Senua’s Saga: Hellblade II Review

Senua’s Saga: Hellblade II is a game that was developed by Ninja Theory who some may know for their work on Hellblade: Senua’s Sacrifice which was the first game in this series. This game is available on the Xbox Series X, Series S, GeForce Now and Microsoft Windows PC.

The first game in this series, Hellblade: Senua’s Sacrifice was one of my favourite games that I had on the PS4. It wasn’t a game that I would say was ever really that popular and I remember finding it on sale long after launch and giving it a go because the graphics looked nice. The game was probably one of the few in that generation that surprised me, it was exceptionally good and I just couldn’t stop playing it on the weekend that I had it. You can read my review for that game here.

When Senua’s Saga: Hellblade II was announced, I was excited. It was heralded as one of the games that was now part of the Microsoft next generation experience and was going to be available on Xbox and PC. That’s fine for me, I chose to play this one on PC.

One of the things that I would say to people who are playing on PC is that the game to me at least seemed to be very smooth. I don’t even have the latest hardware (I’m still using a 2060 Super graphics card) and it was running well. You would definitely need a more powerful graphics card to play this in 4k on the high settings. But I was able to get 1080p working just fine on my PC. I didn’t experience any crashes or freezing, it was smooth. I know not everyone’s PC is the same though, but I’m confident that the game should run well for people with proper gaming PCs with higher specs than my PC has got.

The game runs on the new Unreal Engine 5 and I could tell immediately when I started the game that it looked a lot better than 90% of games I had played. The character models in the game are highly detailed, Senua looked realistic and there’s a huge improvement on her character model compared to the first game in this series.

The environments in the game are highly detailed. For some reason, I found myself impressed with the way the rocks in the game looked. They looked amazing! The ground textures and other elements of the playable environment were realistic. It may be the impact of the Unreal Engine 5 being showcased that helped to make the environments better looking than many other games, but it may also be the work of the developers. There’s a developer diary video that was uploaded by Ninja Theory about the work they did when creating the environments for the Hellblade II world. They travelled to Iceland and photographed many locations and used those to build the game. You can watch how that was done below.

The gameplay is something that’s a bit different. I’d say that I enjoyed the gameplay because it was suitable for getting through the story, but it’s simplistic and repetitive at times. There’s two types of gameplay scenarios that feature heavily in this game, there’s combat gameplay and puzzle gameplay.

The combat gameplay is something that I really enjoyed. Each of the battles felt very cinematic and realistic. Senua fights with her sword in the game against various opponents. Much of the gameplay here is based on simple dodging, blocking and the use of either a light attack or a heavy attack. There’s also a special ability called ‘focus’ that charges during the battle and once activated allows Senua to increase her speed and unleash her finishing moves on opponents.

The combat always felt good, there’s also great use of sound. There’s music that plays quite strongly in some of the fights that creates a very tribal/barbarian feeling. There’s also whispers from the voices in Senua’s mind that speak throughout a fight, which echo how she feels. There’s always a lot of doubt in her thoughts and then moments where she thinks she is doing well. The gameplay leans heavily into the whole mental health aspect of the character.

The other elements of the gameplay are the puzzles. There’s a variety of puzzles in this game that the player will need to solve to get through certain areas. There’s ones where you need to find patterns in the environment Others where you will need to slowly unlock areas in the level so you can walk to where you want to go and some where you need to find items and place them in certain locations in order to unlock something. These are all good, but the only thing I felt was that some puzzles were repeated or re-used. The game is not super long so maybe they could of come up with a couple more? It’s annoying to solve on puzzle using a certain mechanic only to go into the next area and have to do the same thing again, but only slightly different this time.

The sound of the game is one of the other big things that’s great about it. If you have headphones and put them on, things sound amazing. There’s a lot of voices that are in Senua’s mind and when I tried it with headphones on, it was like they were everywhere. Really helped with the immersion of the game. I played as well with just the PC speakers and the sound was still excellent too.

The soundtrack stands out as very unique and powerful. Some of the tracks when they play in the game, particularly during the battles make you feel like you’re in the savage lands. The soundtrack does a lot to bring the game to life and without it, the game just wouldn’t feel the same. If you want to, you can listen to it on Spotify below.

The story of this games is fairly simple. Senua belongs to a people known as the Picts and they’re under attack by the Vikings. Things aren’t going well for the Picts and there’s death everywhere and their entire civilzation is dying. In the game you will visit villages where there’s just death everywhere. It’s scary and also horrible. All of this has had an impact on Senua who is suffering from Psychosis and likely other trauma as a result of what’s going on in the world around her.

As a person who loves ancient history, this game gives me a chance to explore he world of the Vikings and Picts. The first game brought this era of history to my attention and I spent a long time exploring the time period through various documentaries and books afterward. This new game gives me the same feeling and now that I know a lot more about this time period now that I have learnt about it all, I really do feel sorry for the Picts. I don’t like the Vikings for what they did to that part of the world. If this game can get more people reading and learning about ancient history, that’s a positive effect.

The other thing that Hellblade II does, is raise awareness for mental health. There’s few games out there that cover this topic and the game’s central character, Senua, suffers from Psychosis. Much like in the first game, her struggle with this continues. I suppose the game and its popularity does draw attention to this health condition and some people find find this game quite interesting to play. There’s a video that Ninja Theory did for their channel that goes into the Psychosis elements of this game, it’s about 20 minutes long but is interesting if you have time.

The only warning I would give to the readers of this review about this game is that’s it’s quite violent. It’s very violent, there’s gore, death and mental health themes. For some people this might be too much. Some of the villages are filled with the dead and there’s themes of death everywhere. It can be a bit shocking if not prepared for it and maybe a bit scary. This is not a game for kids and even some adults I know might have a hard time with it. For myself, I love the experience that Hellblade II gives me, it gives me something to think about and experience. It’s just for other people, it might just scare them a little too much.

The length of this game is roughly 6-9 hours but my Xbox app is saying I spent about 21 hours in there before writing this review. I didn’t get bored with it and just like with the first game, I finished it in a weekend.

Overall this is a game that I highly recommend. There’s not many games that will keep me playing all weekend long and not many games that will immerse me in the world in such a way like Sunua’s Saga: Hellblade II did. The graphics are some of the best I’ve seen, the sound/music is excellent and story is intense. It’s a great game to add to your collection and I hope it will keep you as hooked as I was. The only caveat is that it’s so intense this game, that for some people it might be too much and a bit scary. If you can handle it though, I’m happy to recommend this game for your collection.