3.5/5 ★ – philip_acquaro's review of Hellblade: Senua's Sacrifice.

Started: June 9th 2025 Beaten: June 17th 2025 I’ve never played a game, let alone have an experience in a medium where you the player see, hear, and feel how a condition like psychosis is felt through presentation until now. In this game you play as a woman named Senua, who is said to have psychosis, while venturing through a world inspired by the viking age and norse mythology to save her already dead lover from Hel. From start to end, you’ll hear several voices that both evoke Senua’s inner feelings and thoughts as well as sort of breaking the fourth wall in the way they respond to your actions such as in calling you (Senua) out when you appear confused on where to go. You’ll hear these voices laugh, mess with, and torment Senua, always adding a sense of pressure and unease which is a clear intent of the developers for the game as a whole. While i’m on the subject of these voices, I want to mention how good the sound design is in this game. If you try this out, headphones are a must, there are areas where you must listen to your surroundings such as the sound of water, wind, or screams/voices to navigate as well as to take in all of the voices that provide narrative background and often haunt Senua through the journey. Getting the best experience possible I feel necessitates headphones so that you can hear all of these sounds and voices in a way that makes you feel like your in Senua’s position with her condition. Visually, it’s mind blowing this came out 8 years ago because the environments are so detailed and lit so beautifully. There are many moments where there are actual live action recordings of real humans that surround and talk to you which I thought was a really cool and unique visual choice for the game. It’s so creatively and deceptively creepy in the way that it often makes you question reality due to Senua’s psychosis. Sometimes she’ll have these episodes where fire will chase you or where staying in the darkness for more than like 7 seconds will distort everything with hues of red until you die, or moments that’ll display her past and meaning to her journey and narrative. The combat, while pretty much being comprised of two attacks, a block/parry, and an evade is really fun all the way through since most of the time you’ll be solving puzzles, while combat happening after what feels like every hour or so, while also being a pretty short game too. The whispers/voices also guide you in combat helping you avoid attacks which is really awesome. The puzzles all pretty much follow the same formula, mostly consisting of focusing on your surroundings until you find a given shape, changing your surroundings by entering portals, going back in forth between different realities in the same location to manipulate the other, or using your senses to navigate dark areas. It’s all a decent time, but I’m gonna be honest none of the puzzle aspects of this game really blew me away, which was a really good chunk of it. I really do appreciate how it all relies on your perception and senses but I guess it wasn’t the best part of this game for me. Towards the latter half, the puzzles get a lot better though. I’d also like to mention how good the acting is because man they all knocked it out of the park with this especially considering how the lead had never acted prior to this game! There’s a lot of emotional and tense scenes where you really admire all of the acting talent which is something you can’t say for a lot of games. I won’t mention much more of the story other than the synopsis as while popular, Im sure this is one that is probably not played by everyone, or just not on everyone’s radar as it wasn’t on mine up until last year. Overall, I think it’s really good! It’s definitely one of the most creative, unique and eerie games i’ve played!