Senua's Saga: Hellblade 2 begins very shortly after the first, as Senua has vowed to stop the Viking raiders that destroyed her village and killed her beloved. What starts off as a quest for bloody vengeance reveals itself, surprisingly early on, as something much more complicated. Senua arrives in Iceland to find a cursed place full of scared people, living in fear of a particularly daunting calamity that I won't spoil here. Soon enough, Senua finds herself allied with the locals, shedding her revenge-fuelled rage and deciding to help these people instead.
For the player, this means roughly eight hours of cutscenes broken up with walking, puzzle solving, and very brief but violent bursts of combat.
It's a visually stunning game. Ninja Theory has made no bones about how much effort they put into scanning real-world topography into their game, and you'll be hard-pressed to find a single person who can argue with the results. The first game was already gorgeous, but also had a suitably monotonous palette. Senua's Saga offers a much more varied range of environments with verdant forests, gorgeous rock formations, coral skies, and some bleak and beautiful vistas that you have to see to believe.
Motion capture is used to equally captivating effect to deliver some astoundingly life-like performances both from the human characters as well as some of the more monstrous antagonists. Melina Juergens returns to the titular role with the same ferocity she brought to the game, moving between quietly devastating introspection and violent bursts of rage the way few performers can. It's as brave and special a performance here as it was in the first game, but seeing her work displayed in borderline photorealistic detail is something else. Juergens remains an absolute powerhouse of an actor, and her performance rings as true today as it did last year.
The Enhanced Edition rounds out what was originally a very lean offering, with some welcome new features. The most noteworthy of the bunch is a Performance Mode that targets (and largely achieves 60 frames per second). I personally don't think Hellblade 2 gains a whole lot from high framerates, but more choices are always good. PS5 Pro owners can also make use of PSSR upscaling, but I was naturally unable to test that on my base PS5.
A more interesting addition is the new 'Dark Rot' mode. One of the weird controversies(?) around the original Hellblade was the dark rot on Senua's arm. In the game's only real fourth wall break, a tutorial popup told you the rot on Senua's arm would expand every time you died, and would force you to start the game over if it reached her head. There was some confusion around how many times you needed to die for this to happen. In the end it turned out to be a bluff, as the dark rot never actually reaches Senua's head. And the game was too easy for it to ever be a real issue anyway. Senua's Saga: Hellblade 2 Enhanced Edition brings back the dark rot, but for real this time. In this mode you're only allowed three game-overs. On the fourth, your save file will be wiped. It's a fun added challenge for those who want it, but given that this game is somehow even easier than the first, I don't see the point.
My personal favourite new addition is the developer commentary, which is unlocked after you finish the story, which allows you to play with the developers chiming in your ear with fun behind-the-scenes tidbits. This is something I really wish more games did.
In addition to the PS5 release Senua's Saga: Hellblade 2 Enhanced Edition also adds a 'Very High' graphics preset on PC, for those with current-gen GPUs who want to squeeze every possible polygon out of their rig. Interestingly, this update also sees the game officially 'Verified' on Steam Deck. On low settings with FSR3 on 'Performance', you'll be able to play the game at a largely steady 30 frames, but that UE5 traversal stutter still pops up here and there. It's not ideal but if Steam Deck is your only option, you'll be able to experience Senua's latest adventure there with few problems.
At the end of the day, this is still the Senua's Saga: Hellblade 2 you remember from last year. If you've already played it, the new additions are a nice free update that might warrant a reinstall, especially if you're academically interested in the developer commentary. If you were previously locked out of the game because of platform constraints, what you're getting here is 8-10 hours of an audiovisual tour de force broken up by some basic, repetitive puzzles and combat. It's not everyone's cup of tea, but one I think everyone should experience at least once, just because you're unlikely to play anything else like it.