7 Hellblade 2 tips and tricks for beginners

✓ At A Glance

• The Furies often give tips and hints
• Look out for white paint marking ledges, gaps, and walls
• Learn to parry
• Dodge and parry late
• Enemy attacks are colour-coded
• Use chapter select to find missed collectibles

Though it’d be difficult to describe Hellblade 2 as a challenging game, the fact that it foregoes modern gaming niceties – like a HUD and a tutorial – to really hammer home it’s immersive qualities means that you’re dumped into a harsh, unforgiving 10th century Iceland with little to guide you. 

Below, you’ll find Hellblade 2 7 tips and tricks that function as a quickfire tutorial to get you up to speed with some of the more vital but unexplained parts of Ninja Theory’s sequel. With these you should be better equipped to take on enemies but also have an easier time progressing through the game’s bleak landscapes and even darker story.

The Furies often give tips and hints

While much of the chatter produced by the voices inside in Senua’s head often verge on the unhelpful and can even be stress-inducing, they’ll provide some useful guidance when you come up against puzzles, namely those involving orbs and flames. This advice often comes in the form of cryptic audio cues about how to go about solving a puzzle. It’s well worth listening to what they have to say. They’ll also perk up whenever you’re near a Lorestangir or Hidden Face collectible with phrases to the tune of ‘feeling’ something close by.

White marks ledges, gaps, and walls

As gorgeous as Ninja Theory’s take on Midgard can be, all those rocks can get hectic to navigate. To make sense of it all, look out for white paint markings. These signal a part of the environment that you can interact with like a gap you can squeeze through, a ledge you can climb up, or a low wall you can hop over. Aside from pushing you forward on the story path, they also often lead to hidden little areas where you’ll find most collectibles.

Learn to parry

For longer than I’d like to admit, I didn’t realise Senua could parry attacks using R1/RB. Put it down to Hellblade 2 having no meaningful player onboarding, but the game doesn’t do the best job of highlighting all of Senua’s moves. While dodging should be your go-to move for avoiding enemy attacks, weaving in the odd parry can help fill up your focus bar much faster. Once charged, tap R2/RT to unleash a brutal combo that takes down most enemies in one go.

Dodge and parry late

Another of the more useful tips we picked up playing for our Hellblade 2 review is that dodging and parrying work best at the tail end of an attack just before it’s about to strike Senua. Aim for late reactions rather than early ones as the latter typically mean you’ll get hit by an attack. The timing can feel a little off at first, but after a couple of fights, it should be easy enough to implement.

Enemy attacks are colour-coded

To help you decide on the best course of action mid-fight, enemy attacks in Hellblade 2 are colour-coded. White means you can either block or parry the attack. Red means you’re better off dodging otherwise Senua will be stunned for a few seconds, opening her up to follow up attacks. Lastly, if you see an enemy’s weapon and their body pulsating red then the attack can’t be parried and will cause massive damage to Senua.

✓ Tip

Whenever you find a Lorestangir totem or Hidden Face tree, you can track the collectibles you’ve found so far – runes for the totems and dots on the spiral for the faces.

Heavy attacks are slow but break guards

Watching as Senua slowly lumbers to wind up a heavy attack can put you off them, but don’t discount them entirely. When you come up against enemies with shields and spears or those that seem to guard however many times you attack them, then a well-timed heavy attack can smash through their guard and make them vulnerable to follow up attacks.

Use chapter select to find missed collectibles

Hellblade 2 is peppered with Lorestangir and Hidden Face collectibles that aside from ticking off two of the trophies needed to platinum the game, provide some interesting extra lore about the myths that make up Senua’s world. Though you can find them all during a normal playthrough, there’s a chapter select option in the main menu that unlocks successive major story beats as you progress through the game. It’s a quick and easy way to jump back in at specific points to grab any collectibles you might have missed. Chapter select even tells you the number of collectibles there are in each chapter and how many you’ve tracked down so far.