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I remember the exact moment Hellblade 2 lost me. I was crawling through what felt like the seventeenth identical cave system, watching Senua's breath fog in the dim light, when I realized forty minutes had passed without a single meaningful interaction. This wasn't the immersive psychological journey I'd anticipated—it was a beautiful screensaver with occasional interruptions. The game's fundamental problem lies in its lopsided design philosophy, where cinematic presentation consistently overshadows engaging gameplay mechanics. Having spent roughly twelve hours completing Senua's Saga, I'd estimate my actual play time—meaning moments requiring active participation rather than passive observation—amounted to barely four hours. The remaining eight? Watching stunning landscapes unfold while holding the analog stick forward.
Let's break down what little gameplay exists. Combat encounters occur maybe once every ninety minutes, each lasting no more than three minutes. The system itself is brutally simplistic—light attack, heavy attack, dodge, parry. While the first few clashes feel visceral thanks to phenomenal sound design, the pattern never evolves. By my fifth identical fight against shadow creatures, I was going through motions rather than making decisions. Compare this to the original Hellblade, where combat frequency was roughly 60% higher despite using similar mechanics. The scarcity here doesn't make encounters special; it makes them forgettable interruptions between walking segments. I found myself actually missing fights, not because they were enjoyable, but because they represented the only times the game acknowledged I was supposed to be playing rather than watching.
The puzzle design fares slightly better but falls into the same trap of repetition. Environmental puzzles predominantly involve finding "focus" patterns hidden in the scenery—a mechanic that overstays its welcome after the twentieth iteration. There's one particular section where you're searching for runes in a forest that overstays its welcome by at least fifteen minutes. The cognitive challenge rarely rises above "look around until you spot the shiny thing." What frustrates me most is the squandered potential—the game's stunning visual craftsmanship could have supported far more inventive spatial puzzles, yet it settles for glorified hide-and-seek. I kept waiting for the mechanics to evolve, for the game to trust my intelligence enough to present something genuinely puzzling, but that moment never arrived.
Where Hellblade 2 truly baffles me is its walking simulator approach. I clocked approximately six hours of traversal—not exploration, mind you, but following predetermined paths through breathtaking environments. The first hour feels magical; the tenth feels like padding. There's a crucial distinction between using slow pacing for atmospheric effect and simply failing to provide engaging content. At one point, I walked along a beach for twenty-two uninterrupted minutes—yes, I timed it—with nothing occurring beyond visual splendor and voiceover narration. While I appreciate artistic ambition, this crosses into territory where the experience might have been more effective as an animated short film rather than an interactive product costing $49.99.
The imbalance becomes particularly glaring when compared to titles that master this balance. God of War (2018) delivered cinematic presentation while maintaining deep, rewarding combat and puzzle systems. Even What Remains of Edith Finch, essentially a walking simulator, understood its format and wrapped the experience in three hours. Hellblade 2 occupies this awkward middle ground—too gameplay-light to satisfy as a game, too interaction-heavy to work as pure cinema. I suspect the development team became so enamored with their visual achievements that they neglected the interactive foundation. It's like building a sports car with a lawnmower engine—beautiful to look at, frustrating to operate.
What's particularly disappointing is how this compromises the very themes the game explores. Senua's story deals with trauma and perception, concepts that could have been powerfully expressed through innovative gameplay. Instead, we get mostly passive observation. There were moments where I felt the potential—brief hallucination sequences that distorted the environment, combat sections where enemy numbers reflected Senua's anxiety—but these were fleeting exceptions. The game constantly shows you her struggle rather than letting you experience it through interaction. After a while, I felt less like I was sharing Senua's journey and more like I was following her with a camera.
My frustration stems from seeing glimpses of what could have been. The technical execution is phenomenal—facial animation that sets new industry standards, sound design that deservedly wins awards, environmental detail that frequently made me stop just to look around. Yet these achievements exist in service of an experience that forgot its interactive nature. By the final act, I was no longer excited to see what came next; I was impatient for the credits. The game's most profound failure is making its stunning world feel like a chore to navigate. I wanted to love Hellblade 2, and there are moments of genuine brilliance here, but they're buried beneath hours of beautiful nothingness. In prioritizing spectacle over substance, Ninja Theory has created a landmark technical demonstration that forgets to be an engaging game.
