The defining design pillar of Hell is Us is a refusal to guide the player. There are no waypoints, no quest markers, and very little in the way of an actual objective to follow. Instead, you’ll have to listen, observe, and puzzle your way through a brutal civil war that has torn apart the fictional nation of Hadea.

The team at Rogue Factor calls this design player-plattering, intending to push the player to lead their own journey. This harkens back to when part of the joy was in the not knowing. The aim is to rekindle the sense of discovery that can be lost with clear objective markers. 

They are, for the most part, extremely successful in prioritising player curiosity in the thirty hours it took me to complete Hell is Us. This investigative focus is accompanied by a solid albeit often opaque narrative, simple but functional third-person action-adventure combat, and throwback puzzle design. But what elevates Hell is Us is the monumental achievement in worldbuilding, lore, and audiovisual design of this unique setting.

Video games often depict war. A defining setting of the medium, players are easily positioned on the side of good against evil. Warfare is frequently spun as a heroic endeavour for the player, from blasting away Nazis to defending Earth from an alien invasion.

Warden of Grief

As Remi, a displaced Hadean returning to his homeland, the war is a backdrop. Despite this bleak setting and outlook, Hell is Us never verges on ‘torture porn’. Instead, playing the role of a detached sociopath creates enough distance to keep it from becoming an all-consuming darkness. You can’t stop the carnage that is destroying Hadea, and at no point does Hell is Us pretend you can. Remi isn’t that kind of hero, if he’s a hero at all. Remi’s characterisation is, instead, restrained. He only speaks when necessary, and his exact thoughts on the unfolding mystery are opaque. A clever framing device gives a peek underneath his implacable exterior, but he is rarely the focus of the story. Elias Toufexis’s leading performance is strong, but in terms of the whole package, he is underutilised.

Regardless of Remi, this isn’t the type of story where disposing of one tyrant will handily stop the bloodshed. This is a conflict where everyday people have turned against neighbours, where mobs murder and lynch former friends. The sectarian divide that separates Hadea is a cut as deep as time itself. Documents detailing their earliest history make it clear that Hadea was built on bones.

Hadea’s history is engrossing, intriguing, and most of all deeply real. You’ll read recent news articles one minute, and a thousand-year-old journals the next. Hell is Us carefully crafts its setting, with myriad threads weaving into a profoundly realistic tapestry of history. It also isn’t just lore for the sake of lore. Understanding Hadea’s history is key to progression. You might not know the Holy Kada from the Lymbic Spheres, but Hell is Us carefully drip feeds this information. Later documents do occasionally verge on overly long, but the balance here is often just right. 

Evidence design is meticulous throughout, from handwritten scrawls to ancient documents to modern orders from the mysterious OMSIF organisation. The accompanying high-quality writing and palpable personality mean every collectible piece of lore provides immeasurable opportunities for you to immerse yourself in Hadean society and culture.

As war rages, Remi focuses on another task. It starts deeply personal. Then, your mission builds to criss-cross the country to stop a calamity far beyond the knowledge of the average Hadean. Luckily, Hadea has faced this before. The history and lore that oozes confidence becomes the backbone for your investigation. Unsealing tombs to claw closer to the truth of what is causing the supernatural disaster that punctuates Hadea’s war is captivating. It turns each lore document into a potentially actionable clue, as you discover secrets some would rather leave buried.

Sphere of Rage

Combat in Hell is Us has many familiar aspects but remixes certain elements. Some pre-release confusion led players to think this was another souls-like, but it actually skews much closer to something like God of War. The usual beat of the drum means a light attack, a charged attack, and a dodge all work as expected. The basic light attack combos feel satisfying, while the meaty sound design on a charge attack is befitting of the high damage output. Meanwhile, parries are an inversion of standard procedure. Enemy attacks can be blocked at a cost to your stamina, but when they flash a different colour, the attack can be parried. 

A successful parry depletes a stance bar, and when emptied, Remi can perform a devastating finisher. The animation and perspective on these finishers are impeccable. Few games have such visceral camera angles, as if Remi has secretly mounted a GoPro to his polearm. Each finisher has a great sense of weight and impact, but I wish there were more variations per weapon type. The attacks that can be parried are also typically high damage, meaning the decision to drop your guard and attempt to re-engage it in time is a high-risk, high-reward maneuver.

