If you had a time machine and went back to the day before Hellblade II’s release to ask me about the game I was most anticipating, I would have said Hellblade 2. That day has come, and the game is out.
Before we dive into Hellblade 2, let me tell you about my connection to the Hellblade series. A few years ago, I got a 15-day Game Pass trial code. While looking for short games I could finish during this period, I came across Hellblade: Senua’s Sacrifice. Without knowing anything about the game, I downloaded it. I checked if my computer could handle it and went to sleep, as it was nighttime. The next morning, I had breakfast and sat down to play Hellblade. It was an incredible game; I didn’t leave my seat except for lunch. I finished the game that day.
The game promised a unique experience. However, this year’s new Hellblade game is an ordinary production that you can find examples of in many places.
The first game was a more unique, experimental work. Throughout the game, we solved various puzzles and engaged in short combat sequences. The game stood out more with its perfect cinematic narrative. I was unsure whether to expect this kind of experimental work from the second game or something more conventional. Ninja Theory, the developer of the first Hellblade, was acquired by Microsoft after its release, and Hellblade II was developed with Microsoft’s support. Would this game be Xbox’s God of War?
When the first gameplay video was released, we learned that no, this game aims to provide a cinematic experience like the first one. As someone who loved the first game, this wasn’t disappointing to me. However, after all the waiting, my first impression of Hellblade II is that it’s far from the level of the first game.
I won’t make ridiculous criticisms like “this isn’t a game, it’s a movie” in this review, rest assured. Contrary to what interaction enthusiasts say, this is a game.
Everything we can interact with is a game. Whether you change the course of the story through dialogue interactions or choose to walk on the left side of the path instead of the right. The type and dose of interaction depend on your gaming preferences. Let’s get back to Hellblade 2.
If you asked me to list my favorite games, I’d put the first Hellblade in the top three. I might even put it in first place. That’s how much I love that game. It’s an almost flawless work within its own concept. However, Hellblade 2 has regressed in many things that the first game did well.
Don’t get me wrong, Hellblade 2 is a pretty good game, but it’s far from the bar set by the first game.
In both games, we control a character named Senua.
Senua has suffered from psychosis throughout her life, which she refers to as darkness. This illness has made her entire life miserable. She was seen as a curse sent by the gods due to this illness by the community she lived in. Just because of this, she was kept imprisoned at home by her father Zynbel and not even allowed to go outside. Senua’s life, where she rarely went out, changed when she met a young man named Dillion. Dillion didn’t believe in Senua’s curse, and slowly a relationship developed between Senua and Dillion. However, after some events, Dillion loses his life. The first game was about Senua’s journey to save Dillion’s soul from Helheim. This game focuses entirely on Senua’s psychology. It perfectly illustrates the chaos, fear, and anxiety inside Senua’s mind.
However, the second game fails to maintain this psychological atmosphere. The theme it replaces this psychological atmosphere with feels very loose. After the events of the first game, Senua embarks on a journey to Iceland to both take revenge and save her people. Our character Senua makes friends and enemies on this journey. The main theme of the game is actually the psychology of the people we meet. Everyone has their own troubles and problems from the past. At times we empathize with these troubles, at times we use these troubles to gain superiority over them.
It might sound like a good concept, and yes, it is. However, a single target is always easier than multiple targets. The first game used all its bullets to describe Senua’s state of mind. This game doesn’t have that luxury; it has a few bullets for all characters.
As such, it doesn’t reach the impressiveness of the first game.
As I said before, if I had played this game without playing the first one, I would have liked it a lot. But the first game really raises the bar.
Before continuing this review, we strongly recommend you read our review of the first game.
Hellblade: Senua’s Sacrifice isn’t a game everyone will like. But it’s a game everyone should experience. However, the second game is definitely not a game everyone should experience. Despite being shorter than the first game, it’s much more boring. The game lasts about 6-7 hours. But right in the middle of the game, there’s such a cave section that it was the most boring thing I’ve played recently. It lasts about 1-2 hours and is so boring that I think it’s the biggest burden for those who don’t like the game.
