Hellblade: Senua's Sacrifice

One of the most brutal games I've played from a psychological perspective. Not really an incredible game as in the mechanics can be a bit clunky but the experience is like nothing I've played in my gaming life. It's heavy, brutal, at times aboslutely terrifying. I recommend it 100% and this is a great example of how videogames can be art.

Really liked it. A different type of adventure, short and to the point.

A highly atmospheric game with stunning scenery. Mostly, it’s a scenic exploration game with some puzzles and fights while experiencing psychosis. Definitely, it’s a nice journey to go through

Yet another game that is unplayable on new hardware.
Stutters and crashes.
Also the bit I played just isn't that good. Slow, fairly boring, repeat the exact same challenges over and over.
The voices in her head get old very quickly.
The level of camera zoom right on her right shoulder is annoying.

A beautiful game with a devastating story that confronts you with Schizophrenia, which helps you in battle. The graphics are great and the combat is mostly simple but had more behind it than expected. A recommend for everyone.

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ A raw, unforgettable masterpiece

Hellblade quickly became one of my all-time favorite games.

The story is powerful, heartbreaking, and beautifully told. It handles trauma and mental illness with rare honesty, and the immersive sound design pulls you straight into Senua’s mind. Play it with headphones — seriously.

Combat feels intense and satisfying. The puzzles weren’t totally my thing (not much of a puzzle person), but I still respect how they were crafted to reflect the themes and tone of the world.

The music? Absolutely incredible. Atmospheric, emotional, and perfectly timed.

And that final fight — where you’re meant to lose — is a cinematic masterpiece. Visually stunning, emotionally brutal, and somehow fun to play despite knowing the outcome. It’s one of the most unforgettable sequences I’ve experienced in gaming.

This one sticks with you. Play it.

Love these games ! The landscape is amazing. Visual and sound are fun. The making of the game is really interesting & the work developers did with those diagnosed with schizophrenia and specialists makes it a very enlightening experience. The storyline and puzzles are interesting- based on Norse mythology. The maps are based on Icelandic nature - and they capture it well !! All n all i would say, "everyone" should try these games. They are worth it.

Amazing character progression and audio design.
A must buy for 1st timers WITH headphones.

It is a unique interactive, immersive, cinematic experience. Pretty difficult subject matter, but definitely worth adding it to your vicarious experience of psychosis.

The story, acting, sound design, art design, and graphics in this game are amazing.

The gameplay is absolute shit.

Combat feels stiff, slow, and unresponsive. Its the same thing over and over again and its not fun to play, but in fact just gets worse and worse as the game goes on.

The other half of gameplay is the puzzles. These are usually perspective based and IMO are very poorly placed in this game usually killing the story's momentum. The puzzles themselves are usually okish to trash. Some of the puzzles want you to line up a shape in the environment, but the shape is very general and you can find it in like 20 different places, but you didnt find the right ONE! terrible.

Watch this game like a movie on youtube. Once i put the controller down and did that I enjoyed it very much.

Great movie, bad game.

The only thing I can say without a spoiler is that this game is extremely intense.

As much as I absolutely love this game, the number of bugs, issues, and soft locking problems present keep me from being able to recommend it. Gameplay, graphics, story, combat, sound production, etc. is all AMAZING but the list of issues I had keep me from giving it the green light to anyone. If you are willing to try to work around them, it's a great (albeit short (8 hours roughly)) experience.

Issues:
- Stuck on rocks/trees
- Stuck on stairs/buildings
- Balance beam bridges unable to return back to previous (needed for progression) area
- (At boss fight) Game returned me to the main menu, and continued into last save (which was soft locked due to bugs)

amazing game 10/10!!!

It was super hard for me at first due to the combat (i suck) but once i got the hang of it then it was sooo worth it !!

good game, but sometime it become lagging while voice keep play normal. And I need when to game menu or restart game so it would be playable smoothly. Maybe my pc problem or the bug I don't know? But what i know is the graphic, story, and the combat was great. Especially the combat, makes me remind my childhood games like Infinity Blade and Dark Meadow: The Pact. Again, it was a good games.

