Hellblade II: Senua’s Saga

I love Hellblade 1. I think it is one of gaming history's outstanding stellar achievements that should be regarded as such by everyone in and outside gaming as medium. It shares the crown with titles like Red Dead Redemption 2, The Witcher 3, Death Stranding, NieR Automata in terms of interactive storytelling. This is a spoilerfree review that will tell you why I don't recommend playing it's sequel. What made Hellblade a deeply personal experience is that the whole game, Senua was alone. Alone with her thoughts, memories, and the invasive voices in her head born of her mental illness, psychosis. When she / you were forced to find rune patterns in the world to open a door or extinguish a fire, or Senua had to fight a huge monster to pass, it was all left to player interpretation: did she really need to play with the mirror, or was that door always open? It made you lose a sense of reality because in it's heart, it was grounded and real. Senua has grown up in a celtic village, her worldview, beliefs, were all shaped by what she grew up in: the monsters she fought were created by her, because they are her personal demons, and so Hellblade created this unique psychological horror for Senua, in an otherwise real world. That made it tragic, and that made all her bravery so inspiring: it was her personal hell and she fought through it all the only way it was possible: alone, in her head. Hellblade 2 destroys all of this. There are multiple characters now along the journey which in itself is not a problem but an opportunity, but THEY can see what she sees - be that a giant, or any other sort of monster or magic. Confirming they are very real, and destroying the idea that psychosis makes you see things, hear things that are not there. Instead, now SOME of it is real, and some are not. Things like (mini spoiler of a non-important scene): the voices tell her it's a test of bravery to give up her sword and leave it in the cave. But when she needs it, divine light actuall manifests the sword elsewhere. You feel the difference compared to Hellblade 1's "magic blue sword" that was actually nothing special, but her belief gave it power and meaning? This one actually teleports somehow. Senua seem to have forgot her entire childhood and belief system because there is no more rune pattern searching (well there is one at the start to get you comfortable, then never again), instead the developers fancied "instead of the estabilished symptoms and personality traits of Senua, let's try every new effect we can find in Unreal Engine 5", so now every second supernatural encounter is drenched in the newest particle effect they found. And her psychosis? Well OTHERS can hear it too now, and turns out it's a superpower to see and listen to another dimension! Nothing feels grounded and real anymore, and they openly went into full fantasy world. Is it still a stellar cinematic experience? So was Star Wars 9, which was nowhere near as good as the old ones were, and retroactively damaged them irrepairably even. Because if it was always an openly fantasy world, then you were just beating random monsters in Hellblade 1, and not fighting her mental illness. You beat a giant here, and your traveling companions stand witness and promise to tell the world of what you achieved, so the giant was very real. What Star Wars 9 is to 1-6, that is what Hellblade 2 is to Hellblade 1, and therefore I cannot with a good heart recommend it to anyone. I'll finish it. Maybe it will turn out that even the 2 traveling companions were hallucinations too, and everything I said above turns out to be nonsense. But this is a 7 hour long game and so far for about 5 hours when I'm writing this review, that is not that case, and the majority of the playtime of the game is this… experience. If at the end of Star Wars 9 they reveal Palpatine was never real and never returned, you still spent 2+ hours sad about how much this movie sucks. And it sucks, because it looks good, but it feels like a forced sequel where the developers proove they had no clue what made the first so special.