Hellblade: Senua’s Sacrifice – Review

Hellblade Senua's Sacrifice

Self-purchased. Reviewed on PC.


It took me a good amount of time to decide if I actually want to play Hellblade: Senua’s Sacrifice, or just live its experience watching RadBrad videos like I did for many PlayStation 4 games. I have been following the game since its development days and had a pretty good knowledge about the game in overall. But I was unsure if my PC would run the game like it really should and whether my experience would be memorable.

Game intros are usually meant to excite gamers for a great journey, revealing what’s ahead and uncovering the mysteries of the game. Not is the case with Hellblade: Senua’s Sacrifice. The game’s intro is terrifically long and boring. For the first few minutes, it was fine and gave me the vibe of entering a dark, mysterious and hellish world through the waters and all. There are voices roaming around Senua’s head, throwing their suggestions and opinions, a narrating voice that tells us the backstory of the game and her own voice, which is quite distinguishable from the others, that exposes her sense of determination throughout the intro.

Shortly after the intro, when Senua needs to open the gate to Helheim, the world of the dead, we get to try out the combats. And let me be clear here, the combat is pretty neat, and the way she swings the sword and pierces through the hearts of the enemies is highly satisfying. My biggest problem during the sequence was facing the ghostly enemies. I was hitting them so hard, planned and calculated their moves precisely and evaded each of their attacks, but THEY JUST WON’T DIE! Senua got off her feet, I got pissed, and when she crawled around, I was like, “Oh! It’s in the game!”

Every now and then I found the game closely resembles the world of Price of Persia: Warrior Within, especially when I saw a red flag similar to that in POP: WW. And we all know what a pain in the ass that game was. To make the game more interesting and challenging, Ninja Theory added this ‘Dark Rot’ thing into the game. So Senua is cursed with this Dark Rot. Every time she dies, or every time you fail to survive the enemies, the Dark Rot starts spreading in her body. Once the Dark Rot reaches her brain, the game’s over and you will lose all your progress. Yes, you will have to start all over again. Pretty sick right? Just giving myself a moment and thinking of the consequences, I slowly headed towards the Combat Difficulty option and set it to Easy. Finally, I was ready for the journey.

I haven’t progressed much in the story yet, but I have developed a kind of relation with Ymir as his name is heard at almost all the headstones. Now that I have actually played the game for a few hours, I won’t lie about it, the mouse settings are awful. You can barely look around without moving the mouse for at least 3-4 times. And the game is terribly slow progressing which is not my type.

Hellblade: Senua’s Sacrifice won people’s hearts with its three-dimensional audio effect and a story resembling dark fantasies. But the gameplay experience is really bad, at least for me. I was hyped to try out this game even before its release, but it sure didn’t meet my expectations.

In overall, I’d not recommend this game if you are a fast-paced and gameplay-loving gamer. But if you are the other type, that wants to explore the world and story of the game, progress slowly, and indulge yourself in a magical world with awfull mouse sensitivity, this game is for you.

Hate me for this review but I can’t be more honest about it. Nevertheless, subscribe to our bell-notifications and never miss any updates from the gaming world. Until next time, Happy Gaming!

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