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When I look at modern games, I can’t help but notice that many of them love holding our hands every step of the way. Some might do it more than others, but there’s always guidance here and there to take you from point A to point B. There’s nothing bad about it, mind you. Yet, it is always nice to have a few unguided experiences that test our puzzle-solving skills and actually let us think for once, instead of mindlessly following a yellow line of paint. Hell Is Us is among those refreshing games. While it isn’t the first one to provide an adventure without a map or markers, it stands out as one of the more original titles due to its intricate quest design and challenging puzzles.
Into A War-Torn Country
When I learned Hell Is Us was a Souls-like, or rather, Souls-lite, I immediately thought that its story would be somewhat ambiguous. Fortunately, it wasn’t the case, as it presents a solid narrative that stays cohesive as you jump between zones and acts, and has a strong message behind it all.
You step into the shoes of Rémi, our unexpected hero, who goes into the bowels of a war-torn country to look for his parents. As he traverses through these lands, he gets involved with a secret organization tasked with fighting the supernatural horrors plaguing this country. He even takes the mantle of the unsung hero as he tries to stop a calamity.
Initially, I wasn’t convinced by the plot. It started slow and had a few clichés, but it all started to take more shape as I delved further into the game’s areas. What made it enjoyable was the message behind it, which I won’t spoil here, but it delves deeply into the humane and inhumane. The war-torn setting further enhances the narrative by showing you the horrors of war, but also how our protagonist can become that beacon of hope to aid a few citizens trying to escape from these dreadful lands.
Overall, the story of Hell Is Us is far more enjoyable than that of other Souls-like games we’ve seen lately. While you could follow the critical path to reach the end quickly, the narrative shines more as you stop to do optional quests and talk with other NPCs who are stuck in this desolate country. Additionally, the game’s lore is excellent. While it is all locked behind collectibles, notes, and journal entries, it is worth exploring as it adds more context to the already magnificent world-building within Hell Is Us.
Hollow Encounters
Unfortunately, if the story is impactful and sticks with you after finishing the game, the combat does not. While the game advertises itself as a Souls-like, it feels more like a Souls-lite and even Nioh-lite at times. You have some staples of both genres, the stamina bar the industry can’t live without nowadays, enemies with erratic attack patterns, and even a healing pulse you can trigger after damaging foes and pressing a button at the right moment. On paper, it all sounds great and seems to be a well-made formula, but in practice, it becomes tedious quickly.
Let’s start dissecting it by talking about Rémi’s armaments. You’ll start the game with your trusty sword, but will quickly unlock hatchets, a spear, and even a greatsword. All these weapons have varied attack patterns that favor different playstyles. Your sword is the most balanced one in terms of speed and damage, while the greatsword trades off speed for more powerful blows. Hatchets, on the other hand, are the fastest weapons in the game, but with the lowest damage, and spears have the longest reach and damage somewhere in between swords and greatswords.
On top of that, you unlock the ability to customize these weapons with elements. Each element allows you to place Glyphs inside your armaments, which serve as active skills you can trigger by using your Lymbic Energy, a resource you’ll get by damaging foes or using consumables. Some of these elements include Grief, which focuses on damage-over-time attacks, or Rage, which focuses on dealing a lot of damage with big blows.
To add variety to combat, you also have Drone Modules that you can equip, which grant abilities to your Drone. Initially, you start with a skill that sends your Drone out to distract enemies. As you progress through the story, however, you unlock a few more that go from launching an attack from the air to sending out shockwaves to enemies that get close to you. All of these are tied behind a cooldown and do not use Lymbic energy. You can also find defensive gear, which is essentially armor that provides passive bonuses, and relics that enhance certain combat styles.
If combat offers so many customization options and essentially three ways of dealing with an encounter, why does it feel so impactful then? Two words: enemy variety. I’ve always thought that the enemy roster will make or break a game, and for Hell Is Us, it is sadly the latter.
While there are different enemy designs, they all feel similar mechanically and don’t even present a challenge after a while. The game also has a gimmick where some foes are invincible until you destroy a glowing orb that’s inside of them. These orbs have specific colors and usually share the same moveset, like the red one focusing on heavy attacks that can break your guard or the green one that performs fast and erratic moves.
In truth, the above elements wouldn’t present an issue if at least the enemy groups were more varied. Often, you’ll encounter three foes of the same type, and the only variant is the orb that spawns. Going further, since exploration plays a key role in Hell Is Us, enemy respawns becomes annoying, as you’ll often be enthralled by the next puzzle you encounter, but will have to go through the same enemy group every time you load into a zone.
