Senua's Saga: Hellblade II | Review (2024)

Before getting into the game proper, there’s a wonderfully narrated recap of Senua’s journey in the first game, as she sought to retrieve the soul of her slain lover Dillion from Helheim itself. If you’ve not played Senua’s Sacrifice: Hellblade, you should – there are deeper elements relating to Senua’s past that do bear some relevance to the plot of this far grander sequel – but isn’t strictly necessary.

Salt and Sail

The first game was a very personal story for Senua, dealing with her past; her ‘curse’ and how she fought against the influence of the darkness within her. The overall story told here in Senua’s Saga: Hellblade II is far grander and broader than that of the first game, and while we still deal with things on a very personal level for Senua, there is far more here at stake.

You can rest easy however – I won’t spoil the journey ahead. Everything I’ll show here will be mere snippets across this eight-or-so-hours long adventure, and there’ll be no real hints as to what’s to come beyond what you’ve already seen in trailers, for the most part. All I will say is that the Northmen have their own problems, as Senua will discover, for their land is plagued by giants.

The Northmen, with particular focus given to Slave Master Thórgestr, hail from Iceland, and it is here, surrounded by these incredible, sweeping vistas, twisted rock and the unrelenting elements that Senua must travel. The country is dark and beautiful, but also brutal and unforgiving. It is as much an ever present character throughout the game as Senua is herself.

Senua’s journey starts at sea, where she has allowed herself, and indeed some of her kinsmen to be deliberately captured by these Northmen tribes. The same men that killed her beloved Dillion in the first game have been raiding her village, taking and enslaving her people. Her goal is to get to the root of it; the source of these raids, and end them, no matter the cost.

Brutal and Beautiful

We can’t go too long into this without mentioning the visuals on display here. If you’ve been patiently waiting for the “next-generation” of gaming to arrive, well, I can’t think of a better showcase than this.

The world of Senua’s Saga: Hellblade II is utterly jaw-dropping to look at, all rendered in stunning detail using Unreal Engine 5. The landscapes are vast, with densely rendered ground texture work and finely detailed geometry.

Senau’s journey will take you through all manner of locales. Pebble and rock strewn shorelines, cliff-faces made up of jagged sharp edges; gorgeous, mist-laden forests, dark, terrifying caves and broad, sweeping plains are all on display here, and all look amazing.

The game also has a lovely built in photo-mode, which you can trigger at any time during gameplay and cutscenes with the press of up on the d-pad. You can add filters, make fire or waves retain their animations, and even add light sources. I’m no photographer, but expect plenty of really awesome looking snaps to appear on social media shortly after launch.

Much ado has been made of the game running at 30 frames-per-second, and as someone who vastly prefers performance and higher framerates, I can tell you first hand, it mattered not one bit. The game is extremely well-optimised and I’m pleased to say that it’s a very smooth 30.

Either way, it is so immersive, so incredible to look at, that after 30 seconds into it, I’m pretty confident most people won’t notice, nor will they actually care. I’ve tested the game in ultrawide 1440P on PC at higher frame rates (90+), as well as at 4K60 – but I went back to the big screen in the lounge once I’d captured my footage.

Senua’s Saga: Hellblade II deserves to be played on the biggest and best screen you’ve got on hand.

Friends and Foes

As I mentioned, Senua’s Saga: Hellblade II is a far broader tale, and Senua is not alone on her journey. Throughout your playtime you’ll encounter other characters – each with their own tale to tell, all trying to survive the events at hand.

I’ve already mentioned Thórgestr, the Slave Master, played impeccably by Chris O’Reilly. In latter chapters, we’ll also meet other characters – Fargrímer, played with a venerable wisdom by Gudmundur Thorvaldsson, and the fierce Ástríðr, played by Aldís Amah Hamilton – an isolated and desperate leader of another tribe – who also consider Thórgestr and his band of slave-trafficking Northmen as enemies.

Whereas Senua travelled to Helheim alone in the first game, she’s now often accompanied on her journey across Iceland by some of these characters. It’s a lovely change, and we get to see Senua’s voice and motion capture actress Melina Juergens really flex her incredible talent, as she constantly juggles between revealing to much of herself, as well as the truth about why she is different. About her darkness.

Because of course, Senua is never truly alone, because ”The Furies” are also with her, ever present, whispering, needling in her ear.

As in the first game, Senua experiences psychosis – she sees and hears things that others don’t. Ninja Theory once again teamed up with Professor Paul Fletcher from Cambridge University, as well as real people with experience of psychosis to bring Senua’s condition to life.

The Furies are constant; sometimes mocking, sometimes encouraging – but always there. They comment on what Senua, and by extension, the player may be doing, conveying sometimes useful information, as well as complaining if we’re going the wrong way.

There’s one moment in the early game where Senua runs forward to help people trapped, drowning in a capsized shipwreck. We crawl in, desperately scrambling to save them and then the sneering laughter breaks through. “Stupid girl. She was wrong. You thought they were real – idiot. She never knows. Stupid!”

There is a difference here though – while Senua is never cured of her psychosis, she has learned to manage it far better in this deeper, broader sequel. Her experiences have led her to a point where the Furies almost feel like allies, and while they’ll sometimes be cruel and harsh, I also feel they are looking out for her too.

Ninja Theory have said it, and I’m going to say it too – if you’re going to play Senua’s Saga: Hellblade II, then you absolutely, unequivocally have to play with the best headphones you can get your hands on. The entire game is a revelatory auditory experience, recorded in full 3D-Binaural sound – and it is incredible.

