While I’ve always felt that the race towards graphical hyper-realism isn’t as widespread as it’s often perceived, Senua’s Saga: Hellblade 2 is definitely one of these games. The kind that probably has twelve artists dedicated to recreating visible pores, that sort of thing. He’s so focused on looking pretty that he didn’t even notice that the title and subtitle got mixed up.
Of course, Hellblade 2 is a heavy test on older hardware, with a heavy reliance on DLSS or FSR scaling to maintain good performance. However, it’s no Dragons Dogma 2-style technical horror show either. A happy balance between visuals and smoothness is achievable on both plush PCs and low-end laptops, while DLSS 3 frame generation can deliver an effective punch in the frame rate pants of RTX 40 series GPUs.
There are some key quality settings you might want to turn down in the process, so more on those below. First, let’s reacquaint ourselves with Hellblade 2’s system requirements, because well, googly, googly, there are a lot of them.
Senua’s Saga: Hellblade 2 system requirements and PC performance
This Pictish action-adventure allows you to skimp a bit on CPU power, requiring only a solid Core i5 at the very least and definitely mid-range chips for max 4K. A more powerful graphics card will pay dividends though, especially if you have one with Nvidia DLSS support; FSR 3 is available for upscaling, but lacks the frame generation component, so RTX card owners can stick with the better-looking DLSS. Hopefully you’re not just using 8GB of RAM either:
These specs seemingly assume you’ll stick with the default upscaling program, TSR. With that, plus the low quality preset, I recorded the GTX 1070 at an average of 33fps at 1080p – although after switching FSR 3 to quality mode, it jumped to 43fps, with a slight drop in picture sharpness. Sticking with AMD’s upscaler, the Intel Arc A750 also showed that budget GPUs can handle it, achieving 47fps at 1080p with a combination of medium settings and FSR 3 for quality.
However, DLSS turned out to be sharper and faster. My RTX 4060 initially struggled a bit with the high preset, even at 1080p, averaging 38fps with the default TSR. Switching to DLSS at quality instantly shot up to 56 fps, and since the RTX 4060 supports DLSS 3 frame gen, that can also push it to a smooth 91 fps. This technology also works well on laptop GPUs. My RTX 4050-based, 1080p MSI Thin GF63 laptop could run the Low preset at 51 fps with only DLSS scaling at the quality level – and enabling frame generation made it produce 88 fps.
Hellblade 2 remains a beautiful game even at these lower settings, and with the apparent lack of any real issues with stuttering, stuttering, or any other miscellaneous performance issues, it’s more adaptable to lower-end hardware than presentation of MEGA REAL GRAFFIX may imply . With limitations, of course – Steam Deck struggles, only being able to run at full low settings above 30fps with FSR 3 set to Ultra Performance. Which looks, in a word, pants. Performance mode is more tolerable visually, but usually puts the framerate in the twenties.
Conversely, Hellblade 2 scales impressively with bigger, sleeker GPUs. The RTX 4070 Ti dropped to 78 fps at 1440p/High, albeit aided by DLSS for quality, and framerate beat that to 127 fps. The same card and settings (without frame generation) also produced 78 fps at 3440×1440, an ultrawide resolution with an unusual side benefit: eliminating the horizontal black bars that appear (and are obviously required) in traditional 16:9. In other words, Hellblade 2 insists when played in ultrawide. I’m not a fan of this, no matter how cinematic the game wants to be, though at least it’s a win for ultrawide monitor owners who might otherwise have to put up with the stretched/inappropriate UIs of a gaming industry that generally prefers the regular widescreen screen.
The RTX 4070 Ti also did well in 4K, managing 59 fps at high with DLSS quality (88 fps with frame generation on). The most expensive card in my cabinet, the RTX 4090, did an even smoother 75 fps with DLSS at quality, rising to 120 fps with frame generation.