A great game with very good graphics , story and combat . it's a bit weird in places , but a great game with a unique concept .

I had voices in my head before playing it , now I have more of them .

Amazing Work in audio, really good scenario, not a fan of the fighting system but this game is not about it, its an mental experience and an emotional rollercoaster

I would I could give this an in between review with the thumb pointed sideways rather than up or down.

There are aspects of this game like the sound design that are impeccable and unlike anything I've ever experienced in a game (seriously, the sound design is in another league), but there are other elements like the combat gameplay that feel like a chore designed to make you hate playing this game that really hold it back.

Firstly lets go over the good stuff... Man, is the narrative and sound design an experience unlike any other game out there. The part before the end where Senua is afraid of the dark and you have to run between points of light while her inner-self ramps into panic mode while in the shadows is so well done and felt so real that it brought me back to my childhood when I was genuinely afraid of the dark.
The narrative is extremely thought provoking and deep but may not be obvious to everyone. There are a few great YouTube videos by "Max Derrat" analyzing the philosophy of this story if you want to understand it deeper, but it obviously contains spoilers, so maybe play the game first.

Now for the negative... I can't state enough how much the combat in this game just ABSOLUTELY SUCKS; it wouldn't be so bad if you only had to face a few dudes and then move on to continue experiencing the fantastic narrative, BUT NO, the bad dudes just have to keep appearing out of thin air one after another. It's especially bad in the final battle, where I seriously feel like I must have fought like 100+ enemies and hated every second of it. Do yourself a favor and turn the combat difficulty to "Easy" in the pause menu so you can just get through it without ripping your hair out.

I will be playing the sequel because the positive parts of this game were so incredible that I can overlook the atrocious combat gameplay, but I really hope that has been improved upon in the next one. (Reports indicate that it is still fairly shallow combat but still much improved upon)

Soaked in atmosphere. I really like the sound work and how it works into the game play.

You don't just play Hellblade: Senua’s Sacrifice — you feel it. Every step Senua takes, every whisper in her mind, every shadow she faces pulls you deeper into her fractured reality. It’s not just about combat or puzzles; it’s about pain, loss, and the fight to hold on to hope. The game doesn’t ask you to win — it dares you to understand.

I love this game. I played twice, this time, with the last DX12 update with RTX. Lovely story.
Recommended.

A beautiful and very exciting game, nice to get through the first part before the second part

Stuttering hard randomly and freezing for many second. On 9070xt 13900k latest driver whql

The main Character is basically The narrator from fight club BUT with +10 Tyler Durdens. 10/10 shit is schizophrenic af.

an easy to play game, with simple mechanics. nice story and music. captivating atmosphere

This game made me question my sanity. Some of the whispers kept feeling like they're not in-game, but actually real.
Anyways, it's a walking simulator with some pretty basic combat, but amazing atmosphere and a good story.

9/10

slow start but once it gets going it tells one of the best and most unique stories ever written in gaming. get this if you are fine with the incredibly slow and frustrating first act because the rest of the game more than makes up for that fact.

8/10 for me.

Amazing game, nice graphics, great fighting system, awesome but kinda short story. Completed it in one day.

Epic single player immersive game. Simple yet very solid combat mechanics, feel like a warrior! Challenging yet solvable puzzles. Especially cool if you like Norse / Vikling / Celtic Lore. Incredible actor performances.

