Senua's Saga: Hellblade 2 Is Now Steam Deck Verified, But It Has Major Compromises

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Of all the Xbox games that I have played recently, Hellblade is one of the more memorable titles that stick with me. Following Senua's journey and descent into her maddening mind was captivating, and the visualization of it stuck in my mind. This continued into Senua's Saga: Hellblade 2, which continued the awesome tale.

Today, the game got a brand new enhanced edition, which comes with some big changes. There's a brand new "Very High" graphical preset with a big visual bump, a developer commentary mode, a Dark Rot mode that acts as an even harder difficulty mode, new Photo Mode features, DualShock controller support, and a bunch of fixes across the board.

On top of that, we also got some performance improvements on the Steam Deck, which earned it that Verified badge. Seeing this, I knew I had to go test it out and see if it earned the green checkmark. There have been a lot of games that get the Verified badge that don't deserve it, so I was curious to see if Senua's Saga would be one of them. Ultimately, I would say it has gotten better, but it does require some major compromises to keep it at a stable framerate.

To get to 30 FPS, Hellblade 2 will now automatically set your graphical quality to what it feels is optimal. It will automatically set the game to the lowest quality settings with FSR 3.1 upscaling on Performance mode. For the most part, the game seems to hold at 30 FPS and higher more often than not. I was honestly quite surprised with how well it was running compared to how it was performing when it first released.

However, there are some major compromises. The visual quality is very poor, with upscaling making the world around pixelated and blurry. It was so bad that even the characters' faces were blurry. It wasn't unplayable, I could still make out what was happening and the surroundings, but for a game that has prided itself on its gorgeous visuals, it's not the greatest.

In addition, the game isn't fully stable at 30 FPS. Some areas run well and go above 30 FPS, but many do drop when walking around and turning the camera. So, while standing still, the game will stick above 30 FPS, but when moving around, it could fluctuate, and I have seen it go down to 25 FPS.

This isn't unplayable by any means, which is why I would say Senua's Saga: Hellblade 2 earned its Verified badge. It isn't the greatest experience, and requires compromises to play at the bare minimum framerate, but it does play. Would I necessarily recommend it? Personally no. The fluctuations and poor visual quality are too many compromises for me. But if you only have a Steam Deck, I would say it's just barely playable now.

Senua's Saga: Hellblade 2 is available for $49.99 on Steam.

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