For 1-2 hours, you walk empty-handed in the cave and solve menial puzzles.
I don’t know what you think, but I don’t like it when solving puzzles in games takes too much time after I’ve found the solution. But the puzzles in Hellblade 2 are almost entirely composed of these. And this bores people.
Let’s start from the beginning.
We start Hellblade 2 on a ship where we’re being taken to Iceland as a slave. The ship gets damaged and we crash ashore. Everyone on the ship has washed up in different places. Our character Senua starts to move forward in fear. Due to Iceland’s nature, everywhere is rocky. We start climbing. As we try to climb, the voices in our head start saying things like “we can’t climb”, “we’ll fall” just like in the previous game. Thus, Senua’s mind slowly begins to surrender to darkness.
Then someone appears ahead. What’s that? Darkness. They’ve given darkness a body.
The dark symbolism I praised in the first game is completely gone.
Well, they couldn’t use the method from the first game in a game with lots of people. Okay, but this time, the narrative from the first game has disappeared. Which affects you more: someone looking into your eyes and begging in front of you, or someone kneeling and begging in front of someone else? This is just an example. Such subtle nuances in the first Hellblade are either gone or very few in this game. In fact, making a sequel to the first Hellblade was a very risky decision. Because you can’t make another game set in Senua’s mind, as there’s nothing left to face. And if you do something different, you can’t reach the bar set by the first game. They chose not to reach the bar set by the first game. I’m not mentioning it to avoid spoilers for the first game, but even continuing from the first game damages the story of the first game.
No lie, they’ve used the darkness character very well, but as I said, it’s not as impressive as in the first game.
After a short mental struggle with darkness, we continue on our way. The slave traders have started searching for the escaped slaves. But we have nothing to defend ourselves with. We try to escape secretly without even helping the captured slaves. Some of the voices in our head judge us for not helping. Others support Senua, saying there’s nothing we can do.
After progressing along the paths, we somehow find a sword and encounter the game’s action system for the first time.
The movement scheme from the first game continues exactly, but there’s a big difference this time. Every fight is like a one-on-one duel. Every fight feels like a boss fight within itself. Of course, this also depends on the difficulty mode you’re playing the game in; I played on automatic difficulty.
In this difficulty, the game dynamically makes the game easier or harder based on how you play. The combat sequences in the game are actually like an advanced quick time event.
You can’t go to the area you want, the camera locks onto the enemy. No other enemy appears until you kill that enemy. I had a definition I used to explain story-based video games to people who have no connection to games.
Think of an action movie. You're shooting in the action scenes. You're watching the rest of the scenes.
This game is exactly the game of this definition.
They’ve planned everything finely like a movie. The whole game is like scenes strung together one after another. You can’t move on to the next one without finishing a scene.
Whenever you kill your enemy, an instant cutscene enters and your new enemy appears. Only the choice of when you land your sword blows is up to you. When you make your attack and kill your opponent, your next enemy comes with short but very impressive scenes. These transition animations are perfect.
Beyond perfect, this is sheer madness. Setting up all of this is mind-boggling. But they’ve done it. There are some transitions that you won’t even see in the most cult action movies. Sometimes you can’t even tell what’s a cutscene and what’s real gameplay. The game’s progression as a single camera, single shot takes this impressiveness to the highest point.
I personally really liked this system. The effects and animations that come out during combat really make you feel like you’re in a survival struggle. I’ve seen the character’s desperation in this game.
In many games, the character we play is overwhelmingly superior to the standard enemies in the game. Because games are a kind of power fantasy for us. But in this game, every enemy is either as strong as you or much stronger than you. And the game conveys this to you very well. You really feel like you’re face to face with death.
