Hellblade II: Senua's Saga (2024)

I am really sad about this one. I really wish it was better and I feel like it could have been, but it just falls flat. The graphics, even on low which is the only thing my PC could run, were absolutely stunning, but some drawbacks came from it. The reliance on small cutscenes to mantle up or down and the painfully slow running speed are problems I think arise from the game being so demanding and needing time to load stuff, but the slow sprint and climb feel so bad.

It has been a while since I played Hellblade 1 so I forgot that Senua had constant voices talking to her in that one too, but the voices always talking were awesome and a great way to deal with some of the boredom that happened when walking or doing puzzles. Speaking of puzzles, I hated the focus on the pattern puzzles because you has to run around a lot and that was painfully slow, but at least there weren’t that many of those puzzles. I do wish the voices stayed during the giant fights and during combat. Now speaking of combat, it’s just bad, no other way to say it. It is too simplistic and feels bad, the only good point was the final blows looking cool.

Lastly, the story. I think it was fine for the most part and I like how it gave people for Senua to interact with, but the ending felt super rushed and not very good.

In the end, I think the game started strong with the shipwreck, and continually got worse. I did at least somewhat enjoy it all the way through, especially because the voices were very fun to listen to, but in the end I was very disappointed. Light 5/10.

I installed this because I'm planning to get around to playing it soon, and was tinkering with the graphical settings last night. I'm genuinely surprised Senua's Saga: Hellblade II this is locked to 30fps on Series X, with no performance mode, for a couple reasons.

One is that this game doesn't really have an option to run without some form of upscaling activated on PC, be it TSR, FSR or DLSS, unless you are running DLAA. Given the Series X supports FSR 2.0, one would think that the game could support a performance upscaling mode via FSR that would allow for greater frames per second without as much of a hit to the GPU.

The second is that I noticed that setting the game to the highest possible settings on my PC utilizes only a little bit above a third of my GPU's full potential, and the game plays very smoothly at a locked 60 fps. My system really isn't working that hard, and I'm utilizing DLAA to maintain a native resolution instead of one that is being upscaled. Which also means I could take a bit of a load off the GPU if I really needed to by utilizing DLSS. I know DLSS and FSR are not comparable one-to-one, but I imagine the latter is still capable enough.

I could be way off base, but it really does strike me that with some optimization and a performance mode that utilized FSR 2.0, Senua's Saga: Hellblade II could likely hit 60 fps on Series X. Even without FSR, I think a 1080p HD mode would probably let it hit 60fps for those who favour a slightly smoother experience over total graphical fidelity. And with the Series X sharing so much of it's hardware DNA with standard gaming PCs, albeit tweaked and customized, I wish that devs weren't so quickly abandoning performance modes during this latter half of the current console gen.

The beauty of the performance mode on console is that it is a single toggle. It gives console users an option to tweak their experience without having to delve into the minutia of graphical settings. It was a nice middle ground whereby you didn't need a PC to benefit from a simple toggle to either boost graphical output or boost frame performance. You just made a simple choice: do I want higher frames per second, or do I want a prettier image. And for those that don't care, it could be completely ignored.

While I recognize that performance modes on consoles are a relatively new thing, I had a hope they'd stick around. A console is a great plug-and-play solution, and giving users a performance option that was just as simple was a nice little bonus. What seems to be a slow loss of that across several newer tentpole titles is disappointing, especially when it seems there is a good chance some of these games could still boast a performance mode without an issue.

This game wastes your time. Its presentation is gorgeous and the oppressive atmosphere is spot on for what it is going for. But there is no game here. It is push forward to see the video play.

Combat was intriguing at first with no on-screen prompts, no health bars, and just the character interactions to understand whether you are doing well or not. The first couple fights I enjoyed because they were short. However, with the boss fight it became a huge chore and felt insanely scripted and uninteresting.

Overall, the game is way too slow in the first hour of play and just doesn’t have any hook that makes me want to play more. The game is mainly about beating down Sensua to see her get back up and succeed. But there are no stakes to make it worthwhile or for us as the player to push forward to see her quest through.

I played the first game to completion, it was intriguing and mysterious and felt like a tight, short offering. Maybe this is just more of the same and I am not in the mood at all for it.

This game is best experienced I think looking at it more like an interactive film than a capital G Game.

It has incredibly strong characters, environments, sound design and the motion capture and visuals are world class.

With that said the combat is almost trivial and not very evolved from the first game but is more cinematic.

The puzzles are all incredibly simple lock and key puzzles that don't add much to the experience at all and feel like they are more there to force you to explore the beautiful environments a little more rather than make you feel clever in any way (as a good puzzle should).

And that's it, the three elements that make up the game are primarily walking with a sprinkling of puzzles and combat.

Overall not a bad interactive film but as a game I think it comes up way short.