Hellblade II is neither the masterpiece critics have made it out to be nor is it the irredeemable dumpster fire some claim it is. When you look past its gorgeous presentation and excellent performances, what you'll find is a frustrating mess of a game--a dated walking-sim occasionally broken up by boring puzzles and terrible combat sections, all held together by a story that has its moments, but ultimately falls apart under any amount of scrutiny.

I disagree with the opinion that you can’t make a sequel to Hellblade: Senua’s Sacrifice, because what makes this game all the more frustrating to me is that it does have a story to tell--one about healing and helping others overcome their trauma. Sadly, it spends too much time wallowing in the same themes as before, leaving its more interesting topics for the last quarter of the game. Too little, too late, I say.

I take absolutely no joy in saying this, but I don’t recommend Senua’s Saga: Hellblade II.

Watch the full review here: https://youtu.be/AXJ2sgi13gI

Hellblade: Senua's Sacrifice is my favorite game of all time. It tells a story through every aspect of its gameplay. Everything from the combat, the setting, the sound design, the visuals, the acting is superb. The story itself is simple, yet told in the most incredible way. It is a game in which you truly become one with the character you play, feeling her doubts, fearing her fears. The Poem before the bridge will live in my mind for the rest of my life. The game was a life-changing experience for me.

Hellblade II: Senua's Saga is something I regret playing now. The graphics are stunning beyond stunning, I have never seen a more beautiful game in my life. Beyond that, it falls short consistently.

The story quickly becomes a jumbled mess, yet felt more simple than the first, in which I continue to connect the dots to this day. In Hellblade II, there are no dots to connect because you are told the entire story through everyone's favorite means: Exposition! Constant exposition, from the narrator, the hidden folk, the voices and the NPCs. The vast majority of my issues is with this part of the game.

Senua herself seems to have forgotten everything she went through in the first game. She discovers the "truth" in Hellblade 2 about 10 times a scene, having some grand meaningless revelation about something I thought had already been established. I don't remember Dillion being mentioned even once, yet Zynbel/Shadow is there the entire game, until he isn't anymore, and that is never explained. You are telling me Dillion, Senua's dead lover, who she journeyed to Hel to save the soul of, is not even present in her subconscious? Yet she cares so much about, and guilt trips until the end of the game about all these randoms who drowned?

The combat is a downgrade, trading fighting multiple enemies with numerous complex combos for an interactive movie that holds your hand even on the hardest difficulty, in which you only fight one incredibly passive enemy at a time, only for one of a set of animations to play then a transition animation then another until combat is over. Senua has somehow lost all of her incredible acrobatics and swordsmanship from the first game, and instead now swings a Viking sword as if it is an 8 pound sledgehammer at the blistering speed of a broken Ford Model T.

I could go on, and I wish to, but chances are nobody is going to read this. It is really more of a rant and a catalogue of my thoughts immediately after finishing the game. I am disappointed in the outcome of the sequel to my favorite game.

I thought Hellblade: Senua's Sacrifice was one of the best games that I'd ever played. It was certainly unlike any game I'd ever played. The story was good, but it was the way they told it that was incredible. It also wouldn't have worked on any other medium such as a TV show, movie or graphic novel, etc. The game managed to place you in Senua's headspace, simulate how someone in her position might think and feel. It certainly changed my perspectives on mental health, and how disparagingly mental illness is usually treated by the entertainment industry. It made you realise how frightening it must be for someone suffering from psychosis, how badly they are demonised by society in general, and how essential empathy is. The ending of the game subverted the usual gamer experience, and sent a powerful message.

So, despite my reservations that Hellblade was a unique game that really didn't need a sequel, I was looking forward to a sequel anyway. I wanted to like this game. But my concerns were borne out unfortunately.

The problem is not that Hellblade 2 isn't as good as the first game. The problem is that the aspects in which the first Hellblade wasn't particularly good are even worse here. The developers made the worst parts of the first game even worse.

