathartic and the game is a considerable step up in visuals but it feels like Senua’s Saga: Hellblade II had a certain checklist during development so they could release a perfect formulaic sequel. The game still has my recommendation on account of the visuals and level design and all these flaws are barely noticeable if you never played the previous game (there is even a handy recap of of the first game in Extras on the main menu) and you’re in for quite a ride.
Capsule Computers review guidelines can be found here.