The inner voices of your furies twist and spin around your head; the rumbling bass of your darkness speaking to your worst fears, making your skin crawl. The soundscapes of the harsh environments and the world around you are relentless.

It’s a goosebump-inducing experience, and all the better for it. There was one particular moment when trapped in a deep dark cave system, hunted by things better unseen; you could hear every footstep, every breath in the darkness, just beyond your vision. It’s truly haunting stuff.

Runes and Rituals

Ninja Theory have been pretty upfront about exactly what Senua’s Saga: Hellblade II actually is – as a digital only, lower priced release, this is not another overly long, padded out action RPG. This is an evolution of the first game, where everything is dialled up to eleven. The team at Ninja Theory describe this approach as “Independent AAA“.

That includes the combat, which I’ll come on to in a bit, as well as the games quieter moments, which often involve environmental puzzles, much like the first game.

These puzzles and challenges mainly revolve around identifying runes and patterns in objects strewn throughout the environment. There’s a neat evolution on these that I won’t spoil here relating to the overall plot, and these quieter moments are often used to learn more about just what’s going on, why things are happening, and how to put an end to it. Suffice to say these puzzles often provide much needed respite from some of the more intense moments throughout your time in Senua’s Saga: Hellblade II.

Having said that, if you found these tedious or laborious throughout your time in the first game, I doubt much of what Ninja Theory have done here is likely to change your mind. One improvement is that it’s much clearer to me as to where I can and cannot go in Hellblade II, and I spent far less time hitting untraversable ledges or barriers when trying to solve these than in the previous game.

I will also say that in bigger games, this is the kind of thing that when repeated often enough would begin to outstay it’s welcome. Happily, in this smaller package, the length and variety of the puzzles on offer hits just about right for me.

It’s also an opportunity to explore these beautifully crafted environments, and there are plenty of hidden secrets to discover, from folklore tales and stories on Rune carved masts, to the stone faces, marvellously obvious once found, yet sneakily hidden literal faces hewn in rock, melting away when you focus on them. Do this, and they reveal a tree, and another tale to hear.

There’s obviously some replay value here in trying to find all of these, and fret not achievement hunters. The game is replayable in chapters, and is broken down further into specific sections. I wouldn’t actually suggest trying to find all the hidden items the first time through. There’s something else that becomes available to you after you’ve finished, that can alter following playthroughs – and you may want to try that out to see what’s different.

Vicious and Visceral

As much as I love the visuals and audio in Senua’s Saga: Hellblade II, I utterly adore the games combat. For fans of the first game, this is definitely an evolution rather than a revolution. Critics of the first games combat may want something deeper, but personally I found it to be immensely satisfying in a number of crucial ways. Senua is a capable warrior, and even though the fights on hand are only ever in a 1v1 scenario, they also, magically – never actually feel that way.

The arenas in which Senua finds herself are often full of other things going on, with enemies organically ‘taking over’ as you move from one opponent to the next. As Senua’s sword pierces the flesh of one fearsome looking warrior, another grabs her shoulder, tossing her to the ground, smoothly transitioning me to the next fight, barely giving me a moment to breathe. It’s relentless.

Senua has a light, quick attack on X, and a heavy attack with the Y button. You feel Melina Jeurgens’ performance in every moment, and there’s good reason for that. Every animation on display has been performance and motion-captured by the team at Ninja Theory, and it really pays off. The team spent nearly 70 days filming combat, and the results are fantastic – every kill felt and looked different, every finishing move brutal and unique.

Senua can parry too, and the timing is fairly tight. Miss it, and you’ll just block – hit it right, and a flash of blue sparks will open your opponent up, allowing you to dish out some serious punishment. Some enemy attacks will also flash red before they land – while they can be blocked, this will break Senua for a moment, leaving you open to being hit. Better to dodge with A, and roll away to recover.

She also has the ability to focus using her childhood mirror – it has to charge, but hit it and the screen explodes in a dazzling array of shattered glass effects and rune like symbols, slowing your opponent for you to unleash a fury of combo hits upon them.

Every one of the fights and combat sequences I played through felt like a boss-level face off in some way. It always felt like a true survive-or-die moment – all or nothing. It’s the only time in my entire gaming memory, that I can remember being so in the moment that I let out some sort of animal war cry during a particularly intense sequence. Sitting in the dark, late at night, headphones on, genuinely screaming as I swung my virtual sword – it is so utterly immersive that I felt like I was there.

Heart and Home

Despite the backing of a company as large and as well-funded as Microsoft, Ninja Theory have, in my opinion, nurtured their independent spirit and kept it well and truly alive in every facet of Senua’s Saga: Hellblade II.

Yes, they can, and have – done far more than any struggling indie developer could likely achieve, but the heart of Senua’s Saga: Hellblade II – the sheer ambition of it – is something to be applauded.

It doesn’t waste your time, and it exceeds it’s goals in every conceivable way, delivering the true ‘next-gen’ showcase Xbox fans have been waiting for.

In an age of ballooning budgets, job losses and studio closures, this is the kind of thing I’m here for. I do hope the game is recognised for what it is, rather than for what it isn’t it.

It’s brutal. It’s breath-taking. It’s brilliant. If this is “Independent AAA”?

Sign me up for more.

A digital copy of Senua’s Saga: Hellblade II was provided to XboxEra for review by Microsoft.