Imagine fighting an enemy who’s exactly as strong as you, your chances of winning are fifty-fifty. As time progresses, although your chances of winning are still fifty-fifty in each new encounter, the probability of you winning consecutively decreases. If you have a 50% chance of beating the first enemy, you have a 25% chance for the second, 12.5% chance for the third. And this starts to stress you out. The game gives this feeling. Especially the fight choreographies are perfect. Everything is finely crafted. Instead of offering you a free experience that allows you to do what you want, they chose to offer a very impressive cinematic experience and they’ve done it very well. In general, you can think of Hellblade 2 as a modernized version of Telltale games.
While our enemies in the first game were mythological creatures, in this game our enemies are mostly real people. While the first game had a bit more of a hack and slash style, this game makes you feel that in every fight, you and the person you’re facing are roughly the same strength, so you could lose at any moment.
Here they’ve made such a choice. In the first game, every blow you struck was clearly visible on your enemy. It was like a glass shattering effect. But here, wound marks form that are relatively harder to see. This situation reduces the feeling of seeing the trace of each blow. Don’t get me wrong, it’s still very good, just I think it was a bit more impressive in the first game.
To attack, you need to disrupt your opponent’s strike. When your opponent is ineffective, that’s when you need to attack. The combat system isn’t very detailed, but it’s simple and effective.
Now, let’s talk about the most prominent feature of the first game: its narrative.
The entirety of the first game was a perfect reflection of a psychotic mind. You couldn’t distinguish between reality and imagination. It showcased Senua’s mental state brilliantly and portrayed her traumas exceptionally well. And this narrative was in perfect harmony with the gameplay and story. If the first game was like a low-budget film made with an amateur spirit but executed brilliantly, this game feels like a big-budget production lacking soul.
While the first game was entirely Senua’s personal experience, in this game we see Senua’s social life and interact with other people. In the first game, there were no characters other than our enemies and the main character. All the characters were voices in our head. Being psychotic, we heard numerous voices from our surroundings. In the first game, these voices, the story, and the cinematic narrative were in perfect harmony. However, this second game lacks that narrative perfection.
In the first game, because it focused entirely on a single character, you deeply understood Senua’s experiences and traumas. But in this game, those traumas don’t affect you as much. Multiple characters aren’t developed as well as the single character was in the first game. Which is understandable. However, the narrative that made the first game special has disappeared in this one. In the first game, you felt Senua’s fears to your core. Even during my second playthrough of the first game, there were moments when I was tense with fear, even breathless. There were times when I paused the game and just sat there, frozen with tension.
This game lacks that spirit. Everything is very professional but soulless.
Of course, this is somewhat a matter of personal taste.
I mentioned that I liked the unsettling nature of the first game. In Hellblade 2, Senua screams throughout the game, but it just irritates your ears. It’s comparable to the screams of a neighbor’s crying baby right now.
In the first game, Senua was trying to save the soul of her deceased lover, Dillion. In this game, we’re going to avenge Dillion. A tribe whose name I can’t remember enslaves people and offers them as sacrifices to giants. By doing so, they try to protect themselves from the giants’ wrath. When Senua learns about this, she discovers another way to protect themselves from the giants. Each giant used to be a normal, ordinary person. But the mistakes they made in life and the pain they experienced transformed them into giants. Senua discovers that they can neutralize the giants through these pains. This is essentially the plot of the game.
The game has a beautiful opening and a beautiful ending. But between the opening and closing, the game starts to drag significantly. As I mentioned at the beginning of the review, that cave section. It goes on and on. It goes on and on. There are no other characters in this section either. Actually, there was good potential here. While Senua was alone, they could have made a Senua-focused section like in the first game. They didn’t. In fact, the reason for all my frustrations is the things they could have done but didn’t. There’s so much wasted potential. I don’t know if Microsoft pressured them or if it was their own decision, but it’s a shame.