---{ Graphics }---
☐ You forget what reality is
☑ Beautiful
☐ Good
☐ Decent
☐ Bad
☐ Don‘t look too long at it
☐ MS-DOS

---{ Gameplay }---
☑ Very good
☐ Good
☐ It's just gameplay
☐ Mehh
☐ Watch paint dry instead
☐ Just don't

---{ Audience }---
☐ Kids
☑ Teens
☑ Adults
☑ Grandma

---{ PC Requirements }---
☐ Check if you can run paint
☐ Potato
☐ Decent
☑ Fast
☐ Rich boi
☐ Ask NASA if they have a spare computer

---{ Game Size }---
☐ Floppy Disk
☐ Old Fashioned
☑ Workable
☐ Big
☐ Will eat 15% of your 1TB hard drive
☐ You will want an entire hard drive to hold it
☐ You will need to invest in a black hole to hold all the data

---{ Difficulty }---
☐ Just press 'W'
☐ Easy
☑ Easy to learn / Hard to master
☐ Significant brain usage
☐ Difficult
☐ Dark Souls

---{ Grind }---
☐ Nothing to grind
☐ Only if u care about leaderboards/ranks
☑ Isn't necessary to progress
☐ Average grind level
☐ Too much grind
☐ You'll need a second life for grinding

---{ Story }---
☐ No Story
☐ Some lore
☐ Average
☐ Good
☑ Lovely
☐ It'll replace your life

---{ Game Time }---
☐ Long enough for a cup of coffee
☐ Short
☑ Average
☐ Long
☐ To infinity and beyond

---{ Price }---
☐ It's free!
☐ Worth the price
☑ If it's on sale
☐ If u have some spare money left
☐ Not recommended
☐ You could also just burn your money

---{ Bugs }---
☐ Never heard of
☑ Minor bugs
☐ Can get annoying
☐ ARK: Survival Evolved
☐ The game itself is a big terrarium for bugs

---{ ? / 10 }---
☐ 1
☐ 2
☐ 3
☐ 4
☐ 5
☐ 6
☐ 7
☐ 8
☑ 9
☐ 10

Like to pet the cat
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　 　　　／` ミ＿^ノ
　　 　 /　　　 　 |
　　　 /　 ヽ　　 ﾉ
　 　 │　　|　|　|
　／￣|　　 |　|　|
　| (￣ヽ＿ヽ)__) __)
　＼二つ

What a game, a beautiful journey. The story is phenomenal; how holding onto things that are gone can make us trapped within our past: "Trapped within the darkness of my own mind, never to see the light, yet your love chases away the darkness dwelling in my world, yet it also keeps me within it."

A few lines from the game:
"A life without loss is one without love."
"Life is all but a lie, an illusion that shatters once we wake up."

About the Gameplay:
I liked the puzzles; very well done. The combat is very well done as well, but I hate the shield guys. :c
Though still, one thing is the minor bugs: using the focus ability sometimes can make you get stuck :/

10/10 recommended

really good game, short and easy to 100% but the story and sound design is very good

It has a little Hell for every Blade (a little Senua for every Sacrifice)

Such an incredible experience! Hellblade did a phenomenal job at depicting the events of Senua's journey. The usage of sounds, especially the whispering, is unique. I can't count the amount of me having goosebumps or just being overwhelmed by the representations. Loved every minute of it.

I cannot say a lot about Hellblade: Senua's Sacrifice without giving away too much. We follow Senua, a Celtic warrior, on a quest into the realm of the Norse gods. The focus is squarely on narrative and the experience of its setpieces. The gameplay consists on exploration, puzzle solving and occasional fight sequences.
There is, however, an additional layer to this game. Senua suffers from severe mental illness like schizophrenia. As such, everything we see must be evaluated in this light. This is a perfect execution of an unreliable narrator in video games. What we see, is what Senua sees. We follow her story and see the world through her eyes. Unfortunately, this perception of reality is warped by her illness and grief. I find this attempt at tackling topics like mental illness very commendable. This is truly a unique premise and its execution is more than satisfying. Sound design, world design and the narrative, most importantly Senua's thought process, are most intriguing. The game's gameplay may be akin to a walking simulator broken up only occasionally by fight scenes, but this is very much up my alley. I enjoy such games.
As such, I recommend this game to everyone who enjoys adventure games even if their gameplay is rather simple.

Great game - worth the money - Only con is its not long enough.

Good graphics, interesting story telling, nice fighting system. A liitlte bit borring. A little bit bugging - have got a bug during Fafnir fighting and can't complete the game. Bug is known from 2017 so I think developers won't fix it. To shame...