Hellblade was partly walking simulator, punctuated by some fights and some puzzles, and elevated by it's exceptional story and storytelling. However, Hellblade 2 barely even meets the definition of a walking simulator. It's more like a very long cut-scene interspersed with QTE's.

Admittedly, it's an exceptional demonstration of next-gen tech. There have been very few games since the PS5 / RTX4000 series came out that are genuinely next-gen, but Hellblade 2: Senua's Saga is a technical masterpiece. It you've got a decent PC set up and really want to see what it can do, this is an excellent showcase. But buy it on sale, not full price - it's not worth it.

The Good

• It's an artistic and technical masterpiece. The graphics are simply stunning. Everything appears to be rendered in real time and you can't tell the difference between the game play and the cut scenes (more on that later). Everything you saw in the trailer is true - it really does look that good. The reflections, the atmosphere, the volumetric fog, the water physics, the trippy illusions - you will find yourself stopping all the time just to take a look around.
  
• Unlike the consoles, PC's get 60fps if your GPU can handle it.
  
• If, like me, you don't like using controllers then don't worry because KB+M controls are absolutely fine.
  
• The acting is excellent, both the physical acting and stunts as well as the speech. Melina Juergens knocks it out of the park again. This time there are quite a few supporting actors and they're all great too.
  
• The animation and motion capture is top-notch, possibly the best in any game out there at the moment.
  
• The audio is exceptional. You really, really want to play this with a good set of headphones. And preferably in the dark. The binaural techniques employed are really effective. The game is incredibly atmospheric.
  
• The story is still a strong point in my opinion. It's a lot more straight-forward than the first game and doesn't have the same punch, but it is a decent story nonetheless. The storytelling is much less effective, however.
  
• There's no HUD, which was a good design decision in the first game that they have carried over into this one, and it really adds to the immersion.
  
• Senua is an excellent character, one of the best-realised characters in a game, movie or TV show in my opinion. Any reviewers whining about how she's a generic "strong, female character" are showing themselves to be the toxic man-babies that they pretend they aren't.

The Bad

• There is almost no game play. You spend the majority of the game watching cut scenes or pressing the forward button as you walk down paths and vast amounts of exposition are dumped on you. Those paths are very pretty, but you might as well be watching a movie of a person walking along a path while someone tells them a stroy.
  
• The fights were never a strong point of the first Hellblade game. However, you did often need to fight several enemies at once, there was some challenge to it and a modicum of skill was required in order to beat groups of multiple enemies and the bosses. The fights in the sequels are much poorer. You block/parry, dodge, hit the enemy a couple of times and then the hit bar fills up and you do a killing move. The enemies always come at you one at a time. The developers are so obsessed with creating cool looking kill moves and quick cut scenes between individual enemies that at times I wondered if my actions were even having any effect or whether the fights were simply scripted. I think I died once in the whole game, the fights were that easy. In effect, the fights are nothing more than QTE exercises (although the button presses don't flash on screen).
  
• There are only two types of puzzles in this game although they do combine them to quite a neat effect. As a result, the rune puzzles are marginally better than the first game. However, while there are similar conceits in Hellblade 2, none of the puzzles match the quality of the illusion gates or time-displacement puzzles in the first game. Nothing comes even close to that 'blind' level in the first game. And that's the crux of the problem; the first game provided experiences that I'd never had in 30 years of gaming, the second game doesn't.
  
• The voices are a strong point once again. They are never quiet and they are often disconcerting. Sometimes the advice they give is good, more often it isn't. However, the developers have fallen into the trap of using the voices to provide narration - at length - several times through the game. It isn't needed, and it's immersion-breaking.
  
• Despite having the word "Saga" in its title, the game is really short. The first game was short too, but it was always billed as a AA game and priced accordingly. It was clearly an experimental game that people were either going to love or hate, a risk that deserved to pay off and did. Hellblade 2 is AAA though, it has the budget and they've given it a price-tag to match. So it doesn't get a pass this time around.