November 2019 Playthrough - Hellblade: Senua's Sacrafice

[Mr_Stubbes]

After setting aside a few hours to play and catch up, I have defeated the beast Fenrir. I'm really glad I came back to this as the story really started to ramp up after unlocking the bridge to Helheim. I plan to finish the game in the next day or two and will give my full thoughts on it then.

[singlebanana]

I started the game the other night, ended up playing for a few hours, and the game glitched out on me. For whatever reason, I couldn't see the runes and use the focus. Tried reseting the game and my console, but nothing worked...  I ended up having to start over, but with the knowledge I already had, I was able to get back to where I was (before the Raven boss) in about 30 minutes.  All in all, not too bad, but it does concern me that this may happen again. I've always enjoyed auto-save features, but I would be nice if they had some sort of manual save to go along with it.  Oh well....

Anyway, I am currently trudging through the bloodsoaked rivers Helheim and fighting my way to god knows what.  I am enjoying the game, the main story is captivating and I even find that the Norse mythology that you pick up along the way is really interesting and nicely interwoven into the main story. As a result, I typically search out all of the story runes, which I often don't find myself doing in other games.  I'm playing this one with headphones and boy does it make a difference in terms of atmosphere and adding to the psychological mindset of the character. They really did an amazing job here.

Overall, I do really like the combat, though probably like many of you, I wish there was more of it at times.  I feel like I don't get a lot of practice in improving my skills and even at the first boss, I felt that I was at a disadvantage.  More enemies and possibly a tutorial would have been a nice addition.

Graphically, the game is beautiful and other than the infrequent, but present screen tearing, the game is captivating and holds my attention well. The cutscenes are great and I love it when it seems that Senua is speaking directly to you; overall, it's a very immersive experience.   

[singlebanana]

For the shield guys, have you tried doing the melee attack? It momentarily knocks them back and leaves them open for a sword attack. Even with that they can be a pain.

I have not tried that. I’ve been dodging to the left/right and taking a swipe at them. They just seem too resilient.

Yeah, dodge to the left or right when they swing, then immediately hit the melee button to knock their shield back and start swinging. Pretty simple once you learn this technique.