The game captures you and sucks you right in to the world. I would advise using a headset while playing this game, it really immersive you in the world. The fighting, the breathes your hear, the tiniest of sounds around you as you walk around, made my heart pump not knowing what was to come. The story telling was amazing with so much detail as to whats going on. It's a very short game for a veteran gamer like myself but if you're new to genres like this you can easily stretch it to 10+ hours. Also an easy game to 100% complete for the achievements if you're a big time achievement hunter.

70% depressing, ADHD/OCD movie dialogue
20% 'meh' turn-based sandbox puzzles
10% unnecessary, repetitive fight scene against the same masked men

barely call it a game, basically a fucking movie

This is a story game. This is not an open-world adventure. If you're hoping for another Skyrim or Diablo or Dark Souls, this is not it. If you want gorgeous visuals, incredible audio, and a performance that feels like what Myst would be today, this is going to hit your sweet spot. Walk with Senua into Helheim, and get absorbed into this story.

I actually like walking sims in some cases, but not in this one. Combat is simple and weak. The rest seems to just be puzzles of finding certain items. The atmosphere is pretty cool. I like that they've tackled mental health in a respectful way.

But man, the gameplay is so incredibly meh. 4/10 stars. A "no" recommendation from me.

My experience range from I hate this gameplay, to this is one of the best gaming experience i had. After finishing it, i lean on the latter. Just keep in mind this is a small game about a girl with schizophrenia before you decide to buy.

Great game with an unique take on delving into the experience of how would it feel to have schizophrenia (you'll not get headaches, it's still fun) in a nordic viking theme setting.

4k...post-processing turned down...now recommended! Takes at least 8 hours to playthru...not sure how people are finishing so quickly maybe with a tutorial. A bit too heavy on the psychosis stuff for me but I guess that was the point. Puzzle stuff also gets a bit tedious. Overall a wonderful game if you really listen to the dialogue and tales, and if you like walking sims plus a bit of simple combat. One of the bosses in particular was insane!

if i could leave a mixed review i would

i had high hopes before playing this but honestly this game was underwhelming. it def was immersive and visually great but the story is boring and feels messy, theres hardly any kinda character development where u grow to like a character even the protagonist has nothing likable goin for her. and the gameplay was pretty boring mainly just being a walking/puzzle simulator doing the same puzzle throughout. once u get to the end of the story/game its more of a "wait so what happened" rather than a memorable ending.

still was a decent game but def not something i would replay

Great game. Very insightful and deep narration/story. The psychosis piece is real. Try with a headset in the dark. Fights were great, not hard enough to ruin the enjoyment of progressing but not easy enough to be boring. Graphics were unreal. I took them down a bit on the steam to have the fights and movement go more smoothly. Loved it.

Amazing! The atmosfere, the history, the lore, the gameplay. ALL IS AMAZING

Solo le faltan subs en español tal vez

Great Story and Combat. It would have been better if puzzles were less and combat a little more often.

I cannot ever get enough of this game. The soundtrack is amazing, the atmosphere is immersive, and Senua is literally the best heroine I have encountered. If you are thinking about playing this game stop thinking and just do it, I have played it on Xbox twice all the way through and once finally on my PC now that I have one and it gets better every time I play. I started to notice some things that I missed and I made it all the way through without dying! I love the game so much, cannot wait to dive into the next one!

its real pretty and all but its basically just an interactive puzzle movie

I went into this game knowing absolutely nothing about it. A couple of hours in I caught on that nothing really was going to happen. The game is mostly just walking around and solving some rather easy puzzles. There is some combat, but it is very easy in that you can pretty much just roll and attack every enemy in the same way. That's a real shame, because the enemies in the game are really interesting and imposing looking. Graphics are very good and there are some very large scenes that express it, but without much to do, it's just eye-candy. I found the voices in the head to be interesting, but I do not think you can hinge an entire game on this idea. Ultimately I found the story to be a bit confusing at times. If you are really into Norse mythology then this game might be for you, but if not, I'd really give it a pass, unfortunately.