Senua’s Saga: Hellblade II it shoves desperate brutality in your face and screams at you to recognize its beauty. Its landscapes are littered with disemboweled corpses and shrines of rotting flesh, and its shadows hide monsters carrying blood-soaked knives. In every chapter Hellblade II it’s a parade of agony and pain, and every scene has a background of taunting whispers. After just a few minutes of playing, he can feel trapped, trapped in the claustrophobic reality of Senua on the Icelandic coast, drowning with it under the dark waves.
And here’s the thing – it’s absolutely beautiful.
Hellblade II is a third-person narrative adventure set in 10th century Iceland and the sequel to Ninja Theory’s 2017 game, Hellblade: Sacrifice of Senua. Senua is a young warrior who hears a cacophony of disembodied voices in her mind, judging her every move. Whispers are a critical and permanent part of Senua’s psyche—a lesson she learns in the first game after realizing the depth of her father’s abuse as a child. In Hellblade IISenua finds how to live outside of her father’s influence, but his voice still roars through her mind at inopportune times, drowning out her whispers that the woman seems to be her ally.
Senua regularly sees the spirits of fallen warriors and civilians around her and carries their souls as a spiritual shroud, fueling her intense desire to save as many oppressed people as she can. His immediate goals are: Hellblade II opens with Senua and the others held captive on a slave ship during a catastrophic storm. The ship is driven ashore, scattering the slaves and slaves on the black rocks. Senua finds her sword here.
He makes his way inland, where he finds companions and learns of a plague of giants terrorizing local villages, wiping out entire communities and destroying valuable farmland. Throughout her journey, Senua battles giants and hordes of human-sized enemies—always one at a time—with a single sword and a bit of magic. Whispers provide a constant soundtrack of criticism, encouragement, warning, fear, anger, and doubt, hisses that break the silence and interrupt the inevitable moments of dialogue.
Hellblade II wider, extremely uncomfortable and violent vibe rather than a traditional adventure game. Its combat is okay, its puzzles a bit tedious and emotionally one-dimensional – but as an interactive visualiser of brutality, Hellblade II is prominent. Senua fights until her pores bleed, screaming with every swing of her sword, whispers surrounding her, telling her when to strike and to ignore the pain. Each fight is close combat and one-on-one, with fighters waiting their turn to rush around a misty circle, punching and dismembering him. Whispers are joined by the sounds of flesh smacking flesh, and the screen turns red when Senua is hit. Hellblade II enjoys physical violence.
Outside of battle, Senua’s body is sacrificed to the elements, caught in swirling riptides, and burned to ashes in blasts of hellfire, with broken pieces of earth floating around her. Senua laboriously steps into dark pools filled with ghosts of cursed, shadowy figures crying and trying to drag her down. The giant’s hand slammed into the ground, tearing apart the body with a wet spot under its palm. Reality is warped and torn apart, and Senua is trapped in agonizing, psychedelic nightmares of her father’s booming voice. He burns himself in the fire. His face fills the screen, panic on his lips and stark terror in his eyes. Whispers continue in every scene.
Basically, it’s metal as hell.
I played Hellblade II on an Xbox Series S without a headset and on a high-end gaming PC with a headset. The game looks stunning in both formats, although of course the details and lighting looked a bit sharper on PC. Senua’s life may not be full of laughs, but there are breathtaking landscapes dotted with delicate bushes and rugged rocks, fine red dust stretching to the horizon. There are lofty cave systems illuminated by the soft glow of blue flames; there are beaches with waves; There are snowy mountains illuminated by the golden setting sun. The environments in it Hellblade II all are phenomenally detailed, which is great news for the game’s Photo mode.
Whether it’s on console or PC, I recommend it all Hellblade II the player must wear headphones to fully enjoy binaural audio. In this format, the whispers surround your head like Senua’s, spawning menacingly from various directions. With no UI in the entire game, Melina Juergens’ perfect performance as Senua, and a headset full of soft, hissing judgments, Hellblade II it can be incredibly immersive.
Beyond its aesthetic and tonal merits, struggle Hellblade II simple and sometimes annoying. The game has reduced mechanics, and Senua only has a standard and heavy sword attack, plus a dodge move, a parry, and a special power. Timing is everything in battles, and Senua moves slowly enough that last-second adjustments rarely land. In addition, Senua’s special move is – dare I say it – superior, and it basically guarantees that she will kill any minion she fights. Between the annoying timing setup and the very powerful boost, it’s hard to find a rhythm with any enemy. Hellblade II. It can really be a rhythm that can be found in these fights. Hell knifebut I couldn’t identify it in the first playthrough.
The most successful puzzles Hellblade II Senua magically transforms the surrounding landscape, focusing on specific vortices to reveal the platforms she needs. These puzzles aren’t particularly difficult and don’t gain layers of complexity as the game progresses, but their settings are spectacular, usually reserved for cave systems that glow like the night sky. The game’s most annoying puzzles are the symbol-hunting puzzles, where Senua must find fragments of an ancient language in the environment. These moments feel like filler; they don’t move the story forward in any meaningful way and make me stare at the screen anxiously. The latter may be because I need new glasses, but I could still do without the character-seeking puzzles.
Hellblade II uses a limited set of inputs – just point, sprint, focus and interact – and its parts are played entirely with one hand, whispers shadowing Senua’s steps. Everything Senua does is wrapped in an apocalyptic frame; every conversation he has with himself or with his friends is drowned in anxiety and haste. There is no joy in Senua’s life, no respite from the pressure to save everyone, and nowhere to escape from the guilt that already weighs heavily on her mind. Senua’s only emotions are desperation, her trauma repeated over and over, her dreams recounted over and over again.
It is as if the Ninja theory was established Hellblade II to be an art installation in a busy museum—as if they expected their audience to move in and out of the room, pay attention to the jumps at a moment’s notice, and wanted to make sure that each scene told a complete story. Although Senua gathers a few allies along her journey, each character in this harsh world feels fleeting, and their presence lacks lasting impact. Hellblade II it’s stuck at 11 on the emotional scale, and it offers no opportunity for the tension to drop or rise, causing its climax to fall somewhat flat. The final scenes are as epic as the rest of the game, but they also feel like the rest of the game. So much so that I was surprised when the credits started rolling.
On a side note, I’ve never seen a game that triggered my phobia of crashing waves Hellblade II. I had to close my eyes for half of one segment as Senua was swept by the raging sea in regular pulses, the waves crushing her body and the camera repeatedly, and it turned my stomach. This is far from the only deep water horror scene in the game, so fair warning.
Hellblade II it’s an immersive sensory experience that’s often interrupted by tedious character-hunting puzzles. It’s an epic poem in video game form, fierce and timeless.
Senua’s Saga: Hellblade II Available on Xbox Series X/S and PC included in Game Pass.