A solid but stripped-back gear system underpins the game’s combat. With two weapon slots, an active and passive relic, along with your active abilities, there are enough options for you to craft a particular playstyle without overwhelming you with choice. The biggest problem with Hell is Us’s combat, then, is variety. There are only four types of weapons, and after a small amount of experimentation early in the game, I settled on my two favourites to keep consistently equipped. Enemies don’t fare much better. There are only five types of Hollow Walkers, which you will fight ad nauseam across the campaign. Of these, only the ranged Hollow Walker requires different tactics from the player. Besides this, each feels similar except for health and basic attack patterns.

There is another type of enemy in Hell is Us. Four key ‘Lymbic Spheres’ are central to major narrative beats, are utilised in puzzles, and are represented in enemies as Hazes. Hollow Walkers can summon Hazes of Rage, Grief, Terror, and Ecstasy. Each Haze is ‘tethered’ to the summoning Hollow Walkers, which are immune to damage until you disrupt the Haze. If you fail to kill the Hollow Walker in that opening, it’ll resummon the Haze, and you’ll have to fight it again.

Sadly, they don’t drive the combat loop beyond its solid but simple core. The issue is that every encounter with a Haze is functionally the same: take them out first. This doesn’t change the way you approach combat moment to moment; it just puts each encounter into two buckets. Either you have to focus on a Haze first, or there isn’t one in the encounter to worry about.

Encounter variation isn’t helped when you realise that while a Haze is active, a Hollow Walker is immune to damage, but not to having its stance depleted. This means that while you cannot kill a Hollow Walker while a tethered Haze is active, you can attack it to stun it permanently. Functionally, this is the same thing. Then, once you disrupt the Haze, you can use a finisher to instantly kill each stunned enemy. Once you know this, every encounter begins to feel very similar, which is a mounting problem as the game progresses.

Initially, I was playing on the default difficulty, but found this extremely easy. Alongside three difficulty presets, you can also hone in your preferences with sliders for enemy damage percentages or aggression. After bumping up to the ‘Merciless’ preset, I interacted more with the consumable subsystem. You can have eight consumables to rotate through and activate in the thick of combat that recharge various resources, or offer a passive defence buff against a particular type of Haze. Regardless of this, I still found combat to be quite easy overall. This is partially because Hell is Us is very forgiving when it comes to player death. Unless changed in the menu, death comes at basically no cost. Enemies remain dead, clues collected, and puzzles solved. Simply run back from the previous save spot and continue your investigation.

As an anti-frustration mechanic, I understand why the game’s default difficulty is forgiving. Despite the number of words I have dedicated to it, combat is not the focus of Hell is Us. The game would much rather you focus on the mystery, investigation, and puzzle-solving aspects. In this regard, having to constantly face the same enemies while attempting to investigate an area would get frustrating. There is a setting to make death more punishing here, but the default firmly signals the focus on puzzles and investigation.

Ecstasy of Knowledge

Hell is Us broadly has two schools of puzzle. One school is ‘lock and key’. A mechanism requires an item, and you will have to find that item by searching the environment. Sometimes these are literal locks and keys, but broadly, these items are diverse. Linking them narratively and thematically to the locale or plotline you’re investigating, and using distinctive shapes, also makes it easy to tell if you have the right item for an area. This is reminiscent of Resident Evil’s puzzle philosophy and is classic territory. These puzzles are well-designed and implemented in Hell is Us, despite their simple and throwback feel. Circling back to a location hours later with the exact item that clicks into place and opens the way forward is, as always, very satisfying.

Given how many investigations are ongoing, especially during the extremely meaty second act of the game, it was impressive how easily I remembered the distinct iconography that pushed me to my next destination. Conveyance in game design is a concept that focuses on teaching players how to progress and interact with various mechanics without being explicit. In the design of these puzzles, Hell is Us frequently impresses with its conveyance. More than once, I’d find an item following what I thought was an unrelated thread, only to have a eureka moment knowing exactly where I needed to take it next. Hell is Us isn’t perfect here, though, and I did get completely lost at times. While infrequent, it did bring into sharp focus why many games avoid this “player-plattering” design ethos.