Still, credit where it’s due because, despite its underwhelming feel, I always appreciate when a game gives you impactful customization options for combat. I spent some time perfecting a Grief-focused build that did a lot of DoT effects, and it was nice to see enemies dying so quickly after pulling off my skills. Yet, more enemy variety would’ve made the experience more enjoyable, or even encouraged me to try different builds with more elements. But as it stands right now, you’re better off lowering the difficulty to focus on the meaty parts instead: puzzles and exploration.
An Explorer’s Paradise
What truly makes Hell Is Us shine every step of the way is its sense of discovery, exploration, and puzzle-solving aspects. Since these all are huge and play a vital role in the whole experience, I’ll focus on its sense of discovery and exploration first.
If you played the demo, you already know that there’s no map in Hell Is Us. You won’t find quest markers or something that tells you where you are. All you have to go by is the landmarks around the areas, your compass, and your memory, and that is an excellent approach.
While Hell Is Us is a semi-open world, I was pleasantly surprised to see the depth of all of its areas. You start in a dense forest with hidden caves and a few minor puzzles, but as you progress through the story, you encounter huge swamp areas with a town in the middle that has a whole underground section, or even smaller towns that feel like a maze as you traverse through their burned-down streets.
The only game that encouraged me to take notes and badly draw a map of my surroundings was Elden Ring, back when it launched, so I was glad that Hell Is Us encouraged me to do it again. Exploring these lands felt incredibly immersive, as I had to memorize my surroundings and guide myself through landmarks, or even backtrack some of my steps to complete a puzzle or progress through the story.
In addition, exploring never becomes tedious. In many games that lack any sort of guidance, finding your next objective tends to become tiring and, at times, frustrating. It doesn’t happen here. Hell Is Us makes the critical path accessible, but also encourages you to go off the beaten path to solve the more obscure puzzles and quests, and that’s one approach I hope other games would take nowadays.
A Puzzle Here, a Puzzle There
The second thing that will keep players hooked with Hell Is Us is, undoubtedly, its puzzles. If combat lacked enemy variety, the puzzle-solving aspect is the complete opposite, and you’ll often encounter many brain teasers that go from extremely easy to solve to outright drill your brain until you find the answer, albeit in a good way.
Most puzzles in Hell Is Us have different stages and go beyond just one zone. You might meet an NPC who has a request, but there’s nothing in that area to fulfill it. I loved this approach as it made things more challenging by having me look for solutions in uncharted places. Also, remember that there’s no guidance here, so all you have is your datapad, which you’ll be using a lot to read clues and remember what you were supposed to do.
To give you an example, there is one early quest that involves moving some torches on the wall. You will find these torches randomly during your adventure and will start moving them around to see if something happens. An hour later, I discovered a corpse at the other end of the map that had information pertaining to the torches; I now knew what to do with them. However, I was not able to complete the puzzle until much later in the game when I unlocked a new area. For that, I was glad that the datapad was there to remind me what to do, but not to hold my hand throughout the process. This is the ideal approach to quest design, and one that rewards experimentation, exploration, and player agency.
Also, I discovered there were many quests I could fail, and I found that out the hard way. In one of my journeys, I encountered two NPCs who needed something to stay alive, so I decided to postpone it until I unlocked more parts of the map, and they met their end. It was a hard blow to deal with, but I learned from it, and from that point onward, I decided to take note of every single thing so I wouldn’t miss one puzzle.
Overall, Hell Is Us greatly shines thanks to its varied puzzles, high stakes, and encouragement to explore. I would’ve loved to have a map of sorts where I could draw things on, kind of like how Project Zomboid does it, but even without that, I loved the approach it took to questing and puzzle-solving.
An Immersive Journey With a Few Bumps
Hell Is Us is a refreshing experience in a gaming world that treats us like little kids who can only draw with crayons on a paper menu. While it isn’t the first to apply the formula, it does so in an original, cohesive, and immersive way. Every puzzle is different, and some can even take dozens of hours to complete. Furthermore, it is great that some of the most memorable brain teasers of Hell Is Us are part of the main story, and it is even better that they are designed in a way that will challenge players without stopping them from progressing through the game’s narrative.
While I would’ve loved to see more enemy variety and face more challenging foes, every other aspect in Hell Is Us makes up for the lackluster combat. The world, while shocking and not for the faint of heart, is one of the most immersive I’ve explored in recent memory, and one where you actually feel you’re making a change due to all the optional quests you can discover. Rogue Factor has struck gold with this approach to the Souls-like genre, and I can only hope for the studio to polish it because I would love to get my mitts on another experience like Hell Is Us.
Review copy provided by the Publisher.
Hell Is Us (PC Reviewed)
Hell Is Us is one of the most unique gaming experiences of the year, bringing some of the most intricate and memorable puzzles in recent memory, accompanied by superb exploration mechanics.
Pros
- Memorable and intricate puzzles
- Superb exploration mechanics
- Excellent world-building
Cons
- Lackluster combat
- The story starts a bit slow
