Hell Is Us | Review

Győző "FairyEmpire" BakiSeptember 1, 2025Last Updated: September 1, 2025

0 2,479 13 minutes read

Armed with little more than a stolen drone and initially rudimental melee weapons, the player has to cross a war-torn country that, for good measure, has also been swarmed by scary and deadly creatures. This is the basic premise of Hell Is Us, a brand new triple-A third person action adventure, published by French publisher Nacon. We played through this single player campaign on Xbox Series X, and boy – there is tons to talk about. Here’s the XboxEra review for Hell Is Us!

Not as familiar as it may seem

There is a high chance developer Rogue Factor doesn’t ring a bell to you. And yet, they have had their share of moderately successful games, such as Necromunda: Underhive Wars and Mordheim: City of the Damned. Their latest title, however, is arguably far bigger in just about every way: a highly cinematic, AAA third person adventure, one that rewards exploration, investigation, puzzle-solving, but also combat proficiency in a violent, creepy world; one inspired by late 1900’s Eastern Europe, featuring some truly terrifying creatures to boot, on top of two warring factions whose conflict may never ever stop, despite the presence of these scary new enemies.

I’ll be brutally candid for a second here: to me, soulslike as a genre, is incredibly tired by now. While From Software still manage to find new ways to evolve the formula, and various interesting titles managed to bring some interesting spins to it, I feel like it’s become an easy way to pad out certain games, via extending the combat encounters’ length, increasing their difficulty, and more noticeably punishing failure or lack of courage by continously respawning deadly enemies. Don’t get me wrong, I still find the genre interesting. Still, I feel like way too many games in recent years used some of From Software‘s design quirks, but merely to extend the scope of their game; without, in fact, actually having the depth or variety to justify it. Which, inevitably, brings us to Hell Is Us.

Souls-unlike

This brand new IP under Nacon’s publishing branch is very clearly inspired by soulslikes, but it is not actually a soulslike per se. Let’s take a step back, though. The player jumps into the shoes of Rémi, a United Nations soldier who was once born in the war-torn country of Hadea. The place has yet to fully end said military situation, but even worse, mysterious vaguely humanoid creatures named Hollow Walkers started roaming the land, viciously murdering everyone daring to get too close to them. The country is effectively under a lockdown, nobody goes in or out, but via a prolonged flashback sequence we find out how our protagonist managed to get in again, trying to survive between what is effectively 3 different factions on the field, all in an effort to find his long lost parents who gave up their future to save their son by smuggling him out at a young age.

With this premise starts a unique third person adventure, one that takes pride in not holding players’ hands. You will not find minimaps, markers to show you where to go, or even neatly explained guides as to what to do. A little bit of tutorial is there to teach you the basics of the combat, which is basically a weighty system very much akin to a soulslike, with a few quirks like finishers, a health draining move, some magic skills of sorts and being able to use a drone to distract enemies, attack them and so forth. But other than that: you, the player, are on your own. There’s always some goals to achieve, places to reach, puzzles to solve, perhaps various characters will give general ideas or hints as to where a location is – say, north-east, with then a compass and our own orientition being our only friends to navigate there.

Fight, die, repeat

With the weighty combat style of a soulslike comes the limited stamina and health as well, with players not being able to eat too many hits before succumbing. Can’t even jump, there’s long ladders to climb – you know the deal. Losing health is even more punishing here, as the very maximum stamina itself is limited by the available HP. You’re low on health? Enjoy only being able to hit once or twice, before your character is unable to attack, parry or even dodge for a couple seconds. I’ve found this mechanic oddly punishing, though at least you get other skills using Hell Is Us‘ equivalent of mana – lymbic energy. Exploration grants health packs, but it’s highly likely that death will eventually arrive for Rémi.

Unsurprisingly, dying is absolutely not the end of the journey, with various save points that bring us back to the action – it’s a canonical thing, actually, but I’ll not explain more. Still, reentering the fight is closer to the save system in Bioshock games, rather than something in Dark Souls. Enemies do not respawn, though the group we were fighting at that time does recover its health. All story progression, collectibles, dialogue and such is mantained, but all enemies cleared will stay dead. Except for when you travel to a different area altogether, at which point enemies do respawn – at least, until you close the area’s timeloop, which is its own can of worms I’ll also not dive into. This would have been nice to know in advance, for sure. Regrettably, health kits and other consumables don’t come back when respawning, so at times it’s more convenient to just let ourselves get killed than wasting resources on a fight that seems beatable. It’s… a weird compromise, as it encourages somewhat unnatural strategies, and rewards trial and error by not punishing the player for failing to make much progress. At least, at the default difficulty settings.

