Hell is Us review - ambitious, unnerving action RPG comes up short

Being offered the chance to solve a mystery, like truly solving a mystery, is a tantalizing prospect. That's what Hell is Us promises: a world without quest markers, a journey in which you must rely on your wits and your thirst for knowledge to sniff out the truth. It's a lofty goal that developer Rogue Factor doesn't quite deliver on.

Hell is Us is a third-person action-adventure game set in the fictional, war-torn country of Hadea. Our protagonist, Remi, has re-entered Hadea in an effort to reconnect with his parents, who sent him away in an effort to escape the fighting. The country's still in a bit of a state, with civil war raging in the streets and a host of demonic horrors appearing seemingly out of nowhere.

I'm introduced to Remi in some fairly difficult circumstances. He's bound to a chair and is being interrogated by someone who looks like he's been deceased for a couple of weeks, with a bloated face, grey skin, and a terrible smoking habit. Truth serum courses through Remi's veins, and he's forced to tell the entire story from the beginning.

This is where I'm thrown into Hadea. A textbook spooky forest lies in front of me, although the signs of destruction and despair are starting to poke their way into view. A cow lies dead on blood-soaked ground, and a dilapidated house speaks to the hardship of Hadea's residents. The house has an open storm cellar, and a light beckons me inside.

The owner of the farm is a man named Earnest, and he serves as my introduction to what I'll be doing in Hell is Us over the next couple of dozen hours. We speak, and I get to ask him some questions about my current mission, and also about current events. He gives me a key to access the next area, and I'm off to the races.

The idea behind Hell is Us is that it's free-form. There is no map, no markers, and you have to figure most things out by yourself. The HUD is minimal, which really drew me into the world as I had to rely on my senses more when exploring, and it was often the case that I heard an enemy before they came into vision.

The enemies then. Whenever I'm out and about, I encounter what can only be described as extremely aggressive storefront mannequins - dangerous, featureless, humanoid creatures that are born from something called The Calamity. They're here to make everyone's life a bit more miserable and to make people a lot more dead. Eventually, it falls on me to stop this pale onslaught.

The combat takes a lot from soulslikes, with parrying, dodging, and a stamina bar. The difference for me is that it's not as quick or as responsive as, say, a Sekiro, and you can't slash through waves of enemies like you would in a God of War. It leaves Hell is Us somewhere in the middle, and I find myself fudging my way through the same set of four enemies on repeat until I wrap the main story, which is a shame, because the game does a lot of work to set a discomforting tone only to be let down by flat fights.

Discordant strings and unsettling synth punctuate each encounter, ramping up whenever I get into a skirmish and settling into a creepy undertone when I'm exploring a pitch black cavern. It sets me on edge, as it well should, and lends Hell is Us a nightmarish feeling, like I could wake up at any moment if I just tried hard enough.

The environments add to the discomfort, although not all of it is due to the porcelain-skinned aggressors that prowl the landscape. Some of the most disturbing scenes stem from man's inhumanity to man, so to speak, with self-righteous figures standing on both sides of the war. To these people, the means justify the ends, and walking through the aftermath of these scenes sends a shiver down my spine.

I can talk to anyone I come across, with some having more to say than others. A priest is chained up in the town square with little hope of survival. It's grim, and talking to him shines a light on the allegedly peaceful religion he preaches, making his aggressors look despicable. Chatting with named characters usually opens up a dialogue screen, which allows me to press them for information about what to do next, where to go, and just what the hell is going on. With him, I was filled with anger at the situation, but sadly, I felt like I had little agency to change things.

Probing the locals doesn't necessarily advance my progress, but in a game about finding the edges, it's good to know the lay of the land. The world has a depth to it, and the conflict raging on feels scarily real. Biases convince each side it's right, with state-run propaganda fanning the flames, or so I'm told by some.

I throw myself into the first major settlement I find, exploring every nook and cranny, questioning anyone I bump into. Initially, this felt like an investigation of sorts; asking after the blacksmith was my first real objective, and piecing together bits of information felt organic in a way many games don't. Someone tells me they think he left with a convoy, then someone else mentions that a convoy was ambushed fairly close by - that's where I need to poke my nose next.

It's difficult for a game as free-form as Hell is Us to dictate a pace, what with the impetus for advancement falling onto my shoulders, but it did a decent job at it in the opening few hours. I had to find certain people because they're important to me, and because with them comes the promise of more information. Once these objectives shift to finding generic items, my interest wanes.

I begin to see the workings behind Hell is Us and its particular brand of exploration. After a point, it's all about finding stuff, and it's everywhere. Most obstacles I come across need a key, or a medallion, or a sigil, often requiring me to leave the place I just discovered in search of yet another McGuffin. They never seem to stop, and after a while, I get tired.

Never do I need to solve a problem by diplomacy, using my words and the knowledge I've gained to help the people or the situation around me. It always boils down to an item I either have or have not found. It eventually starts to feel non-interactive, and Remi is simply a shopping cart filled with all the trinkets I find on my trip across Hadea.

This worsens the further I get into Hell is Us, with most of the second act being consumed with a hunt for several keys. There are pockets of inspiration in the search, with a couple of logic puzzles thrown into the mix, but I can't help but feel like the majority of tasks are a bit too cut-and-paste to be meaningful. The obfuscation of direction muddies the waters, and even the most simple of tasks becomes an overwrought trudge.

The thrust of Hell is Us is the discovery, and a new area brings a wave of potential my way. Some of these are truly beautiful, and as I enter a fresh landscape, I take a second to marvel at what's ahead of me. This begins to fade the more I explore. The lack of handholding doesn't insult my intelligence, which I respect, but it isn't congruous with an enjoyable narrative, and with the rest of Hell is Us being fairly middle-of-the-road, I'm left with little to enjoy.

I appreciate that Hell is Us took the risks it did, and I hope more games follow suit, but there are lessons to be learned here. Place-setting and atmosphere are by far its strengths, but I never felt like I was passing through with purpose, and the minute-to-minute actions didn't feel satisfying enough to make me want to see what was next.