Senua's Saga: Hellblade II
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Senua's Saga: Hellblade II Trailers
Senua’s Saga: Hellblade II – Official Trailer | The Game Awards 2023
Senua's Saga: Hellblade II - The Senua Trailer | Xbox Games Showcase 2023
Critic Reviews for Senua's Saga: Hellblade II
Despite its greater scale and visual splendour, this sequel fails to escape the shadow of its predecessor with a muddled tale that Senua herself feels out of place in.
Senua’s Saga: Hellblade II is another Viking-worthy feast for the senses that meets the high bar set by its predecessor, even if it never really manages to clear it.
There is simply nothing else like Hellblade 2 on the market and that alone kept me enthralled the whole way through. Its pared-down elements might not be mechanically complex, but they give the story a momentum that makes it hard to put down. Ninja Theory tackles themes that are challenging and not often seen in games, with a backdrop that vacillates between the epic and the intimate. It's approach doesn't have widespread appeal, but Senua’s Saga: Hellblade 2 is as close to an interactive movie as we’ve seen yet.
Hellblade 2 continues Senua's story with grace, confidence, surprising brutality and thundering conviction.
It's easy to focus on Hellblade 2's flaws because they are so surface level. Combat is repetitive and made an unnecessary focal point. The extra characters dilute instead of adding. I'm still not sure what Hellblade thinks it is, or wants to be. But deeper than that, there is some quality worth rooting for - an interesting protagonist powered by a brilliant performance, ingenious use of the environment for exploration and puzzles, a true electric miracle of motion capture unfolding before our eyes. The temptation is to look at this, at the victories Ninja Theory finds as it flounders to keep pace with the biggest hitters, and wonder what the team could do with a lot more money behind it. But when you consider it keeps getting tangled up in its own triple-A Halloween costume, maybe the question is to wonder what magic it could work with less.
A joyless slog of barely interactive entertainment and a muddled portrayal of mental illness… that just so happens to have the best graphics ever on a video game console.