An easy mode is the death of the soulslike genre, and other 99 funny lies to entertain your friends with

Hell Is Us is yet another reminder that a game loses absolutely nothing by having adjustable difficulty options. On top of various base difficulties, the game is particularly generous with the customization, as there’s separate sliders and options for enemy health, enemy aggressivity and countless more options – including a more classic “death penalty” system, where you do indeed lose XP and such when dying, closer to what it’d be like in a soulslike. I can not stress it enough – this is an undeniable positive, with no negatives for people who want to experience the game as it was meant to be played by the developers. More accessibility is never a bad idea though, especially if the way to obtain it is completely optional. Don’t like the easier settings? Don’t use them. Simple as that!

What does bite back, in terms of design, is the game’s absolute commitment to the immersive system of almost always only giving hints, never solutions. The areas in which Hell Is Us is played are often large. Be it a forest, a swamp, a city, an underground maze, the surroundings of a church or a sewer, chances are you can get lost. These areas can even be re-explored at your own leisure anytime, with a cool armed vehicle our protagonist happily borrows from some soldiers who are absolutely not amused by this event. Well, aside from the aforementioned compass and some generic indications, you’re left on your own. This sounds great, but in practice, the game gives all sorts of side objectives, good deed missions, optional paths and more, with the player constantly encountering people to talk with, key items that you have to keep, solutions to puzzles that you may have not even encountered yet, you name it. With only very limited fast travel options, that means a tons of walking back and forth, aimless backtracking, only for you to hopefully find something you haven’t noticed the previous two or three times you’ve been there already.

I’m at a loss

This is a legitimate problem with Hell Is Us. If you like to explore, and you really should, given how many cool things there are to find and how many extra dialogue options you can get by doing everything, chances are you’ll be stacked with things to do. So-called good deeds, in particular. In these, it can be quite frustrating to find an item, such as a photo, a teddy bear, a key or whatever, then have to remember which exact barely documented side mission even needed that. Even worse is when you find the item, but not yet the place to use it. At one point, I’ve found a half-empty bottle of booze. You can give items to virtually any speaking character in the game, but nobody will accept anything except for the thing (or things) they need, exactly. Cue some point ‘n’ click style trial and error, where maybe giving the teddy bear to a hidden young girl sounds smart, or maybe the alcohol is meant for a grieving person. Nope, by talking to the 20th seemingly identical guard, that one appears to have a drinking problem and, if you bring them enough stuff to drink, they may even give you a key that you didn’t even know you needed. Some of these deeds are even time sensitive and can be failed – though, of course, the game doesn’t really tell you until it’s too late.

In all fairness, most of these puzzles and situations are purely optional. There’s so many such events, secrets, complex puzzles per each major area, and it’s way too easy to get lost among all of it. Oddly enough, despite the game taking pride in not giving hints, the player does have a nice tidy datapad on which the “investigation” elements can be checked at any given time. You’d think this would be an excellent tool for the protagonist to take notes of where an elusive character is or where they encountered a bizarre puzzles with rotating pillars. At times, it can absolute be, but it also seems like the game expects the player to take notes like in Blue Prince, except you only realize this when you notice that the game’s own note-taking process is severely lacking. We do find new companions, who will help us identifying objects, rewarding us for solved good deeds and so forth, but for the most part: the player is on their own.

A puzzle within a puzzle within a puzzle

Even when it comes to the so-called “golden path”, as in the primary objectives and the most optimal route to clear them, the amount of convoluted puzzles is high. Because, at one point, it turns out that to solve this bizarre situation in this war-torn country you need to go through a series of hilariously elaborate puzzles. The fourth area of the game, for example, is a neverending sequence is puzzles, doors to find keys for, mechanisms to figure out, clues to interpret. They can feel rather excessive in numbers, but usually, this is fine: solution usually isn’t far off, and if you’re progressing in a linear fashion, chances are the puzzles can be solved quickly. The issues arise when said obligatory twists and turns happen in the more open areas, where the player has complete freedom of exploring massive lands – sometimes, even needing to go back to a previously visited area as well.

In these areas, it’s highly likely you will encounter various locked doors, puzzles with strange symbols, characters who hint they might be able to help in the future, or paths that are only temporarily blocked, waiting for a specific story beat to happen to move forward. Well, these are the places where Hell Is Us‘ open-ended exploration faulters. When you have half a dozen different puzzles to solve, and no indication as which one may be the key one, it is hard to figure out which of them lets you progress, and if you simply missed a hint somewhere or you’re banging your head against something that legitimately can not be done yet, as the clues or key items for it are to be found at a much later time. And often enough, the game inserts puzzles within a puzzle itself. Find a clue to solve a puzzle. This leads you to a door, hopefully you’ve found the key 12 areas ago – if not, backtrack! This then leads you to another puzzle, for which clues you may have to look around half a mile. Google will be your friend at that point, I suppose.

