Hellblade: Senua’s Sacrifice is a story oriented experience featuring a Celtic warrior suffering from psychosis that ventures into Viking underworld to save the soul of her beloved. At least that’s what you’re led to believe, as you’re following the events from the protagonist perspective, and the game is trying its hardest to emulate the struggles of people with that mental disorder. She will constantly hear voices & see things, there will be bright discolorations & visual distortions, there will be darkness chasing her and rot eating up into her. She will be reminded of the grim side of her past & upbringing. Despite paralyzing fear she will need to muster her resolve in order to look into herself and slowly recollect blocked out horrific memories, and face the unrelenting challenges awaiting her.

The game plays largely like a very sophisticated walking simulator, with fairly simple puzzles and combat arenas. For the most part you will be exploring very detailed and gorgeous looking environments, trying to achieve a singular goal - to enter Helheim and confront Hela. There will be some roadblocks and detours on your way, as well as events forcing you off the set course. The locations are designed really well. Even though you follow a fairly linear path, the geography feels like a seamless whole with lots of interconnecting passageways and shortcuts.

The puzzles you solve are mostly of a visual nature, requiring you to find rune shaped objects or shadows. You will need to move around and look for the right perspective where the correct shape can be uncovered. Even though some variations were more interesting than others (like the Valravn archways reshaping fragments of environment), they were not very riveting overall. Very much in line with the psychosis theme though, where patterns all around emerge despite there being none, which people link together despite no such connections. Ordinary words, sounds, colours and objects become steeped in meaning, forming a strange and sinister puzzle only in their minds.

The combat has weight to it, feels deliberate and realistic. There are some basic combos & neat moves you can execute, and it can be fun for a while. Unfortunately, it’s designated to certain specific areas, were enemies will spawn wave after wave. You won’t see any of them roaming freely in the world. Encounters are unevenly distributed. Sometimes you’ll run into several battle arenas in a row, and then you’ll go through large portion of the game only solving puzzles and listening to voices/ narration & watching story cutscenes.

Towards the end of the game you will face more and more opponents at once, and you’ll learn that the real enemy here is the unreliable camera movement often obscuring the view, or hiding the attackers behind you, along with automatic targeting system that frequently won’t let you strike who you want, or place you in danger by swapping to the furthest enemy mid combo, and positioning you in the middle of the group (something you really want to avoid).

The greatest advantage in my opinion is that the game attempts something new, and it succeeds on this front. It’s immersive and believable. The story is serious, the theme is heavy and doesn’t pull any punches, and all that has been approached very respectfully, but at the same time nothing is sugar coated or shunned away from. It potentially can make you feel uneasy, but it might also enrich your point of view. It’s the atmosphere that rules here. The gameplay is vastly outranked. It’s not bad, it's just relatively modest in scope, and doesn’t feel substantially fleshed out. There is enough of it to provide another layer of engagement, but don’t go into this game for the mechanics alone or you might get disappointed.

Recommended, but tone down your expectations in certain regards :)

Written after completing the game with 10.5 hours played & 14 of 14 (100%) achievements earned.

Hellblade: Senua’s Sacrifice is a story oriented experience featuring a Celtic warrior suffering from psychosis that ventures into Viking underworld to save the soul of her beloved. At least that’s what you’re led to believe, as you’re following the events from the protagonist perspective, and the game is trying its hardest to emulate the struggles of people with that mental disorder. She will constantly hear voices & see things, there will be bright discolorations & visual distortions, there will be darkness chasing her and rot eating up into her. She will be reminded of the grim side of her past & upbringing. Despite paralyzing fear she will need to muster her resolve in order to look into herself and slowly recollect blocked out horrific memories, and face the unrelenting challenges awaiting her. The game plays largely like a very sophisticated walking simulator, with fairly simple puzzles and combat arenas. For the most part you will be exploring very detailed and gorgeous looking environments, trying to achieve a singular goal - to enter Helheim and confront Hela. There will be some roadblocks and detours on your way, as well as events forcing you off the set course. The locations are designed really well. Even though you follow a fairly linear path, the geography feels like a seamless whole with lots of interconnecting passageways and shortcuts. The puzzles you solve are mostly of a visual nature, requiring you to find rune shaped objects or shadows. You will need to move around and look for the right perspective where the correct shape can be uncovered. Even though some variations were more interesting than others (like the Valravn archways reshaping fragments of environment), they were not very riveting overall. Very much in line with the psychosis theme though, where patterns all around emerge despite there being none, which people link together despite no such connections. Ordinary words, sounds, colours and objects become steeped in meaning, forming a strange and sinister puzzle only in their minds. The combat has weight to it, feels deliberate and realistic. There are some basic combos & neat moves you can execute, and it can be fun for a while. Unfortunately, it’s designated to certain specific areas, were enemies will spawn wave after wave. You won’t see any of them roaming freely in the world. Encounters are unevenly distributed. Sometimes you’ll run into several battle arenas in a row, and then you’ll go through large portion of the game only solving puzzles and listening to voices/ narration & watching story cutscenes. Towards the end of the game you will face more and more opponents at once, and you’ll learn that the real enemy here is the unreliable camera movement often obscuring the view, or hiding the attackers behind you, along with automatic targeting system that frequently won’t let you strike who you want, or place you in danger by swapping to the furthest enemy mid combo, and positioning you in the middle of the group (something you really want to avoid). The greatest advantage in my opinion is that the game attempts something new, and it succeeds on this front. It’s immersive and believable. The story is serious, the theme is heavy and doesn’t pull any punches, and all that has been approached very respectfully, but at the same time nothing is sugar coated or shunned away from. It potentially can make you feel uneasy, but it might also enrich your point of view. It’s the atmosphere that rules here. The gameplay is vastly outranked. It’s not bad, it's just relatively modest in scope, and doesn’t feel substantially fleshed out. There is enough of it to provide another layer of engagement, but don’t go into this game for the mechanics alone or you might get disappointed. Recommended, but tone down your expectations in certain regards :) [i]Written after completing the game with 10.5 hours played & 14 of 14 (100%) achievements earned.[/i]