Senua is back for her second round of a journey where all the odds are stacked against her. She is not only facing a series of trials involving a few giants that are deemed immortal and only soothed through human sacrifices, the voices in her head are going to break her down and make her doubt herself in more painful ways than the piercing of a sharp blade. Ninja Theory’s follow-up to Senua’s Sacrifice doesn’t reinvent the Viking Iceland wheel of brutality, instead offering more of what made the first game receive such acclaim: even more beautiful, deeper lore, raw combat, and some narrative developments that will hit you right in the guts. But how much off Hellblade 2: Senua’s Saga is an actual game?

A Journey of Sacrifices

Anyone who has played the first game should know by now that Hellblade 2 is not quite about gameplay depth. Instead, it’s a cinematic experience with a strong narrative focus, sometimes bordering on a walking simulator or interactive movie with plenty of exposition moments, at times as interactive as the worst of Quantic Dreams’ often brilliant but QTE-riddled adventures.

But that’s a direction that is made clear from the start, as Senua seeks to exact revenge on the slavers who have decimated her community. It’s intentionally slow-paced to make the other aspects of this epic shine through, with breathtaking sights and incessant whispers from the voices in your head, the narrator, other characters nearby, and the like. It’s a visual and aural masterpiece in that sense, voice work is remarkable across all characters, but Senua is the obvious highlight of the game.

Melina Juergens’ work as Senua, both in motion capture and voice acting, is once again outstanding. The way she delivers her lines with feeling and grit, grinding her teeth at times, looking completely lost and frightened on other occasions…it’s a performance worthy of the best ever seen in a videogame. This is bolstered by her acting for the combat scenes, as Senua screams, shouts and breathes heavily, taking every hit with audible languishing pain, almost piercing our ears with her honesty and raw talent, as real as can be.

Hellblade 2 regularly shows you in many ways that it isn’t your average game. One of them is the extremely cinematic and creative use of camera angles, with slow panning and intense face closeups that highlight the fantastic facial work of Senua and the other few protagonists, players gazing into her profound blue eyes as they have this magnetizing quality. During many of the cinematics, courtesy of Unreal Engine 5, we feel like the cameraman, slowly traveling around the actors and focusing on details that most videogames ignore and to their loss. This is one of the few games where secondary characters have almost the same level of facial quality as the protagonist, and although it’s not quite an uncanny valley, it’s some of the best work you’ll be able to see for a few years.

This Iceland is based on the real one, with some stunning sights and enough diversity to appreciate, but you’ll be in heaven if you’re a fan of rocks, boulders, and more stone, with a bit of river and lakes for good measure. It’s postcard quality, with the weather making it all feel more real than reality, gorgeous thunderstorms, wind effects, and brash waves crashing into the rocks with noticeable strength. The downside of all this is the rigidity of every aspect of the flora, each branch, leaf, and blade of grass immobile at your passage, sturdy as a rock, inadvertently keeping with the theme.

Hellblade 2 does without any sort of HUD; the screen is entirely free of anything that would clutter and clash with the gritty beauty in front of you. At times, this may stump you due to the need to interact with something that isn’t a regular action, such as lighting a fire, but these will be rare occasions as you learn the ropes.

Fighting With My Voices

The gameplay swings between long walks across the majestic but desolate landscapes of 10th century Iceland, solving some simple rune puzzles where you must find the right perspective just like in the first game, and relatively simple combat. Fighting has slightly evolved since the original, but it felt to me like there’s a lesser focus on it throughout the campaign, and these remain divisive – they are extremely limited in terms of depth and skill, resembling a timing mini-game where perfect dodges will allow you to strike, repeating this until the enemy falls. You can build your focus through your handy mirror to unleash a devastating combo, but apart from that, it’s all very basic and straightforward.

That doesn’t mean there isn’t a spark in these fights, though. They may be repetitive, but the choreography can sometimes be marvelous to watch as enemies jump on you out of nowhere, deliver unexpected blows, and the like. Scripted, certainly—and it’s definitely all planned down to the slightest detail, just like the most elaborate of dances—but it remains very effective as a cinematic piece, delivering impactful moments that more than makeup for the lack of an involved and deep combat system.

Boss battles are an aspect where the game falls somewhat short, again not due to the lack of grandeur, but because these clashes against giants take the path of the scripted visual panache by means of very simple gameplay artifacts. Instead of this epic confrontation, and without reaching too much into spoiler territory, Senua will be playing hide and seek in one and running for her life, barely having time to catch her breath and throw a few spears in the other. It’s fantastic as an interactive spectacle, but it doesn’t offer enough depth to challenge or involve you, the player, in a colossal battle of wits.

With a story that is entirely linear, apart from the occasional detour to find a point of interest that rewards you additional lore, which is great for completionists, Hellblade 2 still manages to feel a little stretched out during the eight hours that will take you to reach the end. Exposition for the slow walks along other characters is a recurrent theme but an understandable one; however, a certain cave descent with a few light and dark puzzles thrown in ends up tiresome, section after section of the same thing, feeling like an endless repetition of the same processes, making us yearn for some sunlight that will take us out of this wretched darkness.

A Journey of Much Grit But Little Skill

Hellblade 2 is more of a good thing, a thing that started with the first game and doesn’t change a winning formula. Admittedly, it’s not a formula that is going to win over everyone, but the limited gameplay is offset by the stunning visual and aural work, the entrancing journey into psychosis with the voices constantly messing with Senua’s ambitions and insecurities, and an overall cinematic feel that very few games manage to rival.

Yes, Senua’s Saga may be deliberately slow, combat is heavily scripted and akin to a timing minigame, and you’ll have a hearty dose of yawns to go with the sounds of jaws dropping to the ground, but this is a trip that deserves to be experienced – a trip into a gorgeous but dangerous Iceland, but especially into Senua’s dark and twisted psyche.

Score: 8.5/10

Pros:

• Gorgeous presentation, both for characters and environments
• Voice acting is remarkably good
• A big narrative focus that just doesn’t let go
• Combat has quite some punch and grit, visually speaking
• Senua’s voices are more present than ever

Cons:

• Deliberately slow for most of the time
• Combat is akin to a timing mini-game
• Mostly linear and repetitive in its structure

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Senua’s Saga: Hellblade 2 review code was provided by the publisher. You can read MP1st’s review and scoring policy right here.