The other category of puzzle you’ll interact with is code-breaking. Not only are computers and keypads locked with number combinations, but ancient dungeons seal forgotten artifacts behind chunky physical dials. These required specific sleuthing, but feel even more rewarding when outwitted. My favourite moments were often using the accumulated knowledge of the lore of Hadea to beat a lock long before the game had more thoroughly spelled out the specifics of its mechanism. It is a shame then that some of these locks are tied to collectible progression, where the game hands over the code after trading in enough objects rather than hiding it in the environment.

It is also worth noting that Hell is Us’s puzzles have one correct answer. Having played another investigation-forward AA title earlier this year, the excellent Atomfall from Rebellion, this is an interesting point of comparison. Atomfall was happy for you to stumble upon off-the-beaten-path solutions, and took minor inspiration from immersive sims. Early in Hell is Us, there is a reference to the number 0451. If you’re familiar with the immersive sim genre, this reference will trigger certain expectations in you.

Unfortunately, if you like this kind of thing, Hell is Us isn’t actually aiming for this design philosophy. I think this created an unfair expectation at the start, which works against Hell is Us in the opening hours. This may sound extremely nitpicky, which it is. But if you like puzzles with multiple solutions and seemingly game-breaking options, you should know you won’t find those in Hell is Us.

Roadtrip of Terror

Hell is Us segments Hadea into multiple zones that you fast travel between. Some zones are large, expansive spaces that you’ll return to, while others you’ll visit once and comfortably finish their available content. This creates a feeling of a much bigger world just beyond the borders of each level, with the front lines of the civil war often felt rather than seen. Locations also have drastically different visual designs and vibes. From small towns to ancient temples to the besieged capital, each new locale was a joy to visit.

Good Samaritan

Alongside the main investigative threads, these locations also have minor mysteries and Good Deeds for you to complete. Along with another piece of side content I won’t spoil, these stories are small in scope and simplistic in gameplay. Most mysteries can be resolved when you open a locked chest or door, and Good Deeds when you deliver a specific item to a character.

Mysteries reward observation, and while some can be solved almost immediately, others will require you to return to an area many hours later. I highly recommend a notebook for these, as the menu that logs them barely gives enough information to know how you found the mystery to begin with. This might frustrate some, but for me, it further enforces the central tenets of engaging meaningfully with the lore and hints dotted across the game.

For Good Deeds, the lack of information enhances the experience. Most are simple, with some unfortunately verging close to fetch quests at times. But without guidance, the better ones become mini-investigations into easing the suffering of your fellow man. There is nothing so grandiose as a quest in Hell is Us. But by delivering a photo of better times or returning a lost watch to someone who needs it, you offer a momentary reprieve. You might not be able to stop the war, but that doesn’t mean you can’t do a little bit along the way. While most Good Deeds do not have a failure state, it was frustrating to find out quite late in my playthrough that some do. Without a way to reload an older save if you mess up, this was quite jarring. 

For some characters, you can also ask about their opinion on various topics unrelated to your overlapping missions. Performances are solid, but Hell is Us lacks a standout from the extended cast. Each of these characters provides yet another avenue for the player to interrogate the realities of a society that has become embroiled in endless war. Faith, propaganda, duty, or some combination of the three often blinding them to the objective truth. Hell is Us goes to great lengths to depict the way societal pressures can dehumanise a population and manufacture consent for atrocities against a political other.

It is a shame that these conversations, along with the sporadic cutscenes, featured some lip sync issues. This was nothing major, but it was notable in a game with otherwise impeccable presentation and style. Performance was extremely consistent across my playthrough. As I entered some areas, I briefly dropped frames, but it was nothing that impacted gameplay.

Finally, I have been deliberately light on narrative details across this review to avoid spoilers. If you have any interest in this game, I would highly recommend going in as blind as possible to the main plotline. Primarily, this is the story of your investigation. Dialogue is sparing in comparison to more cinematic games, and each answer remains under the shroud of additional layers of mystery. Put simply, if you enjoy peeling back esoteric lore and deep diving into fan theories, you’ll enjoy Hell is Us’s story.