Senua returns to a land that wants her dead, and this time the voices are not the worst thing waiting on shore.
Hellblade II: Senua’s Saga, developed by Ninja Theory and published by Xbox Game Studios, puts players back inside the head of a warrior who has never once been allowed a quiet moment. The 2024 sequel to the award-winning Hellblade: Senua’s Sacrifice arrives on Xbox Series X|S, PC, and PlayStation 5, and it asks the same question the first game did: what does survival cost when the battlefield is your own mind?
The answer, in this sequel, is a brutal journey through Viking Iceland that trades some of the first game’s focus for a wider, crueler world.
Trailer, via XBOX.
Orkney to Iceland, by Way of a Shipwreck
The setup is swift and grim. In 9th-century Orkney, Senua allows herself to be captured by Northmen slavers. Her plan is simple: cross the sea to Iceland, where her people are held in bondage. A violent storm wrecks the slave ships, and Senua washes ashore alone on the Icelandic coast, haunted by the voices that have followed her since childhood.
What she finds is not just a rescue mission. Giants born from a volcanic eruption have driven settlements to ruin. Survivors live under the tyranny of those who exploit the chaos. Guided by the mysterious Hiddenfolk and joined by unlikely allies, Senua sets out to confront the giants, free the enslaved, and face the human cruelty that feeds on fear.
She soon learns that the land is gripped by a different kind of terror: giants born from a volcanic eruption have driven settlements to ruin, and the survivors live under the tyranny of those who exploit the chaos.
That is a lot of story for a game that runs single player, third person, and leans hard into action, fantasy, and horror. The genre mix is not decoration. The horror is the point.
The Darkness Within and Without
Ninja Theory built its reputation on putting mental anguish on screen without turning it into a monster-of-the-week. Senua’s voices are not a gimmick here. They are the texture of every scene, and the sequel’s central battle is stated plainly: overcoming the darkness within and without.
The giants are the “without.” The tyranny is the “without.” The voices are the “within,” and they do not take a level off.
Where the first game kept its scope tight, Hellblade II: Senua’s Saga widens the frame to Iceland, to settlements in ruin, to a people in bondage. That ambition is real. It also spreads the pressure. A story about one woman’s torment now has to carry a whole island’s worth of suffering, and not every thread gets the weight it needs.
The Hiddenfolk are the clearest example. They guide Senua, and they remain mysterious, which is fine. But mystery is not the same as presence. Allies arrive, and the human cruelty that feeds on fear gets named as a theme rather than always shown as a face.
What the Numbers Show
The critical score sits at 7.3/10, according to an IGDB critic aggregate drawn from 7 outlets. That number is fair. It is not a dismissal and it is not a rave.
Key facts
– Title: Hellblade II: Senua’s Saga
– Year: 2024
– Developer: Ninja Theory
– Publisher: Xbox Game Studios
– Platforms: Xbox Series X|S, PC (Microsoft Windows), PlayStation 5
– Modes: Single player
– Perspective: Third person
– Genres: Adventure
– Themes: Action, Fantasy, Horror
– Critical score: 7.3/10 (IGDB critic aggregate, 7 outlets)
A 7.3 lands exactly where this game lives. The craft is high. The commitment to Senua’s interior life is total. The sequel does the hard thing of continuing a story that did not obviously need continuing, and it does that without betraying the first game’s central subject.
What holds it back is the same thing that makes it interesting: it wants to be both an intimate portrait of one woman’s mind and an epic about an entire subjugated people. The intimate half wins. The epic half is where the seams show.
The Giants and the Hiddenfolk
Hellblade II: Senua’s Saga is a brutal journey of survival through the myth and torment of Viking Iceland, and it knows exactly whose head it is inside. Ninja Theory does not flinch from the darkness within, and the result is a sequel that earns its place next to the award-winning original even when it cannot quite match its grip.
The giants, the slavers, the Hiddenfolk, the allies — they all serve one purpose, which is to press on Senua from the outside while the voices press from the inside. When the game remembers that, it is hard to look away. When it reaches for the wider war, it thins out.
This is a game about a woman who lets herself be captured so she can save others, and who then has to save herself first. That is a strong enough spine to carry a sequel. It is not quite strong enough to carry an island.
Play it for Senua. Stay for the voices. Do not expect the epic to hit as hard as the interior.
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