And then there’s the final hours

It may feel like I’m just repeating myself at this point, but trust me – whatever difficulty I may have had with the puzzles, with the backtracking in the first three quarters of the game, just absolutely dwarves compared to the sheer insanity of the last couple hours. Sure, the visual choices and the architecture start getting really intriguing, I’ll concede at least that. But at this point, it looks the developers figured that you are comfortable with the combat, the exploration, the puzzles and everything, so they cranked everything up to 100 – and maybe more. Combat encounters with multiple enemies at a time that can basically kill you with like two hits if you’re not careful – often in extremely tight corridors, which underline the game’s issues with the camera and aiming in certain spots. Maze-like sequences where, for good measure, you also often have to combat in elevated areas, with a risk risk of falling to your death.

And, well, the puzzles. Oh, the puzzles. At this point, you’d better have taken all the notes about the game’s intricate lore and mythology, because there’s gonna be several enigmas to solve where not only you have to investigate and look around tons, you also have to fill in the blanks via your very own knowledge of the game – or your skills in finding out info from your investigative panel on the datapad, which at this point is enormous. One of these series of puzzles involves pressure plates that automatically kill you if you choose the wrong option, sending you back to a checkpoint about a minute walk away. And then, still in Act, some of the more annoying boss battles I ever encountered in a third person game of this sort. I’m not gonna spoil how they function, but not only they shamelessly repurpose combat situations you’ve done a thousand times before, it’s also done in such a way that it’ll test your nerves, more so than your actual skills. I’ll not even get into some of the crazy stuff in the end, Act 3, because we’d be here until tomorrow otherwise.

A world worth exploring

I just wrote several paragraphs of grievances, didn’t I? Yet, I really felt the desire to go on with the game, as I was genuinely loving its vibes. The themes of eternal conflict and the cycle of violence, the brutal and grim world with gorgeous graphics and vistas, the crazy mythology about gods, the creepy enemies that wouldn’t feel out of place in the Southern Reach Trilogy book series, which was a big inspiration for this title admittedly. Speaking of the enemies, they can get rather tanky, especially the ones which have a self-detaching core which has to be beaten first. With only 5 main types of enemies, the opponents’ variety isn’t high, and there’s no invasions, PvP or other multiplayer variations either – not that any of that feels needed, mind. On the other hand, there’s various interesting characters, many tough themes are explored, and it’s hard not to feel something in your heart when you find a sobbing man next to a ditch with countless bodies, or a massive tree in the middle of a swamp with several civilians hanging from ropes at their necks.

Despite the low enemy variety and the fact the enemies respawn when switching areas, the combat is for the most part fun, rewarding, and has the weighty skill-based feeling of the best soulslikes titles. Lock-on is a bit messy though, and aiming melee attacks when surrounded by enemies is a bit tricky; yet, with various lymbic and drone skills at disposal, most combat encounters can become quite trivial, if played in a smart way. You can, for example, cheese many encounters by spamming projectiles from a distance. There’s even a weapon upgrade system, elemental variations, defensive perks and more, giving a solid build variety as well. Ironically, despite Hell Is Us being advertised predominantly as an action adventure with a focus on combat, I’ve found far more challenge in some of the puzzles than in the fights. I occasionally lost time to a couple glitches, such as one loading failing and once where my character got stuck in a loop where it could no longer interact with anything, nor roll, attack and so forth. Rare instances, though, as the game’s generally quite polished – aside from the few combat anomalies I mentioned.

Did it have to be this way?

Not only the game looks quite damn gorgeous, with both a quality and performance graphics mode for everyone’s preferences to be met, I must commend the creepy yet beautiful soundtrack as well, making for an excellent background to such a broken world. It is by all means a massive game, and despite the fact I didn’t complete anywhere near all the optional content, it still took me a couple dozen hours to reach the end. This, to be blunt, isn’t at all a good thing. While the depth of builds is solid, the effective gameplay and area variety isn’t all that high, and much of the extraordinary length is achieved by copious amounts of padding. Endless mazes, convoluted puzzles, tons of backtracking, respawning enemies – and, of course, the difficulty and complexity spike of the last hours of the story. I have a distinct feeling that, instead of going for an absolutely brilliant 10-15 hour game, developer Rogue Factor may have felt the need to extend the game’s length to rival other AAA games, severely impacting the overall experience in the process.

As such, Hell Is Us is a game of two tales. One of a gripping world with devastating stories of humanity and lack thereof, challenging the player to truly think about their actions, understand the morbidly beautiful world around them, be able to solve intriguing puzzles and challenges without holding their hand, including the soulslike-inspired combat itself. The other tale, however, is of aimless wandering, tons of trial and error, getting stuck on some convoluted multi-level puzzle in some needlessly large and maze-like area, or dying to to some clunky combat features in some oddly designed areas. Such incredible highs with such frustrating lows are a rare sight, and your overall enjoyment of the game will largely depend on how much you tolerate the latter. I still feel like recommending Hell Is Us, to some people at least, because it is a unique experience worth digging into. Just, remember to arm yourself with a lot of patience – and maybe a guide or two.