If there was an annual award for releasing a good game that is accidentally grouped in with a more significant controversy, then this year that would go to Senua’s Saga: Hellblade II for releasing weeks after its parent company Microsoft publicly made a “statement” that they aren’t interested in art form games anymore. This, in turn, put a bunch of weight on Hellblade II before release. When it came out, it was really good but not a masterpiece. People online began to start editing “Best of Ninja Theory” videos set to Sarah McLachlan. But should we blame this current shift in gaming all on Hellblade and look at it on its own before we throw it on the pile? Well, from my experience with the game, this was the closest I felt that a non-Sony game has gotten to fully replicating the cinematic storytelling style that bigger budgeted games have been aiming for, feeling more like if A24 made a video game. As for the game itself, that’s when the issues start to pop up in the short experience.
The game picks up shortly after the events of the first Hellblade, with protagonist Senua being captured by Icelandic Vikings in hopes of learning where they are taking her people whom they have enslaved. When you press start and get all the options set up, you are hit in the face by the game’s main point of praise. I played this on an Xbox Series X, not a PC, and with that said, this is easily one of the best-looking games I have ever played, not since playing Arkham City back on my Xbox 360 has a game’s graphical fidelity made such a substantial impact on me, and that was helped by the design choice to have the game be presented in a letterbox format, this being the case that if you are playing on PC and have an ultra-wide, then you wouldn’t experience this AR change.
Everything was going well for me until I looked down at my controller and realized that I had been holding up on the left thumbstick for the last 30 minutes, and nothing had changed. Then, I realized what this was: the most gorgeous pure walking simulator game I’ve played. But that didn’t bother me at all, mainly because I’m that weird type of person who, if a game is sucking me into its world, I will look past a majority of the flaws, hence why I enjoyed Cyberpunk 1.0 when it first launched more than most people. Hellblade II is an immersive experience, from the visual art style to the next-level sound design. I should add that I played this with headphones, and the Dolby Atmos mix helped immerse me even more into this messed-up world.
Then you have the combat and puzzles throughout the game, which are just there; they are the same level of depth as the first game, mainly put here to keep the game from genuinely earning that walking simulator label. However, the combat, in general, is more detailed here than the first; it’s still simple compared to Ninja Theory’s past work, like DMC, but it’s more visceral. You approach an enemy, dodge, and try to slice them, and it’s brutal, not the combat but the animation and the weight; it’s nearly life-like but still gives you that uncomfortable feeling when taking down a foe. Then I realized it was designed like this so you can be immersed in Senua’s current emotions by being forced to kill in the current situation, and that’s when the combat clicked for me. But once I got through that issue, I was presented with one of the best gaming experiences I’ve had in a long time.
Now, with that said, should you give this game a chance? That mainly depends on whether any of the marketing has appealed to you. Because this is a game similar to The Last of Us in tone, this is not a game you will have fun while playing; it is a game that will stay with you emotionally and probably make you feel bad. I’m the type of person who likes media that has that effect on you, which is why I loved Oppenheimer so much last year. But I think this will be a less talked about game given that prelude going in, and also, with Microsoft finally starting to look closely at the money reports from Xbox, I won’t be doing this game any favors. But from my perspective, this is one of the best games of the year so far, and I hope it gets enough steam to convince Xbox to look at the team they have with Ninja Theory and improve on them instead of cutting them to the side.
Score: 9 out of 10
Reviewed on Xbox Series X