Senua’s Saga: Hellblade 2 Best Settings Guide
Unfortunately, DLSS 3 is beyond most GPUs, but smooth performance can be yours with a combination of regular scaling and a few lower settings. Don’t be afraid of such cuts in the visual merits of Hellblade 2 – as you can see from the comparison below, all three presets High, Medium and Low look quite similar, and some of the more visible changes (such as leaf quality and texture ) don’t really affect performance that much. Or at all, in many cases.
Armed with an RTX 4060 – I was going with a minimum spec GTX 1070 but wanted to test DLSS and frame generation – I compared each individual graphics setting at both highest and lowest quality, thus identifying which the best for speeding up productivity. Anything with a significant improvement at 38fps, the average result at preset high at 1080p, is worth a look:
Motion blur: You can turn this down if you just don’t like the effect, though it won’t affect performance in either case. I’m still at 38fps with the 10 down to 0. (You’ll also need to go into the accessibility menu to find the slider, as it’s not in the main graphics menu.)
Custom zoom tool: Forget the default TSR, even with its resolution scaling at a faster setting; FSR 3 and DLSS are faster and, especially in the latter case, better looking. DLSS in quality mode boosted the RTX 4060 to 56 fps, the best result of the bunch, while FSR 3 proved to be the best alternative for non-RTX GPUs with 54 fps in quality. Intel XeSS is also available and scored 53fps 53fps in its Ultra Quality mode, although it’s a little blurrier than FSR 3.
Frame generation: Again, this is exclusive to Nvidia’s RTX 40 series cards, but worth having if your GPU supports it. When enabled, it’s 56fps with Quality DLSS scaling up to 91fps. Just make sure that if you enable frame generation, you also set Nvidia Reflex (a little further down the menu) to On+Boost. This will help deal with the added input lag.
Variable speed shading: VRS, which aims to improve performance by changing the visual quality around different parts of the screen, is turned on by default. I got exactly 38fps after disabling it though, so you can turn it off and keep everything consistent.
Anti-aliasing: Probably not a problem since both DLSS and FSR include proprietary AA technology that replaces the game’s own. For what it’s worth, I saw no performance difference between High and Low while TSR was enabled.
Post-processing quality: Another unchanged 38fps after switching from High to Low.
Effects Quality: Low gave me 39fps, just 1fps faster than High. I wouldn’t bother.
Shadow quality: It’s minor, but I think the 41fps afforded by bumping this to Low almost makes it a worthwhile change. At least if you’re not already pulling 60fps-plus.
Reflection quality: Another low score of 39 fps. You can see the difference in water quality and whatnot, so try to keep it high.
Global lighting quality: Another setting for the cutting block. Low quality still looks good and helped the RTX 4060 to 44fps, an instant improvement of 16%.
Volume indicators: Perhaps it mitigated that as well, as the Low got the RTX 4060 with an average of 43 fps.
Texture Quality: Keep this up. Low did absolutely nothing to help performance, hitting 38fps again.
Viewing distance: Low produces an average of 39 fps, which may not be worth the push.
Sheet Details: Likewise, dropping to Low only increases performance by one frame per second. Stick to High.
It might not be the most precise approach, but turning a bunch of these settings down to Low and keeping the rest on High really does lead to big gains in FPS. Make no mistake though, it’s the third-party scaling programs that do a lot of the heavy lifting. Here’s what I’d suggest for Hellblade 2:
- Motion blur: 0
- Custom zoom tool: DLSS/FSR 3 on quality
- Variable speed shading: off
- Shadow quality: low
- Global lighting quality: low
- Volume indicators: low
- Everything else: High
Still on the RTX 4060 at 1080p, they got me 75 fps with DLSS and 73 fps with FSR, with the former able to rise to 117 fps with DLSS 3 frame generation. Even without it, note , that’s awfully close to doubling what the GPU was pulling at the high preset, and without the painful drop in visual quality. Job’s a good’un, as the Picts would probably say.