Let’s return to the narrative. The cinematography and visuals are excellent. Both the animations and the scenes look very good. In terms of photorealism, Hellblade 2 is undisputedly the best game ever made. I don’t think there will be a production that can surpass this anytime soon. They even made the character costumes in real life first, using the methods and materials of the historical period in which the game is set. Then they scanned these using various methods and transferred them to the digital environment. There’s truly insane effort here. I look at the game, then I look at real life. The game looks more real than reality. Everything looks so good that you can’t play the game because you’re constantly taking screenshots. They’ve made a beautiful photo mode for the game. You’ll find yourself pausing the game to take screenshots all the time. We’ve seen the first game to fully utilize Unreal Engine 5. And it looks like it won’t have a rival for a long time. Even the most photorealistic games will start to look like cartoons to you after Hellblade 2.
With the graphics being so realistic, the result is indistinguishable from a cinematic film. Especially with the advantage of being a video game, it has produced close combat scenes that we couldn’t see in any film.
It’s unrivaled in terms of production quality. I always thought that RDR2 would be the benchmark for production quality in video games and that no one could surpass it. Of course, they are very different, unrelated games, but there’s an incredible quality here.
Only the story seems a bit lackluster within the narrative.
Let’s return to the gameplay: Puzzles. The biggest flaw of the first game, as everyone agreed, was the puzzles. Although the game tried to diversify the puzzles, after a certain point, it became repetitive and bored the player. The team thought, “How can we prevent puzzles from boring the player?” and made this decision: Remove the puzzles.
There are far fewer puzzles in this game compared to the first one. They removed puzzles to reduce the tedium of puzzles, but what they replaced them with are just empty walking sequences. This hasn’t made the game more fun, but rather made it even more boring. They barely used the perspective puzzles from the first game in a few places. Instead, they created a new puzzle mechanic.
Imagine a straight path. There’s an obstacle A in front of you. When you focus on that sphere in the sky, obstacle A disappears. But a bit further, obstacle B appears. When you go between obstacle A and B and look at the sphere in the sky again, obstacle B disappears and obstacle A reappears. Since you’ve already passed that obstacle, it’s not a problem. The puzzles are a slightly more intertwined version of this concept.
I’m not a person who particularly enjoys puzzles in games. But I managed with the puzzles in the first Hellblade. Here, however, I got very bored. They’re exactly like labor puzzles. Very simple, but time-consuming. I don’t want to waste time after I’ve found the solution to the puzzles. But in this game, once you find the solution, you’ll have to go and open and close each obstacle one by one. It bored me. That infamous cave section of the game consists almost entirely of these. I even considered quitting the game. That’s how much I disliked it.
It’s as if the plans for the development part of the game were different, but then they decided to release the game early and said “add puzzles, add, add, add” as if.
It starts as a 9 out of 10 game, drops to about 5 out of 10 around this cave part. Then it rises back to 9 out of 10.
But when you look at the overall experience, it leaves a slightly sour taste in your mouth.
To sum up, Hellblade 2 is a good game for those who like the genre but it hasn’t reached the striking impact of the first game. It hasn’t addressed the shortcomings of the first game and has added new ones on top. For someone who enjoys cinematic storytelling, it’s a near-perfect game.
While writing this review, I always felt a bit uneasy. I feel like I’ve portrayed Hellblade 2 as if it were a terrible game. No, Hellblade 2 is a very good game. In most of the aspects I criticized, it’s very good, I just liked those aspects more in the first game.
Games are usually rated out of 100 points. However, nowadays, people don’t seem to weigh each point equally when rating games.
Normally, scores should be distributed linearly, but they seem to be distributed more like an exponential function graph.
The difference between 90 and 100 is much greater than the difference between 10 and 20. Actually, giving numerical scores to games in general is very inconsistent, but that’s a topic for another article.
Please note that this review was originally written in Turkish. As a result of the translation process, there may be instances where the translated text contains inaccurate equivalents of terms or expressions.