Dropped Crisis Core.
Completed Senua’s Saga: Hellblade II.
- Visuals - 9.0/10 (excellent)
- Audio - 9.0/10 (excellent)
- Gameplay/Combat - 5.0/10 (average)
- Story/Characters - 9.0/10 (excellent)
- Overall - 8.0/10 (great)
Went back to the game yesterday after putting it on hold back in May. Was halfway or so through chapter 3 when I put the game on hold. Play time was probably around 7-8 hours on easy. Not sure exactly but it wasn’t long at all.
Graphics are excellent, the character models and faces especially. The environments look great and detailed. Audio wise, the music is really good, sound effects are great and the voice acting is superb. However, I am over “the voices”. It’s run it’s course in my opinion. Story and characters are excellent and overall, I would say better than the first game.
Gameplay and combat wise is where my biggest issues are. While the two giant encounters are cool and the final boss fight isn’t horrible or anything, there’s simply no depth or strategy whatsoever to any of the combat encounters, they’re all one on one which gets boring very quickly and all seem to be scripted with another enemy running into you or whatever after killing an enemy. The brutality if anything is overrated. There’s no decapitations or dismemberment which when using a sword, I would think that there would be. It definitely feels high impact so I’ll give it that.
Puzzle wise, one or two were cool because the environment shifts or turns upside down but those shadow puzzles with the symbols are horrible. I didn’t like them in the first game and I like them even less here. Outside of that, you’re literally just walking or jogging like I was doing through the very linear outside areas or inside of what were usually very dark caves.
I’m a combat/gameplay guy first. Always have been and always will be. When I play a game, it’s all about the combat loop for me followed by the gameplay in general. This is how you win me over. I will gladly accept less visuals and a lesser story with less interesting characters in exchange because at the end of the day, im playing the game, not watching it. Hellblade 2 simply goes a few steps backwards in this regard which for me leads to me being bored for most of the game. It’s not a bad or broken game or anything like that but to really get the most out of these types of games where there’s very little action/combat and is very slow paced, you have to really be into everything else.
For example, I played and completed Detroit: Become Human and Until Dawn back when they released. They were an 8 and 7 overall respectively for me. The main difference is that I knew both games were very slow paced and not centered around the combat at all. In fairness, I know that Hellblade 1 and 2 are story driven games. No issue there but when you make a sequel, im simply expecting it to be at the very least, equal to what I played in the first game or better and when it comes to just the combat/gameplay aspect of Hellblade 2, I don’t see it as even being equal to the first game.
I understand that the combat/gameplay takes a back seat to all three of those other categories/aspects but when you’re developing a sequel, I would think that you would want to make the gameplay and combat experience better or at the very least equal. Hellblade 2 doesn’t do that. With the first game of a new IP, im more forgiving because it’s a new IP so in that aspect, im thinking, let’s see what you got. The foundation of the first game was good and a sequel is meant to build upon what that foundation was and Hellblade 2 doesn’t do that at all and in fact, goes backwards.
Another issue I had/have is with Microsoft/Ninja Theory showcasing a boss fight (if you could call them that which I don’t) against a giant you encounter later on in the game during the 2022 Game Awards if I remember correctly. This could have been a cool “holy shit” moment but it all just falls flat for me because I saw it already so the impact just isn’t there. Really wish companies in general would stop showcasing their games past the first few hours or so. Stop spoiling your own games because it makes zero sense to do so.
With that all said, I will say the giant encounters and how they’re structured were pretty cool. I didn’t mind this setup at all because I understand why they’re done the way that they’re done.
For those wondering, I completed the first Hellblade game back on PS4 at launch. Rated it an 8.0/10 overall with the categories being a 9/9/7/7 respectively. My biggest issue with the first game were the puzzles because outside of one or two of them, they’re all the same setup and boring. After that was the non-existent permadeath which the game teases in the beginning. I always thought this would have been really cool to give the player a set amount of deaths based on the difficulty level and if you can’t complete the game before using all your deaths, you would have to start the game over from the beginning. I’m not into permadeath at all but for Hellblade 1 and what the story was, it would have been really freaking good in my opinion.
Anyway, im happy that I finally completed Hellblade 2 which took me three attempts to do which coincidentally also applies to first game. In closing, I know some may not agree with my opinion in regards to the combat/gameplay which is fine but I wanted to explain it from my point of view so people can understand why I rated that category low.
On a final note, I do hope that Ninja Theory does move on and away from Hellblade. I really hope they do something more along the lines of DmC or my personal favorite Ninja Theory game, Enslaved: Odyssey to the West. 
